Non-dom paralysis

Uncertainty continues to abound regarding the status of the changes to the taxation of non-domiciled taxpayers, originally scheduled to take effect from 6th April this year.

By way of a recap, the changes as intended were in summary to:

• automatically treat those born in the UK with a UK domicile as origin as 'deemed domiciled' in the UK whilst UK resident;
• also treat as 'deemed domiciled' any non-dom individual who has been resident in the UK for at least 15 of the preceding 20 tax years;
• introduce certain reliefs to rebase assets to their value at 5 April 2017 for capital gains tax purposes, and allow for 'cleansing' of mixed accounts for those previously claiming the remittance basis; and
• reform the tax treatment of non-UK resident trusts settled by non-dom individuals.

It remains uncertain which of the provisions, in particular the rebasing and cleansing reliefs, will survive the recent political upheaval.  The timing of the changes is also in question, with the possibility that some or all of the amendments could take effect from 6 April as originally planned, or be postponed to the start of the next tax year in April 2018.

We keenly await the Summer Finance Bill which should offer some much needed clarity in this area.  For now, however, the uncertainly which persists in this area remains symptomatic of wider political instability.

Please contact us if you would like to discuss the impact of this on your own situation.