Robert Harris has over 25 years experience working for some of the major financial institutions in the City of London, including 12 years at Citibank where he was a Senior Banker. During his time at Citibank, Robert was responsible for global relationships with important financial institutions and instigated a number of landmark deals.
Robert is a founding partner of Forth Capital and has helped the company become the leading expat financial advisory company in Switzerland. He has been quoted in the Financial Times and numerous magazine articles.
For the www.knowitall.ch website, Robert invites various members of his team at Forth Capital to contribute blog articles on different financial topics that he thinks will be of interest to our readers.
By Mark Routen, Forth Capital
Things are changing at HMRC, the changes are happening fast and they are certainly not in favour of the expat community. The Government in the UK inherited a vast black hole in the finances and this needs to be filled. They have approached this by arming HMRC to extract as much tax as possible together with running a very successful PR campaign calling into question the morals of those who act within the law to arrange their taxation affairs in an efficient way. They are trying to be seen as a type of Robin Hood taking from the rich and saving taxes for the poor.
This has been a very effective use of the politics of envy and the man in the street now sees the rich as a fair target. This goes further as to identify the rich - in people’s mind they use buzz words and unfortunately for expats the words Expat and Non Dom figure highly on this list.
The end result of this is that we are seeing creeping legislation, which starts off as a fairly mild restriction of allowances or increase in tax but then creeps up year after year until it becomes a real issue. They are already acting in three areas of attack which affect many expats: –
- Taxation of UK residential property owned by non-residents
- Restriction of pension tax relief and benefits
- Attacks on Non UK Domiciled individuals, both entering and leaving the UK.
By Dr Graham Brown, Forth Capital
The majority of FTSE 100 Company schemes are in deficit, which is where their pension liabilities exceed their assets and it is clear that the employer does not have the means to make up the deficit in the short term. The numbers are startling according to a Financial Times article on September 7th 2015:
By Nicole Booth, Forth Capital
The Finance Bill 2016 was presented to the Council of Ministers on 30th September 2015. The Bill does not contain any major changes to tax legislation, apart from a reduction in income tax for low income households. The main focus is on making electronic filing compulsory in order to prepare for the introduction of withholding tax from 2018.
The main changes affecting private clients are:
By Mark Routen, Forth Capital
As the government first announced in the 2013 Autumn Statement and subsequently enacted in the Finance Act 2015, capital gains tax (CGT) applies to non-residents disposing of UK residential property. The tax is levied on gains arising on disposals after 5th April 2015 and only applies to gains made since that date. Before then, CGT did not apply to non-residents, other than those carrying on a trade in the UK, certain temporary non-residents or companies subject to the ‘annual tax on enveloped dwellings’ (ATED) charge.
The extension of the CGT charge goes some way to putting the UK system in line with other jurisdictions that charge tax on the basis of where the property is located rather than where the owner is resident.
By Dr Graham Brown, Forth Capital
Many clients ask if they should transfer their UK pension to a QROPS (Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme) even if they think or know that they will return to the UK in the future. There are a number of reasons why a QROPS should be considered even if you are planning to return to the UK:
1) Avoiding Lifetime Allowance Charge
As discussed in a previous article, a transfer to a QROPS is a Benefit Crystallisation Event and so tested against the Lifetime Allowance (currently £1.25 Million) on transfer. If you have a pension close to this level you should definitely consider a QROPS transfer in case this level is reduced in the future or further changes are made.
2) Reduced UK Income Tax on Foreign Pensions
By concession, you will usually only pay tax on 90% of your foreign pension payments as 10% is exempt from tax.
