Your first UK tax year

Your UK tax position turns on residence, decided by the Statutory Residence Test rather than by your visa. Arrive part-way through a tax year and split-year treatment can keep earlier foreign income out of UK tax; qualifying new arrivals can also claim the 4-year FIG regime on foreign income and gains.

One question decides most of the others: whether the UK considers you resident, and from when. Get that right and the rest is arithmetic. Get it wrong and you will either overpay for years or explain yourself to HMRC later.

Residence is not about your visa

UK tax residence has nothing to do with immigration status, nationality or how you feel about where you live. It is a statutory test, applied year by year, and the tax year runs 6 April to 5 April rather than January to December — which alone causes a surprising amount of confusion.

The Statutory Residence Test works in three stages, and it stops at the first one that gives an answer:

1. Automatic overseas tests. Meet one and you are non-resident for the year, regardless of everything else.
2. Automatic UK tests. Meet one — most commonly by spending 183 days or more here — and you are resident.
3. The sufficient ties test. Where neither of the above settles it, residence turns on how many days you spent here combined with how many ties you have: family, accommodation, work, previous presence.

The ties test is where care pays. The number of days that makes you resident falls as your ties increase, and "days" has a precise statutory meaning that is not the same as your own idea of when you were in the country. Count them properly and keep the evidence: boarding passes, entry stamps, a simple calendar.

The year you arrive

By default, being UK resident for a tax year means the whole year is in scope — including months when you were living somewhere else entirely. Split-year treatment exists to prevent that unfairness: it splits the year into a non-resident part and a resident part, so foreign income and gains from before you arrived are not swept in.

It is not automatic. Your circumstances must fall within one of the defined cases — starting to have a home in the UK, starting full-time work here, and so on — and the treatment is claimed on the return. Where it applies and is not claimed, people pay UK tax on income the UK was never entitled to. Our guide to split-year treatment covers the cases and how the split date is decided.

The 4-year FIG regime

From 6 April 2025, a foreign income and gains regime replaced the old remittance basis for new arrivals. In outline: qualifying individuals are not taxed in the UK on foreign income and gains for their first 4 years of residence, whether or not the money is brought into the UK.

Broadly, it is aimed at people who have not been UK resident in the previous ten tax years. Two things are worth knowing before treating it as an obvious win:

• It is claimed, year by year. Nothing happens automatically — and the four years run from the start of your residence, not from your first claim, so unused years are simply lost.
• It has a price. Claim it and you give up your £12,570 personal allowance and your £3,000 capital gains exemption for that year.

For someone with substantial foreign income the arithmetic is not close. For someone with a modest foreign rental and a UK salary, claiming can leave them worse off. It is a calculation, and it should be done with real numbers before the return is filed rather than assumed either way.

Income taxed twice

Where the same income is taxable both abroad and in the UK, the UK's double taxation agreements decide which country has the primary right to tax it, and foreign tax credit relief sets what you paid abroad against the UK bill on the same income.

Relief is capped at the UK tax on that income — it is not a refund of foreign tax — and it must be claimed on the return with evidence of the tax actually paid. Keep foreign assessments and payment receipts. Reconstructing them from another country's tax authority two years later is a job nobody enjoys.

Employees who arrive to work in the UK but continue performing some duties abroad should also ask about Overseas Workday Relief, which keeps the earnings for those foreign workdays outside UK tax. It was reformed in April 2025: four years rather than three, a new annual cap, and no more requirement to keep the money offshore.

If you are leaving instead

Form P85 tells HMRC you have left, and is normally what triggers any refund of PAYE overpaid in the year of departure — leaving in, say, July usually means a full year's personal allowance was only partly used.

If you keep a UK property and let it out after leaving, the non-resident landlord scheme applies from the day you go. Sorting the paperwork before departure is considerably easier than after.

What we do

• Residence position established under the Statutory Residence Test, with the day count and ties documented
• Split-year treatment where it applies, claimed properly on the return
• FIG regime modelled on your actual figures — including the years where claiming would cost you more than it saves
• Foreign tax credit relief and double taxation agreement positions
• First UK return with foreign salary, freelance income, rental or dividends
• P85 and departure filings for people going the other way

We are accountants, not immigration advisers, and we are not regulated to give immigration advice. Where your tax position touches a visa or settlement application, we prepare the financial side and work alongside your regulated adviser.

Figures are for the tax year shown and change every April. They are general information, not advice — we check the current position for your circumstances before anything is filed.

Reviewed 19 October 2026.