UK Taxes while on Dual residency

Good morning all,

Working in London and willing to be on Dual residency under the UK laws. Would you know an accountant or any organisation that can help on UK taxes?

I am on a Swiss C work permit with a principal residency in Geneva. Working in IT with a permanent contract. I commute to London and will be working from home (Geneva) sometimes in the year. Surprisingly I am having difficulties in finding someone to help me with taxes and expenses such as UK rent, flight tickets, paying for Swiss health care and having the paye UK NI.....

Would you know anyone in the UK or in Switzerland but for UK taxes.

Thank you!

More and more people found work in London but have the family in Switzerland.

Travel to work, rent & health insurance are not deductible in the UK. Your UK liability is likely to be higher than your Swiss.

UK NI is not deductible in either country.

A foot in both countries & the channel tunnel in the middle? No, don't know anyone who can help.

Thank you for your answer I was told in Geneva by a Swiss accountant that about £10600 can be deducted but I cannot find further details on this.

Possibly from Geneva taxes. As far as an employee in the UK is concerned the expenses need to be incurred "wholly, exclusively and necessarily in the performance of the work".

That amount is probably the UK personal allowance.

Speak again to your accountant as your situation shouldn't be that rare, although I suspect you'd get more accurate information from a UK based accountant or tax advisor rather than one in Geneva.

There are tax relief but...

That's the surprising bit of the situation, no accountant seems to have enough knowledge or interest in this kind of situation. I emailed several of them having offices in London and in Geneva or some that seem to have knowledge on dual residencies. I did not get any answer. I am probably not wealthy enough...

Somehow I am not a profitable case for accountant having office in Switzerland and others do not seems to have any interest in people in dual residencies with Switzerland. So far I could not find any who knew anything about the tax treaty between the UK and CH.

If you know anyone please message me their contact details.

I cannot help with your request but got really interested in your situation since I am just started studying international tax. I would have thought you would only be liable for Swiss tax and not UK tax.

If you have a main home in Switzerland and if you also have closer ties to Switzerland (e.g. family) you would be considered (only) Swiss resident under the tie breaker rule provided in the double tax treaty. (see under Residence tie-breaker rules https://www.gov.uk/government/public...seas-residence , also Article 4 of the treaty https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...tzerlandUK.pdf )

With regard to your salary - since you are a Swiss resident, under the treaty, if you exercise your employment entirely in Switzerland (e.g. work from home in Switzerland), Switzerland exclusively has the right to tax your salary. (see Article 15 https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...tzerlandUK.pdf ). All your professional expenses (flight tickets etc) would/could be considered in your Swiss tax not your UK tax...

If the UK did tax your salary then you will only have file a claim form with HMRC ( https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...-form-2016.pdf ) and attach with it your C permit.

I thought that would be simple enough and you might be able to do it on your own but maybe I did not have all of your facts...

You need to google statutory definition of UK residence, then read & understand the 100 page plus document. It's possible to be UK resident & spent very few days in the UK. UK residents are taxed on world wide income & capital gains.

I didn't deny the fact that the OP could be a U.K. tax resident. In fact I'm counting on that very fact. When a taxpayer is a resident under UK law (those 100 pages u referring to) and also a tax resident under another country's domestic law, and if that country is a treaty partner with the UK, then the tax residence is determined based on the tax treaty (tie breaker rule). The result should be the taxpayer is tax resident of only one country for the purpose of the treaty (and should prevail domestic laws of both country).

Unfortunately you don't have a clue & have not bothered researching.

The OP will likely be a dual taxpayer, my brother was for 5 years, There is no way out for many people. Being tax resident in CH does not preclude you being a UK tax payer too.

You might also want to google 'Robert Gains-Cooper' who thought he had left the UK, the Bank of England agreed even confirmed to him in writing that he had. This did not stop him getting saddled with a 20 year back tax bill from the UK.

Wow isn't that a bit agressive. Robert Gaines-Cooper is a Seychelles-based British multi-millionaire and Seychelles and U.K. do not have a double tax treaty... the rule above can only apply with whom the U.K. is a TREATY PARTNER as I'd explained multiple times.

But then I ́d personally rather believe the data given by FMF on his brother? didn ́t you say you just started studying tax law?

You can be dual tax resident in several countries, despite them having treaties. Same goes for example for Germany.

Robert Gains-Cooper spent very little time in the UK. He married a local girl in the Seychelles who then went on spent a lot of time in the UK, their children having a UK Education. He also had a collection of cars in the UK. The revenue decided he never left in retrospect.

For many years the top tax advisors to Mr Gains Cooper believed he had no tax liability in the UK.

You are quite wrong that you cant be dual resident in both the Uk & Switzerland.

The UK has a tax treaty with the USA, however many US citizens living in the UK (and CH) have to pay money to Uncle Sam.

The U.K. decided in the case of Robert Gaines-Cooper entirely based on U.K. domestic law, which I don't think is appropriate to be brought up here since we are talking about treaties...

Also I don't think you understand how tax treaties operate... Tax treaties aim to resolve double taxation by allocating taxing rights to country partners to the treaties. European countries typically follow the OECD treaty model but all treaties have their specifics which are the points countries want to reserve while negotiating with their treat partner. Now the US. The US has its own US treaty model and often reserves the right to tax its citizen (and is the ONLY developed country in the world defines tax residency based on citizenship).

To avoid double taxation, the tie breaker rule in tax treaties try (and succeed most of the cases) that there can only one tax resident in the case of dual residency. The income can be then allocated to either the resident state or the source state. The US typically applying "tax credit system" and together with its reservation on tax residency based on citizenship means, in a nutshell, that all US citizens living abroad will be taxed first in the country where they live in, then the US will give them a credit from US taxation...

But US is another story. The OP asked about Swiss - UK treaty and so my answer was very specific to the point of this particular treaty. I actually looked up the treaty and read it through you know...

You might want to look into that again as one definitely can be liable for taxes in 2 countries, in Europe.

Sure you can be dual residents based on DOMESTIC LAWS. For example you can be tax resident in Switzerland under Swiss law and resident in X country under X law. But if Switzerland and X country has a double tax treaty it resolves dual residency for THE PURPOSE OF THE TREATY APPLICATION. So if you're dual resident in both Germany and Switzerland Article 4 of the treaty determines ONE country of residence for the purpose of the treaty application.

I have been formally studying this for 2 years (and for me it's just the beginning of learning the vast knowledge in this field). But I practically work in the field of international taxation for 7 years now.

Sorry, but reality has shown that this is not correct.

And no need for capital letters, I can read

I never said being tax resident in one country means they're not liable for taxes in the other country.

I mentioned quite clearly my assumptions in the OP's case (salary is the concerned income, permanent home and vital interests in Switzerland, place of excercising employment in Switzerland only). Only in that case Switzerland has the exclusive right to tax based on the specific UK Swiss tax treaty.

Which reality? Is it the reality you got from the press as in the case of Robert Gaines-Cooper, or the reality when US citizens get taxed despite their residence and you think all treaties fail? I think it's sad when ignorant people judge something without understanding it. Sure there are many cases tax treaties can't resolve but they do resolve a lot of cases, if not the majority of double taxation cases.

Sorry I didn't think you could read since I have mentioned that point in previous posts but you kept bringing that up...

Anyway there's no point in explaining one thing over and over. If you still don't understand it now I doubt you will ever understand it.