Plan B?

[BlasterBates]

...the trouble is AtW that either expat pays tax for the full year in that EU country or he splits it. If he splits it the IR will request 40% because the UK includes your overseas earnings in calculating the tax rate, though they don't tax the overseas earnings it shoves up your tax rate on UK earnings.

[AtW]

But surely taxation in Europe is lower, so why won't you pay tax in the place where you work and not UK? I appreciate you must have very carefully considered it, I am just curious on reasons why not.

[meridian]

But surely taxation in Europe is lower, so why won't you pay tax in the place where you work and not UK? I appreciate you must have very carefully considered it, I am just curious on reasons why not.

That might be construed as a tax minimisation scheme....

[AtW]

I've changed my view on that as soon as I started paying substantial amount of tax (40% rate is IMO a bit too high).

[expat]

But surely taxation in Europe is lower, so why won't you pay tax in the place where you work and not UK? I appreciate you must have very carefully considered it, I am just curious on reasons why not.

Taxation in Europe is not necessarily lower. There are only a few places where total tax bite for someone in my/our position is lower (total tax bite = employer's NI + employee's NI + income tax: there are pretty exact equivalents in most places).

Also because there isn't "the place where I work", it is different with each contract. And to get the non-resident advantages of, say, Netherlands or Switzerland, you have to be non-resident there, i.e. resident elsewhere.

Right now I'm in Spain and enjoying it but I really don't want to pay their tax instead.

And I am ready to be UK-resident, to get a mortgage, sometime.


The overall tax bite is higher in most places, but that just means that the same would apply there. Only it applies especially in the UK because of the sudden jump in tax rates (in France, for example, it's higher but so fine-grained that there is no single point at which you might decide it's suddenly not worth any more).

[AtW]

ok, so it follows that UK personal taxation is not that much worse than around Europe and it would only make sense to be tax exile if you spend this time in some offshore like Isle of Man?

[expat]

ok, so it follows that UK personal taxation is not that much worse than around Europe and it would only make sense to be tax exile if you spend this time in some offshore like Isle of Man?

IMHO it isn't worse, it's better than quite a few. It does have some differences: the very few tax bands being one, and the high employer's NI being another.

[AtW]

ok thanks. So it seems in effect taxes got reasonably harmonised around europe, which is a good thing. Now if only they closed offshores live would be