Hi,

I've currently changed to contracting for a UK based company that I used to work full time for before. Due to the nature of my work I can work from anywhere with an internet connection so I am planning and indeed practicing being out of the UK for over 9 months of the year (changing country every couple of months or so) to claim non-residency and tax free status.

However I currently only have a UK bank account and if I have my money is paid into this I believe it will be liable for tax? I'm desperately trying to find out how to quickly open an offshore account but all the information I have googled for and read hasn't really been that helpful.

Also initially I don't have a large sum of money to deposit although I could get a loan but really I would rather not. I'm not a big financial institution (We are talking about ~£74k a year) so lots of the options I have seen don't suit me.

There must be some people out there in a similar situation that have found a workable solution?

I'm no expert my friend, but I think you'll find your dosh is liable to tax wherever you have it ... offshore or not. Just recently I believe Barclays were taken to court as the HMRC wanted access to their offshore customer accounts as it was seen as a tax evasion.

Nowt so certain as death and taxes

But from what I understand if I am non-resident I am only liable for tax on income arising in the UK and so if I have money paid into a non-UK bank account I am only liable for tax by the country that bank account is held in? This is the advice I have been hearing from various accountants - is this incorrect?

As I said, I'm not an expert .... I've seen this discussion on other forums when people have moved around, having no real country of residence. Its a difficult one.
If you've had advice from accountants who are well versed in INTERNATIONAL finance then I'd stick with it. I know my accountant in the UK didn't have an eye for the bigger picture .... only knew of the UK implications.
Maybe the Barclays things was to do with UK residents moving cash to offshore accounts.

Well I appreciate any and all views as I understand it is one of those things there is no clear answer too but what you can seemingly 'get away with' so to speak.

I/we can help you ;
p.m. me with a little more detail and I'll be glad to offer quality info , contacts etc...

It is tricky because the laws are changing... The EU is pushing small countries to sign agreements to give up information about all EU citizens....

I do something kind of similar. I'm currently in the USA. Where I have nationalized citizenship. I have citizenship in Barbados and I plan to be moving to Canada at some point. From what I'm told when I enter Canada I will probably have to continue using my US bank accounts, because that's where I'm currently a permanent resident. I don't have national pension ID etc. in Canada yet to open a bank account and thus, by their terms I would have no "Credit" history since all of that is tied to a pension ID. Canada wont use the social security number I would need one of their pension IDs they say.

The problem you're having is it sounds like you want a bank account almost for a 'stateless person' not in the sense that you are. But just that you want to be able to access your money everywhere and not have to worry about paying taxes on it anywhere? Since you'll be moving along too soon to pay taxes??? In this day and age with the anti-terror laws I don't think you can do anything like that. To "offshore" it- you would have to put it all in a trust and that would be taxable in the jurisdiction it is in if I'm not mistaken. And since it is offshore, it means you probably can't access it in that location all funds I think have to only be accessed in the home country of the parent trust. This keeps local companies in offshore jurisdictions from becoming "Offshore" in their own country and just paying the 1%-2% tax to their local government too. Thus I think all offshore funds have to be accessed outside of the jurisdiction.

There was a time you could get away with this but globalization has done away with that. The Banks in the English speaking Caribbean are largely controlled by Canada based financial companies and the other countries would hit Canada either through NAFTA or WTO etc. in order to play by the global consensus. When it was just small Caribbean banks many probably wouldn't care about "sanctions" from the USA because they could just re-route the money trail elsewhere. Now eventually the money will have to pass through a legit. jurisdiction that will "care" and they wont want to be targeted for someone elses' mess so I mean I'm not an "expert" either but I think you need some very-- powerful friends to pull this off.

Many offshore locations today will check that you have actually registered in your home country just so they are covered incase there's an investigation on funds moving around for terrorists.

You need to become non-resident in the UK and resident in a county that does not tax worldwide income whilst relocating your internet business (server) to a third country and ensuring no income arises from UK sources or where you are residing. You need to have an address outside the UK for your offshore account as well. You can strike all EU countries off that list, I think. Far East countries may be okay or South American ones. An alternative would be to create an offshore company and then use that to shield your income from an EU country but it is quite costly and you would still need to pay income on money remitted to the EU country where you are resident. Most offshore banks want 25k sterling or something like 50k a year income. BTW transfer of business assets aboard are taxable as if you sold them re UK CGT so you would need to close your UK business and recreate it elsewhere. Transfer of funds aboard over 10k euro are also reportable to the tax authorities. The only good thing in all this, the UK tax authorities still don't pursue people abroad who owe them money (though there may be implications if you want to renew your passport!). You can get away with spending half the year "lounging" around Europe whilst spending more than 183 days in the new country of residence. May end up paying more in airfares and accommodation costs than you save in tax! That is my take on the scene though you will need to talk to an international tax advisor to really sort it out. There are now very few holes in the EU system but if you sell everything in the UK, don't visit very often, and run something from the Far East most likely no-one is going to pursue you!