Sold a UK property? The 60-day rule

Since 2015 the UK taxes non-residents on gains from UK residential property, and since 2019 on commercial property and property-rich companies too. The reporting rule is brutal in its simplicity: a return within 60 days of completion, with a payment on account of the tax. Residents only file when tax is due; non-residents file even when nothing is due. Solicitors rarely mention it; penalty letters do.

What we do inside the 60 days

• The non-resident CGT computation, using whichever gives the best lawful answer: rebasing to April 2015 (residential) or April 2019 (commercial), time-apportionment, or the whole-period gain.
• Private residence relief for the years you lived there, plus the final months that count automatically.
• The 60-day return itself, the payment-on-account calculation (18% or 24% on residential gains), and getting you set up to pay from abroad.
• The year-end Self Assessment entries so nothing is taxed twice.

If you've already missed the deadline

File anyway, fast — penalties stop accruing when the return goes in, and a reasonable-excuse appeal is far stronger with a completed return attached. We've dealt with plenty of late ones; the worst thing to do is nothing.

How it works

1. Instruct us at exchange if you can — the sixty days are far more comfortable spent gathering valuation evidence than hoping. Already completed? Same process, faster.
2. We run all three computations — rebasing to 2015, time-apportionment, whole gain — plus private residence relief where you lived there, and pick the lawful best.
3. Return filed, payment set up, year-end tied off. The 60-day figure is an estimate by design; we true it up in your Self Assessment so nothing is paid twice.

What we'll need from you

• Completion statement (sale) and the purchase completion statement or Land Registry entry
• Invoices for capital improvements — extensions, conversions, new kitchens
• Dates you lived in the property, if ever
• A rough estimate of your UK income this year (it sets the 18%/24% split)

The clock, precisely

The 60 days run from the date of completion, not exchange, and not the date the money reaches you. Within that window a non-resident has to file a UK Capital Gains Tax on UK property return and pay any tax due. The obligation applies even where there is no tax to pay, and even where you made a loss — reporting is the duty, tax is a separate question.

It is also independent of your Self Assessment return. If you file Self Assessment, the same disposal goes on that as well later in the year. Filing one does not discharge the other.

Rebasing, which is where the money is

Non-residents were only brought into UK CGT on residential property from April 2015, and on commercial property and land from April 2019. You are not taxed on growth before that date. For anything held a long time, the choice of computation is usually the difference between a real tax bill and nothing at all:

• Rebasing to the April 2015 (or April 2019) value — the default, and best for most long-held property that rose steadily.
• Time apportionment — splitting the whole gain across the ownership period and taxing only the post-2015 slice. Better where the property rose sharply before 2015 and flatly since.
• The whole gain from original cost — occasionally best, usually where there is a loss you want to bank.

You elect, so the computation has to be run all three ways before choosing. That comparison is part of the £449 and it is the part that most often saves several times the fee.

If you have already missed it

Late filing is fixable and worth fixing quickly, because the penalty structure escalates: an initial fixed penalty, then daily penalties, then further charges at six and twelve months, plus interest on unpaid tax. The gap between "two months late" and "eighteen months late" is large.

The routine is the same either way: establish completion date and ownership history, compute all three bases, file the return, pay what is due, and put a reasonable-excuse case in where there is genuinely one. Coming forward before HMRC writes to you consistently produces a better outcome than waiting.