Hello fellow nouveau-Canucks (and wannabe Canucks),

I have a quick question that hopefully some of you may be able to answer.

I moved to Canada as a permanent resident in July 05.

A year and a half on, a letter has arrived at my parents house from the UK tax people asking me for details about what I have been doing since Aug 05 (as a teacher I was contracted to that period).

I will phone those people tomorrow but in the meantime, so as to allay my worrisome mind does anyone know if I was supposed to officially declare that I was leaving the UK to any of the UK authorities?

I am wondering now if I should have completed some declaration or the like - does anyone know? Have any of you had any experience about this. I didn't really notify anyone apart from my former employer that I was going to live in Canada. I guess I didn't think about it too much but also I had it in the back of my mind that if things didn't work out here that it would be easy for me to go back to the UK.

After 18 months or so here I can say I am deliriously happy with my new life in Canada and therefore I am pretty certain I'll never return to the Uk. Do I need to do anything/let anyone know?

All advice, comments gratefully received,

M

I think it's called an IR85 form (IIRC) available to download from UK Inland Revenue site. Fill in and send back to Blighty with salient details and new address*. We also contacted UK pensions and whatever else we had on our list at the time. IR sent us tax refunds about 5 months after leaving UK based on submitting the IR85 forms.

*If you really want to, of course.

Rich.

P85 - Yup, we filled them in before leaving and sent then off. Got tax refunds (both of us) that came in handy. Well worth it and 'you never know' about returning. Don't want Mr Taxman waiting with large request when you land.

I suggest that for your own peace of mind, it is better to settle
what ever tax is owing now,than later, it would be more expensive due
to accumulating interests , penalty charges and harassments .
Your well being is more important.
Good luck , Yoong

Yep, it's a P85 form that you need to fill in. Don't worry though, it'll be a nice litttle earner of about £400 rebate that you can get back. I'm not entirely sure that you can backclaim, but I'd assume as much.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/r_and_d.htm

You may also want to ask them if there is anyone else you should notify (state pension, NHS, etc....)
As a teacher, your union fees are tax deductible. Works out to about £25 per year for the last six years. If you weren't claiming for them, do so now.

Also, if you had an occupational pension, they can now be transferred over into a few pension plans (haven't done it myself yet, my pension people told me to wait until I was in Canada) that are finally accredited. You may want to get proper financial advice regarding this.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/PENSIONSCHEMES/qrops-list.htm

Bonne chance.

Good Post!
Not wanting to hijack the post, but, is there other things that we need to do that no one has told us about?
I thought about the tax, but what about DVLA, Pensions, NHS etc?
Thanks,
Kenny

we done the tax thing and have both got refunds. Nice little bonus. Stopped our private pensions and but them on hold as we could not pay into them if we are not uk residents but we couldnt cash them either so we stopped paying them about 10 months before we left, saw no point. Thought we had pretty much everything taken care off but my sister has just had letters for us (shes living in our house) about national insurance. i knew i would forget to inform someone!

We just did the IR tax thingy - DVLA was taken care of by swapping my license here. Everything else seems to fall off in time - you'll drop off NHS dental lists if you don't go for ?15mths, etc etc.

The one thing I would have pushed harder before leaving is stopping child benefit. It's really annoying that they seem unable to stop giving me it, despite repeated requests. Annoying that I have to put that money aside for the day, maybe years hence, when they acknowledge I've left and ask for it back!

Hmmm - we told both the tax man, our pension providers and told our doctors about the move...... I did not specially tell N.I........ can you tell me who you have to tell and what you needed to tell them? (I thought the pension and doctors would have fed into their system....... that's what happens when you make an assumption!)

Ta very much!

I think you need to fill a br19 form in for a State Pension forecast (not that it will be worth anything) and let them know your new address.

Check out this link for more info:-

http://www.direct.gov.uk/BritonsLivi...018&chk=5WmTob

Paul

im not quite sure about the NI thing as we are going to deal with it when we go back in jan. It possibly is only because husband and son were self employed so we need to sort it when we go back. have not told doc although he did know we were going as i wanted to make sure we were staying before i took us off his list. He has been my doc since i was small and i wont see any other doc!!! but when we go back i will tell him so that he can take on other patients.

thanks will look into that.