I have a EU passport, working remotely in the UK, have a fully settled status, and for the last 8 months I’ve been in the UK for a total of maybe 5 days.
I still have a UK address which I realistically don’t live in, but I have ability to receive letters in there. I Also have UK phone number and I continue to receive salary to my UK bank account. So on paper I’m a resident of the UK.
I use UK credit card for everything and it works out quite well especially with lower costs of living.
I’m currently in Hungary but I’m not registered here. I don’t think they know I’m here because with EU passport I could just cross the border any time and that it doesn’t look like it’s tracked anywhere. I haven’t seen anyone in Hungary to track my whereabouts, and I usually say that I’m temporarily living here.
I haven’t told my employer, which is a bit risky but so far they haven’t found out. My boss said he wouldn’t care if I worked from abroad sometimes (we had an informal chat about it)
I do come to the office once every 2 months, and generally my colleagues think I live in England. There aren’t any emergency office meets, which gives usually me time to plan the flights and hotels etc.
So I have few questions.
Could there be any implications if I do it long term? Could HMRC find out that I’m living abroad? Could they use UK border data to check how often I am in the country? Would they even care if they did find out? After all I’m paying tax to their pocket so why wouldn’t they be happy?
Your best long-term solutions are:
- Setup Ltd in the UK and get hired as contractor with B2B contract. Then pay all your taxes properly in whatever country you actually reside.
- Get your company hire you through service like Deel that handle taxes on it’s own since they just legally hire you in whatever country you reside in.
Both options wont be suitable for majority of employers, but at least you won’t be on the hook for tax fraud in EU with some hefty fine to pay.
Both options will arouse interest in the employer. Best not to bother.
This actually is not a bad idea, the company I work for does provide an option to switch to private contract position, but it can only be done if they hire you via ltd that you can create yourself. However I don’t think I’ll go this route as this kind of like protecting yourself from something that might never happen
The down side is you have zero legal protections against being fired for no reason and with no notice. If you are an employee over two years you have the right not to be fired without a reason and notice.
Also it would be really obvious you are up to something.
Don’t know about the UK but I’ve been doing this for ~8 years… I make an American salary and live in places that have a MUCH lower cost of living.
It’s been my experience that my colleagues never care. However, HR is a nightmare to deal with. It’s literally their job to find out how to pay employees less. Every time HR has found out what I’m doing it’s been a problem. This is the main thing I have to be aware of when interviewing for new positions… I keep my mouth shut until after onboarding is finished and I never have to talk to them again.
On the tax front, the Americans have an exemption you qualify for if you are out of the country for 330 days or more per year… Basically the first $120k of your income is not taxed and anything you make above that amount begins to be taxed at the lowest tax rate. I don’t have to mention this to the employer at all because it’s part of the paperwork I file with the government at tax time… It has nothing to do with the job really… My tax rate has been 1% or less for nearly a decade now.
You should talk to a tax strategist. They may be expensive up front but they will save you MUCH more than whatever they charge in the long run.
EDIT: If someone knows a good place for finding contract work, I’m looking for SRE gigs.
Could there be any implications if I do it long term? Could HMRC find out that I’m living abroad? Could they use UK border data to check how often I am in the country? Would they even care if they did find out? After all I’m paying tax to their pocket so why wouldn’t they be happy?
Unless you phone up HMRC or write to them they will assume you are living happily at your last address. HMRC won’t do any pro-active checks. They don’t have time.
There’s very little cross-checking of border data for UK citizens unless you start going around attracting the UK police’s attention.
Unless you pro-actively tell your host country where officially live then they won’t know.
People need to stop worrying.
I totally agree with you, but to keep pretending like you’re still living in UK you have to commit few crimes here and there. AFAIK all UK banks except for HSBC and international branches of high-street ones only work with residents and tend to ask you about residency from time to time.
It’s not like you can’t do it, but you need to consider consequences especially when OP only ILR and he is not actually UK citizen.
I totally agree with you, but to keep pretending like you’re still living in UK you have to commit few crimes here and there. AFAIK all UK banks except for HSBC and international branches of high-street ones only work with residents and tend to ask you about residency from time to time.
No you don’t. I’ve lived outside of the UK for long periods of time. I’ve never been asked to provide proof I’m living at a particular address by a bank.
Please stop over thinking this and posting information that is not practical.
Do you have any plans to get the UK citizenship? You may need to declare how much time you have been out of the UK with your application and you don’t want to lie about that. Any reason you can’t or don’t want to get it? With the UK citizenship you don’t have, at least, to worry about losing your settled status.
Any reason you can’t or don’t want to get it?
I would be eligible but I don’t want UK to have full rights over me, this country became increasingly more fascist and totalitarian in the past decade and a half, unfortunately.
I might consider it there’s a new government with a different policy; at this point I’m happy with being a citizen of a different country and knowing I at least have somewhere else to turn to or, at the worst, I will just get kicked out to where I’m originally from which is miles better.