I came to the (reluctant ) conclusion a few weeks ago that it was fairly pointless me continuing to file UK tax returns. I’m a French tax resident/UK non resident. I have no UK investment income, gains, earnings, and limited visits there. I only receive private pensions from the UK that are either exempt from UK tax under the tax treaty, or will be when I file the appropriate France Individual forms… ie there is no tax liability in it for HMRC.
I wrote to them, online, and was quite surprised - but delighted- today when they wrote back and agreed with my arguments. I’m officially relieved of self assessment filing obligations going forward, provided of course my situation doesn’t change.
It occurred to me that others might possibly be in the same boat. Here is the online tool to check to see if you need to file a UK return…
Here is a little more background and the link to apply for exemption from self assessment…
Haha - Be careful what you wish for! Maybe not for you, but for others with a uk taxable pension. Or UK interest. Simple assessment may beckon - 60 day appeal period. More control with SA - simply enter your own figures.
We have been on an “NT” code from HMRC for some years. What we have found, however, is that, if an new source of income crops up, such as another pension kicking in, HMRC does indeed, as @larkswood12 suggested, change the code back to another, in our case the emergency tax code.
However, apart from this being a pain and requiring a refund of the tax extracted by HMRC, it doesn’t necessarily take very long to retrieve the old staus quo.
For clarity, perhaps I should explain that I have a state pension and two small extra pensions, plus UK bank account interest and the NT code has been fine for years, barring that one not-to-be-repeated hiccup.
I wasn’t sure if this was a question directed to me or not…if you’re French resident and all you have that is UK source is the state pension, for example, it would only be taxable in France. You could absolutely apply, with full confidence to leave self assessment, assuming you have no gains, no taxable income such as UK rent, don’t make very, very long visits to the UK etc.
HMRC recently explained to me that PAYE was obviously designed with just UK domestic scenarios in mind (set up I think during WW2). The system assumes that if you suddenly have more than 1 pension, you will want to share personal allowances, basic rate bands etc between the two sources of income…The fact that one is already exempt from UK tax (hence the NT code) clearly doesn’t impress the UK domestic focused PAYE system, which automatically switches off your NT code, starts an emergency code etc etc. You know the rest!
) conclusion a few weeks ago that it was fairly pointless me continuing to file UK tax returns. I’m a French tax resident/UK non resident. I have no UK investment income, gains, earnings, and limited visits there. I only receive private pensions from the UK that are either exempt from UK tax under the tax treaty, or will be when I file the appropriate France Individual forms… ie there is no tax liability in it for HMRC.