Financas contacting UK employers?
Jun 7th 2021, 5:55 am
#16
Forum Regular
Joined: Jun 2021
Posts: 74
Re: Financas contacting UK employers?
And it seems to me that the OP wants to avoid invoking the double taxation agreement for the 2020 tax year and retain residency in both countries. I can’t see why that would not work in practice, except for the contributions issue.
Jun 7th 2021, 6:02 am
#17
Forum Regular
Joined: Apr 2017
Location: Greater Lisbon
Posts: 263
Jun 7th 2021, 8:00 am
#18
Forum Regular
Joined: Jun 2021
Posts: 74
Jun 11th 2021, 8:33 am
#19
BE Enthusiast
Thread Starter
Joined: Jun 2020
Posts: 348
Re: Financas contacting UK employers?
One last thing - there is no way that UK employer can (or would be legally obliged to) pay PT social security contributions.
These are either paid in the country (UK) where the employment is, or not paid in the country where the employment is if there is a bilateral agreement and you are considered to be under PT social security regime (meaning you pay contributions in PT, and not in the other country, if the duration of your employment in that other country, the UK, would not exceed 12/24 months).
As long as your contributions have been paid in the UK, that's fine, you have not evaded paying them in any way.
The main issue here is not informing your employer and HMRC about your tax residence status.
You could have done so at the time with hardly any consequences regarding tax/social security contributions - you would still have been taxed in the UK, and contributions would still have been paid in the UK, with no additional cost for you or for your UK employer.
I don't think that would be a big issue as there is no unpaid tax or contributions, but still get it sorted.
These are either paid in the country (UK) where the employment is, or not paid in the country where the employment is if there is a bilateral agreement and you are considered to be under PT social security regime (meaning you pay contributions in PT, and not in the other country, if the duration of your employment in that other country, the UK, would not exceed 12/24 months).
As long as your contributions have been paid in the UK, that's fine, you have not evaded paying them in any way.
The main issue here is not informing your employer and HMRC about your tax residence status.
You could have done so at the time with hardly any consequences regarding tax/social security contributions - you would still have been taxed in the UK, and contributions would still have been paid in the UK, with no additional cost for you or for your UK employer.
I don't think that would be a big issue as there is no unpaid tax or contributions, but still get it sorted.
The issue is that when my UK employer find out I'm not living in the UK they are very likely to sack me as being in breach of contract. I have no doubt they would like to dispense with me (most of my specialist skills are no longer used much), and would take advantage of being able to do so without paying relatively expensive redundancy.
Because I have almost zero chance of finding any kind of work in Portugal, the idea has always been to keep the salary coming as long as I can. I am thinking of asking for voluntary redundancy at this point though - obviously at the point I'm no longer working for them I would inform HMRC.
The big question really is what is the risk of delaying all this for a few months.
