syngirl said:
But you just said you worked at sea for 6mos a year... not sure where your current residency is listed, but for instance in Canada if you`re outside more than X number of days per year -- I can`t remember if it`s 181 or 183 -- you don`t have to pay tax on that income. A colleague of my husband`s has it down to a science, and the guy`s from Alberta where he`s only paying 10% provincial tax anyway, and then hasn`t had to pay tax on his full income in years.
Well, I've been keeping it to the UK and yes I've been able to claim back tax for some years where I've been away a lot. That said, I don't earn much so even 22% ends up as not a lot of tax to get back (hope I can fix this, I'll never be able to afford a house otherwise!). I end up paying more in fuel & flight taxes. In order to qualify you have to basically be visiting the UK on holiday on rare occasions. Not only that, there's a bunch of other requirements. It allows me to travel, which is very nice, but the cost of being out of the UK outweighs the savings.
The thing is, you have to choose
somewhere to be resident. It's also good to pay
some taxes as being completely off the radar in that sense can be troublesome. There are plenty of UK expats who haven't paid national insurance who then return to the UK to fin they're not going to get a pension etc. A break in payment makes it that much harder to continue.
You can always fall back your residency quite easily to wherever you have your citizenship. But it's hard to start a residency somewhere new - that typically needs you to be there. So shopping for somewhere low tax to live is limited by that. That's why certain business people are able to do that. The offshoot from that is making tax havens expensive places to live.
If the tax rate gets much higher I'd definitely have to look into changing residency. But you have to weigh up the cons of where you're moving to. Even if I had to pay perhaps... 6% more tax for keeping residency in the UK I'd rather pay it there because of the bureaucratic machine here. At least in the UK you can get a reliable accountant and there's electronic systems to help you through the process to.
My partner spent about a week trying to pay some minor taxes because the system was such a pain in the butt and she refused to pay someone to do it for her.
I really hope the gov here can cut loose the crud and make it easier for people to pay taxes. Looking at Asia, even Chile there's been improvements in this area. It wouldn't take much to see some of that here. Although InfoTech is coming slow here it
has to come through eventually and god willing that might help the bureaucratic machine here. Who knows, there could even be a good rate one day to attract people here, anything can happen.
