HMRC has published revised guidance on tax residence and domicile which will apply from April 2011. The 86-page revised guidance (HMRC 6) mainly affects claims relating to residence and ordinary residence status and the use of the 'remittance basis' of taxation.
It is widely considered that merely being absent from the UK for the whole of the tax year (6 April to 5 April) makes one non-resident for tax purposes. This is a dangerous assumption. In a recent case, HMRC claimed that an individual can be UK-resident at a time when he or she has not been in the UK for three years and had no intention of staying in the UK in excess of three years.