this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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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?

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[–] SxxxX@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Your best long-term solutions are:

  • Setup Ltd in the UK and get hired as contractor with B2B contract. Then pay all your taxes properly in whatever country you actually reside.
  • Get your company hire you through service like Deel that handle taxes on it's own since they just legally hire you in whatever country you reside in.

Both options wont be suitable for majority of employers, but at least you won't be on the hook for tax fraud in EU with some hefty fine to pay.

[–] Greenawayer@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Both options will arouse interest in the employer. Best not to bother.

[–] Intelligent_Loan_987@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This actually is not a bad idea, the company I work for does provide an option to switch to private contract position, but it can only be done if they hire you via ltd that you can create yourself. However I don't think I'll go this route as this kind of like protecting yourself from something that might never happen

[–] Greenawayer@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

The down side is you have zero legal protections against being fired for no reason and with no notice. If you are an employee over two years you have the right not to be fired without a reason and notice.

Also it would be really obvious you are up to something.