What survives the move
Private Residence Relief exempts the proportion of your gain that periods of occupation, plus the final 9 months of ownership, bear to your total period of ownership. Nothing about leaving the UK removes the years the house was genuinely your only or main home, and occupation is a test of quality rather than length: HMRC's manual accepts that even short but genuine residence qualifies, while token occupation may not. The final 9 months are yours automatically once the property has been your main residence at some point, whether it was let, empty or you were living abroad; the period is 36 months for owners who are disabled or in long-term residential care. Whatever is left chargeable after the relief is taxed at the residential rates, 18% within your basic rate band and 24% above it, after the £3,000 annual exempt amount for 2026/27. Our Private Residence Relief guide takes each element in order.
The 90-day rule and the absence rules
The relief survives the move with one extra hurdle. A tax year of non-residence only counts as occupation if you, or your spouse or civil partner, spent at least 90 days in the UK home during that tax year; fail it and the year drops out of your fraction entirely. You also nominate the property as your main residence when you report the disposal. The statutory absence rules can rescue a posting abroad: a period employed with all duties performed outside the UK counts without limit, up to 4 years counts where your place of work required you to live elsewhere, and up to 3 years counts for any reason. Generally the house must be your main residence before and after the absence, though the after condition is relaxed where work prevented your return. An absence only counts if no other property was your main residence during it. See selling versus renting out your UK home for the timing decision.
Rebasing, reporting and what usually decides the bill
Two non-resident features sit alongside the relief. First, rebasing: as a non-resident you are generally only taxed on the gain arising since 5 April 2015 on a UK residential property, often the bigger number for a long-held home. Second, the deadline: a non-resident must report the disposal of a UK home to HMRC within 60 days of completion whether or not any tax is due, and the relief computation goes on that return. Lettings relief will not help if you let the whole house after moving out, because for disposals from 6 April 2020 it only applies where you let part of the property while occupying another part yourself. The sequencing of dates, not the size of the gain, decides the bill. Our 60-day CGT guide covers the filing, and your residence status itself is tested under the Statutory Residence Test.