I have a EU passport, working remotely in the UK, have a fully settled status, and for the last 8 months I've been in the UK for a total of maybe 5 days.
I still have a UK address which I realistically don't live in, but I have ability to receive letters in there. I Also have UK phone number and I continue to receive salary to my UK bank account. So on paper I'm a resident of the UK.
I use UK credit card for everything and it works out quite well especially with lower costs of living.
I'm currently in Hungary but I'm not registered here. I don't think they know I'm here because with EU passport I could just cross the border any time and that it doesn't look like it's tracked anywhere. I haven't seen anyone in Hungary to track my whereabouts, and I usually say that I'm temporarily living here.
I haven't told my employer, which is a bit risky but so far they haven't found out. My boss said he wouldn't care if I worked from abroad sometimes (we had an informal chat about it)
I do come to the office once every 2 months, and generally my colleagues think I live in England. There aren't any emergency office meets, which gives usually me time to plan the flights and hotels etc.
So I have few questions.
Could there be any implications if I do it long term? Could HMRC find out that I'm living abroad? Could they use UK border data to check how often I am in the country? Would they even care if they did find out? After all I'm paying tax to their pocket so why wouldn't they be happy?
Don't know about the UK but I've been doing this for ~8 years.. I make an American salary and live in places that have a MUCH lower cost of living.
It's been my experience that my colleagues never care. However, HR is a nightmare to deal with. It's literally their job to find out how to pay employees less. Every time HR has found out what I'm doing it's been a problem. This is the main thing I have to be aware of when interviewing for new positions.. I keep my mouth shut until after onboarding is finished and I never have to talk to them again.
On the tax front, the Americans have an exemption you qualify for if you are out of the country for 330 days or more per year.. Basically the first $120k of your income is not taxed and anything you make above that amount begins to be taxed at the lowest tax rate. I don't have to mention this to the employer at all because it's part of the paperwork I file with the government at tax time.. It has nothing to do with the job really.. My tax rate has been 1% or less for nearly a decade now.
You should talk to a tax strategist. They may be expensive up front but they will save you MUCH more than whatever they charge in the long run.
EDIT: If someone knows a good place for finding contract work, I'm looking for SRE gigs.