I got a fair bit of help here when I decided to take my entire UK personal pension as a lump sum. So I thought I’d report how things worked. It took a long time, but it’s all done now (bar actually paying the French tax).
I got my pension in April last year, minus £62,000 in UK tax.
I got the UK tax paid back to me in November.
I just got my French tax bill which comes in at about £15k on the pension.
I’m now looking at investing in rental property to give myself a reasonable income. A little money goes a long way in some French cities.
So the system does work quite nicely. No questions asked by the French tax authorities whatsoever, even though I am continuing to work.
Not R43, but SI 2009 Number 226 - French double taxation form - was the route my UK tax adviser suggested. The only minor difficulty was getting the stamp from the French tax office - and that just took a visit and a couple of hours in total; as so often, getting through reception was tricky, but once I found the right expert, it took a few minutes to get the papers scanned into the system, printed and stamped.
I sent the stamped form off to HMRC and things took their course.
Oh, that’s interesting. Of course things may have changed in the interim. It might also depend on when you became non-resident. The double taxation form asks for details of residency and time spent in each country over the past three complete UK tax years.