This month's Featured Article...

MEDIA STORM AT SEA

There’s been a lot of talk about poor Mr Gaines-Cooper and his recent defeat in the Court of Appeal of his claim to be non-UK-resident. The way the media are talking, you would have thought that we are now in a harsh new world in which emigration from the UK is effectively near impossible.

The purpose of this piece is to provide an antidote, if possible, by pointing out that, actually, little or nothing has changed.

We had a look two or three months ago at the revised Revenue Guidance for UK residents and non-residents, and what we concluded was that the guidance was now more tightly worded but that the real emphasis of the rules hadn’t changed.

What has happened, perhaps, is that a few people who have up to now been in a kind of fool’s paradise, thinking that they have achieved non-UK-residence status, are finding that they may not have done.

To particularise. The old guidance did rather imply that all you needed to do was avoid being in this country for 183 midnights in any given tax year, or more than 91 midnights on average over a four-year period. Pass these tests, the common mythology went, and you’d be treated as non-UK resident even if your main home, together with spouse and family, are still here, and you visit them regularly (even every weekend).

More sensible advisers (if we may say so) always entered a note of caution, in saying that a person needs to genuinely emigrate in order to lose UK residence. Purely passing completely mechanical arithmetical tests, these advisers said, may not work.

And the case of Mr Gaines-Cooper, and in fact a number of others recently, has proved that they were absolutely right. His case hung on the fact that while he had unquestionably become a resident of the Seychelles under the local rules there...read the rest of this article by signing-up for a free trial issue of The Schmidt - Save £99 by ordering now!
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