Self Assessment for non-residents

If you have UK income and live abroad, you'll usually still have a UK return to file — and it's a harder return than the one you filed when you lived here, because it now includes the SA109 residence pages: your residence status under the Statutory Residence Test, split-year claims, treaty claims, and your personal allowance position.

Who this is for

• Expats with UK rental income, dividends from a UK company, or UK pension income.
• Directors of UK companies living abroad.
• People in their year of departure or return — the split-year rules decide how much of that year the UK can tax, and getting the claim right is usually worth more than the fee.
• Anyone HMRC has sent a notice to file, wherever they live.

What's included

• The full return including SA109 — filed with commercial software (HMRC's free online filing doesn't support the residence pages; miss that and you're stuck with a 31 October paper deadline).
• A Statutory Residence Test position for the year, documented, so your status doesn't rest on guesswork.
• Treaty relief claims where the UK shouldn't be taxing something at all.
• A computation your local adviser can use for foreign tax credit where you live.

One more thing people miss: student loans. Move abroad and you're required to tell the Student Loans Company and repay against local thresholds — we'll flag it if it applies.

How it works

1. A one-page questionnaire covers your income sources, your UK day count and your ties — the raw material for the residence pages.
2. We prepare and explain. The full return including SA109, split-year or treaty claims where they apply, and a plain-English summary of what you owe and why — before you approve anything.
3. Filed by software, deadline 31 January. With payments on account flagged in advance so the January after a good year never ambushes you.

What we'll need from you

• P60/P45 or payslips for any UK employment in the year
• Dividend vouchers, pension statements, rental figures if any
• Your UK day count and travel pattern (the questionnaire walks you through it)
• Your Government Gateway isn't needed — we file as your agent

Why this return is not the one you used to file

A non-resident return carries the SA109 residence pages, and HMRC's free online service cannot file them. That is not a quirk of your account or a setting you have missed — the pages simply are not in the service. Your options are commercial software, a paper return by the 31 October deadline rather than 31 January, or an agent who files it for you. This is the single most common reason people who were perfectly capable of doing their own return suddenly cannot.

The pages themselves do real work. They record which residence status you are claiming, any split-year treatment, days spent in the UK, and any relief you are claiming under a treaty. Get them wrong and the rest of the return is computed against the wrong status, which usually means tax on income the UK had no business taxing.

What counts as UK income after you leave

• Rental profit from UK property — always taxable here, whatever the treaty says.
• Employment income for duties performed in the UK, including your final part-year.
• Director's fees from a UK company, which catch out people who kept a directorship they no longer think about.
• Pension income, though many treaties give the taxing right to your country of residence instead — claimed on the return, not applied automatically.
• UK dividends and interest, which fall under the "disregarded income" rules: they can often be left out of the calculation entirely, at the cost of your personal allowance. Which version produces a lower bill has to be computed both ways.

That last point is worth the fee on its own for a lot of people. The disregarded income calculation is not intuitive, the software will not choose for you, and the difference between the two answers is frequently several hundred pounds.

How the year runs

The UK tax year ends 5 April. We ask for your information from mid-April, prepare the return over the following weeks, send you the computation with the figures explained in plain English, and file on your approval. You will know what you owe months before 31 January rather than in the last fortnight — which matters when the payment has to cross a border and clear.