Concept
Pre-arrival planning is the legal design of facts before the UK tax year begins or before residence is triggered. It is not avoidance packaging. The aim is to identify the consequences, remove avoidable ambiguity, and avoid entering UK residence with unmanaged structures. The residence start date runs off the Statutory Residence Test, and since 6 April 2025 a UK resident is taxed on the arising basis on worldwide income and gains under RFIG41000 unless a relief such as the four-year FIG regime applies.
What pre-arrival planning fixes
Residence and the FIG window
The SRT decides the residence start date and any split-year case. A qualifying new resident — broadly UK resident after at least 10 consecutive non-resident tax years — can claim the 4-year FIG regime, and foreign employment income runs through Overseas Workday Relief. The window opens on residence, so the date is the first lever. Finance Act 2026 added a separate age condition to the definition of a qualifying new resident: under s. 845B(1)(d) ITTOIA 2005 the individual must be at least ten years old at the commencement of the tax year. The condition measures the person's own age; the requirement of ten consecutive non-UK-resident tax years remains a standalone condition, and the two are tested together. In practice it bites on families who route foreign income through a young child. One caveat: the temporal reach of the age condition does not read off the face of the Act, unlike the type restriction on the relief, where retrospective effect from 2025-26 is stated expressly, so the year of application is worth confirming with UK counsel.
Portfolio, companies and trusts
Offshore fund status under IFM12144 decides whether a disposal is a gain or an offshore income gain. A foreign company's central management and control and the transfer-of-assets-abroad rules decide whether company income reaches the founder. Trust benefits and matching, and the IHT long-term-resident clock, all start counting from residence.
The planning test
The test asks what happens if the client becomes UK resident in the intended tax year. It then asks whether the outcome changes if arrival is delayed across a tax-year boundary, assets are sold before arrival, non-reporting funds are switched, a company is governed from outside the UK, trust benefits are deferred, or a treaty residence position is preserved. Each answer should rest on a document, not an intention.
Scope
The page covers individuals and families before arrival: founders with companies, investors with foreign funds, trust settlors and beneficiaries, executives with deferred compensation, and families approaching the 10-year long-term-residence mark for inheritance tax.
Consequences
Pre-arrival decisions decide whether the FIG regime is available and whether a gain falls inside the four-year window; whether a portfolio throws off offshore income gains instead of capital gains; whether a foreign company's residence is challenged through central management and control; whether trust income is attributed to a UK-resident settlor; and when the IHT long-term-residence clock starts to bite.
Examples
A client holding non-reporting funds may switch before UK residence or rely on FIG timing instead. A founder may move the central management and control of a foreign company away from the UK before arrival, on real facts rather than minutes. An incoming executive may model Overseas Workday Relief before a start date that fixes the qualifying year. A trust beneficiary may defer distributions until the residence and FIG position is documented.
The 2025 regime in one view
The remittance basis closed on 6 April 2025. A UK resident is now taxed on the arising basis on worldwide income and gains, and the only general shelter on arrival is the four-year FIG regime: someone who becomes UK resident after at least ten consecutive non-resident tax years can claim relief for the first tax year of residence and for any of the next three tax years in which they remain UK resident, on the foreign income and gains they choose to include in the claim. The claim has a price: it costs the income tax personal allowance and the capital gains annual exempt amount for each year claimed. So the four-year window is something to model against expected foreign income rather than claim by reflex.
Anyone who was UK resident on the remittance basis before 6 April 2025 sits in a different position. The Temporary Repatriation Facility lets foreign income and gains arising before 6 April 2025 be designated. Amounts designated in the 2025/26 and 2026/27 tax years are charged at 12% and at 15% for 2027/28; 2027/28 is the last designation tax year; the election for that year can be made by 31 January 2030. Once the charge is paid the money can be remitted in any later year with no further UK tax. For trust capital payments, check the designation basis in TRF designation mechanics. Former remittance-basis users who meet the conditions — a remittance basis claim for at least one year from 2017/18 to 2024/25, no actual or deemed UK domicile before 2025/26, and an asset held on 5 April 2017 that was not situated in the UK between 6 March 2024 and 5 April 2025 — are also treated, on a disposal on or after 6 April 2025, as having acquired that asset at its market value on 5 April 2017, unless they elect out for that disposal (Finance Act 2025 Sch 11). Neither feature helps a true first-time arrival, but both shape the order in which a returning resident should remit, realise and restructure.
