Try to ensure that the offer includes tax advice as on the face of it, it looks like you will be consider to be a dual resident under extended criteria:
- Regularly visit the UK
- Family resident there
- Place of abode available to you when you do visit there.
- etc...
Basically what it means is that the UK and the Swiss tax authorities will have to agree how you will be taxed. So there could be a bit tax consulting needed, better have the employer on the hook for it.
I do exactly this, living in the UK, flying to Zurich on Sunday nights, back home again on Friday.
You will be tax resident in both countries. As previously mentioned, the Swiss will deduct at source. Then you complete the details on your UK tax returrn, including the amount of tax already paid, and HMRC take the difference.
In effect you pay roughly the same tax overall as if your salary was paid in the UK. So you miss out on any if those Low Tax Switzerland advantages. But on the upside, you get to keep your UK house...
Thanks for the very helpful replies. I'll have to see what happens next, but hopefully my prospective employer will provide at least some of the help I need...
Hi guys, new here and 1-month since I started work in Switzerland. I'm finally starting to understand how taxes work for UK resident, working in Switzerland with G Permit.
The Swiss Tax office and ExpactTax were super fast to clarify this to me and the latter to provide me with documentation on the same. I will basically pay Swiss Tax for all the work that I physically carry on from the Basel HQ, and will be credit in the UK via Assessment for days I work from home in London.
Now that this is sorted... would any of you have an UK Accountant to recommend to me who understands all of the above and that could do my UK Assessment?
Maybe @fatmanfilms and @eairicbloodaxe as it sounds like we are in the same situation
Any UK accountant should be able to handle this, you are UK resident for tax purposes but have foreign income which has had Swiss tax deducted. Unfortunately in CH all your social costs are tax deductible along with an allowance for traveling to work & work lunches so the UK tax to pay will may be shockingly high. (The deductions won't be obvious on source tax but probably amount to 15,000 CHF if you were doing a Swiss tax return)
As the UK has a personal allowance it may not be as bad as I was thinking, as it's quite close to the standard deductions.
Essentially you file a UK tax return putting in your entire income then deduct the tax you've paid in Switzerland from the UK tax liability (as long as it's not more than you would have paid in the UK). All the info is available online and you can do the return online. You can do it yourself or any personal tax accountant *should* be able to do it.
Thank you, yes. I started the registration process. I never had to do tax/self-assessment by myself and only the thought of this makes me so nervous... so I'd rather someone doing on my behalf so I know that they have more chances to get it right
Thank you so much for the clarifications and sorry I'm totally slow on this tax thing, it's all new to me.
Does this mean that if work pays for my flights, the UK will someone consider that my taxable wage?
I don't think I will have issues with lunch as I pay out of my pocket... or are you saying that I should keep my CH lunch/dinner receipts so I can deduct these as expenses?
In the UK travel from home to work is not tax deductible, so in theory the flights are taxable. You don't need lunch receipts as there is no UK deduction. In CH there is a standard deduction for lunch every day. If you are on normal Swiss tax, your taxable salary is your salary net of income tax not your gross salary as in the UK.
Many many years ago if the workplace was abroad, they were deductible. Probably not the case now, but worth checking.
If the OP is only temporarily working in Basel, then home to office is deductible up to 2 years. After that, it's considered your new permanent workplace. (That's the basics. HMRC application is rather more complicated, considering a number of other factors).
Seems to be some confusion here between UK rules where someone works only in the UK and rules where employees work abroad. If you're UK based and you work abroad it can be that some if not all foreign expenses are tax deductible. Just google it and you'll find all the info on the HMRC website.
If doing your UK self assessment yourself, I would recommend one of the software programs to help you. I have used TaxCalc for the last few years and found it pretty intuitive and easy to use, with links to advice for bits where you are unclear what to put. It costs about 25 GBP a year.