BUZZ ACCOUNTINGThe rules that quietly cost expats money.
Written up properly as they change — with the deadlines, the numbers and what to do about each one. No filler.
24 August 2026
Your 2020/21 NI year disappears in April — here's what that actually costs you
Voluntary National Insurance can only reach back six tax years, which gives the system a silent annual deadline: every 5 April, one more year of your pension record becomes permanently unfixable. What's still open, what each year is worth, and how to decide properly in one sitting.
24 August 2026
The 20% missing from your rent statement: what it is and how to get it back
If you've moved abroad and your letting agent's statements have quietly shrunk, look for a line marked 'tax' or 'NRL'. It isn't a mistake and it isn't optional for the agent — but it is fixable, usually with a refund at the end. The mechanics, the two forms, and the recovery sequence.
24 August 2026
Selling UK property from abroad? You have 60 days and your solicitor probably won't tell you
Completion starts a clock that most conveyancers never mention: non-residents must file a CGT return within 60 days — even at a loss, even at nil. Where the rule came from, what filing involves, and the exact salvage routine if you've already blown the deadline.
24 August 2026
A year into the FIG regime: the three mistakes new arrivals keep making
The four-year tax window that replaced the non-dom rules is genuinely generous — and claim-based, allowance-costing and hard-edged. After a full filing season, the same three errors keep walking through the door. Here's each one, and the shape of getting it right.
24 August 2026
The frozen pension map: where your UK State Pension stops growing the day you retire
Retire in Toronto and your UK State Pension is frozen for life; retire twenty miles south in the USA and it rises every April. The uprating map is arbitrary, decades old, politically stuck — and it should shape both where the maths points and how you value buying NI years.
24 August 2026
Leaving the UK: the ten tax jobs that are cheap now and expensive later
Between booking the movers and boarding the flight, there is a short list of tax jobs that cost almost nothing done in the right month and four figures done in the wrong year. The complete list, in the order the deadlines actually arrive.
31 August 2026
Why HMRC may ignore your UK dividends entirely: the disregarded income rule
A statutory cap on what HMRC can charge a non-resident can make UK dividends and interest vanish from the computation. The price is your personal allowance.
7 September 2026
Split-year treatment: the eight cases, and which one is yours
The year splits into a UK part and an overseas part only if you fit one of eight statutory cases. It is automatic, not optional, and the split date matters.
14 September 2026
How HMRC actually counts a day in the UK — and the three counting rules that catch people out
Everyone doing their own residence sums counts days the way a diary would: if I was there, it counts. HMRC's test runs on midnight, not daylight hours, and layers on a transit exemption, an exceptional-circumstances cap and a deeming rule that can turn thirty day trips into UK residence. The automatic tests, the ties bands, and the count that actually survives an enquiry.
28 September 2026
Running your UK company from Dubai: why the company stays UK tax resident even when you don't
Moving to Dubai does not move your UK company. But since 2023 the UAE runs its own test that can make the same company resident there too.
What these are
Shorter than the guides and tied to something happening: a deadline coming up, a rule that has just changed, a mistake we have watched several people make in the same month. Each one carries the numbers and the dates rather than a general observation, because a piece about voluntary National Insurance that does not tell you which years are still open is not much use.
If you want the full mechanical explanation of a topic rather than the news, the guides are the longer treatment and are kept current.
The expat tax year, in dates
Most of what goes wrong from abroad is a date nobody knew about. This is the whole UK calendar that applies to a non-resident, in order.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 6 April | The UK tax year starts. The six-year window for voluntary National Insurance rolls forward, so the oldest year you could have bought is now permanently closed. |
| Mid-April onwards | Agents' annual rental statements arrive. This is the earliest sensible point to start last year's return. |
| 31 May | P60s issued for anyone still on a UK payroll in the year just ended. |
| 6 July | P11D deadline for benefits in kind — relevant if you kept a UK directorship. |
| 31 July | Second payment on account due, if you make them. |
| 5 October | Deadline to register for Self Assessment if you had UK income for the first time in the year just ended. Missing this is a penalty in its own right. |
| 31 October | Paper return deadline. This is the one that matters if you are not using an agent or commercial software, because HMRC's own service cannot file the residence pages at all. |
| 30 December | Deadline to file if you want tax under £3,000 collected through a UK PAYE code rather than paid as a lump. |
| 31 January | Online return deadline, balancing payment, and first payment on account for the new year — all on the same day. |
| 5 April | Tax year ends. Anything year-end — ISA, pension, the day count you have been tracking — has to be settled by now. |
| Any time | 60 days from completion to report a UK property disposal. This one does not sit in the calendar. It starts when you sell. |
Two of these are the usual culprits. The 5 October registration deadline catches people in their first year of letting a property, and the 60-day CGT clock catches almost everybody, because a conveyancer is not required to mention it and generally does not.