Inheritance tax now follows residence
Inheritance tax changed basis on the same date. Domicile no longer decides exposure; residence does. Non-UK assets fall inside the IHT net once someone is a long-term resident — UK resident in at least ten of the previous twenty tax years — and a departure tail can keep worldwide assets in charge for several years after residence ends, up to ten for the longest-staying. Non-UK assets held in a trust are excluded property only while the settlor is not a long-term resident (IHTA 1984 s 48ZA), so the same clock reaches settled property, not only settlor-interested trusts. Separately, for income tax and capital gains, settlor-interested trusts lost their protected-settlement status on 6 April 2025 (Finance Act 2025 Sch 12): trust income and gains are now attributed to a UK-resident settlor as they arise unless a FIG claim covers them. That is why the inheritance-tax clock and the trust review belong in the arrival plan rather than the exit plan.
FIG: in the first 4 tax years of residence foreign income and gains can be taken out of UK charge — provided the ten preceding tax years were spent outside UK residence; the claim is made year by year and costs the personal allowance and the CGT annual exempt amount.
FIG relief is limited to the qualifying income or gains it relates to, with effect from 2025/26. Unused relief cannot offset other income, so the arrival model must separate tax years and income categories. The statutory amendments and their effect on the calculation are explained in the FIG regime.
OWR: also up to 4 years, but with an annual limit of the lower of 30% of employment income or £300,000. IHT: since 6 April 2025 a long-term resident (UK resident in 10 or more of the last 20 years) pays inheritance tax on worldwide assets — 40% above the £325,000 nil-rate band — and after departure the tail runs from 3 to 10 years.
The arrival date and the split year
The arrival date is the most flexible lever, because it can still be moved. The SRT settles not only residence itself but the split year: a few days either side of 6 April can shift an entire tax year, and with it the opening of the FIG window, the OWR count and the start of the IHT clock. So the residence start date and the split-year scenario are modelled first, and the portfolio, the governance and the timing of trust distributions are built out from there.
The order of review
The arrival plan is worked through in a fixed order, each line resting on the one above it.
| Review | What it settles |
|---|---|
| SRT residence date | The tax year of arrival and any split-year case, modelled before the move |
| FIG and OWR | Eligibility for the four-year window and the treatment of foreign employment income |
| Portfolio | Offshore fund status and excess reportable income, read by ISIN |
| Company governance | Where the central management and control of a foreign company actually sits |
| Trusts | Benefits and matching, and the timing of distributions |
| Inheritance tax | When the long-term-residence clock starts and how long the departure tail runs |
Common mistakes
- Leaving planning until the first UK tax return, when asset timing and governance are already fixed.
- Treating artificial arrangements or false residence evidence as planning.
- Reviewing the portfolio only after arrival, after non-reporting gains have crystallised as income.
- Changing company minutes without changing where decisions are actually taken.
- Ignoring transfer of assets abroad and CFC rules as if they were peripheral.
Advisor trigger
A tax adviser can coordinate a clean arrival where the facts are simple and documented. A UK tax solicitor should lead where there is a foreign company with UK management questions, a settlor-interested trust, large embedded gains, a treaty residence position, or a structure that needs to be re-papered before the residence start date.
The thread through all of it is evidence. A board minute only helps if decisions are actually taken where it records them; a pre-arrival disposal only helps if it is dated and real; a fund's character depends on its reporting status, not its prospectus. Pre-arrival planning is the work of making the facts true before the residence start date, so that the first UK return simply reports them.
Q/A
Is pre-arrival planning avoidance
No. Legal planning identifies consequences and structures facts honestly before residence. False residence evidence or artificial arrangements are a different thing, and the transfer-of-assets-abroad and CFC rules treat them as such.
Which issue should be reviewed first
The residence start date. It controls the tax year, the four-year FIG window, the split-year analysis and the IHT long-term-residence count, so every other decision keys off it.
Should portfolios be reviewed before arrival
Yes. Offshore fund status and excess reportable income can materially change the UK result, and selling non-reporting funds after arrival can convert capital growth into income.
Can a foreign company simply be run from abroad after arrival
Only if the central management and control genuinely sits abroad. Moving the minutes while the decisions stay in the UK does not move residence, and transfer of assets abroad can still attribute income to the founder.