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HorizonUK Tax Solutions

Choosing an Adviser

How do I choose a UK expat tax adviser?

Answered by Jordan Onraet-Wells, Founder & Chartered Tax Adviser (CTA). Published 9 August 2026. Last reviewed 9 August 2026.

The short answer

Check three things: a recognised tax qualification (most often the Chartered Tax Adviser, CTA), anti-money-laundering supervision you can verify on HMRC's public register, and genuine cross-border specialism in residence, treaties and the post-April-2025 rules. Then agree the fee in writing before any work starts. Anyone in the UK can call themselves a tax adviser with no qualification at all, so the burden of checking falls on you.

  • Tax advice is not a regulated profession for competence or entry: no licence or qualification is legally required, and the titles accountant and tax adviser are not protected.
  • AML supervision is the one mandatory rule: anyone providing tax services by way of business must be supervised, and you can verify a firm on HMRC's public Supervised Business Register.
  • The CTA from the Chartered Institute of Taxation is the leading specialist UK tax qualification; verify an individual on the official CIOT or ATT member directory.
  • A fair engagement uses a fixed fee agreed upfront in writing for a defined scope; open-ended hourly billing with no estimate or cap is the main red flag.
  • Expat cases turn on the Statutory Residence Test, double tax treaties, split-year treatment and the FIG regime, so regular current experience of those rules matters more than a job title.

The checks you can do yourself in fifteen minutes

Use public registers rather than trusting a website. Confirm the individual holds CTA or ATT status on the official CIOT or ATT member directory, confirm AML supervision on HMRC's Supervised Business Register, and check the firm at Companies House for incorporation, directors and filing history. Then ask directly who their AML supervisor is and whether they hold professional indemnity insurance. Members of the seven bodies behind Professional Conduct in Relation to Taxation (PCRT) are bound by a mandatory ethical code on competence, integrity and the limits of acceptable planning, which is a trust signal an unaffiliated adviser cannot offer. From May 2026 advisers who deal with HMRC on clients' behalf must also register with HMRC, though that is registration rather than a licence of competence, so these checks still rest with you.

Why a generalist is the wrong fit for cross-border work

A capable high-street accountant handles a straightforward UK return well, but expat and non-resident cases turn on the Statutory Residence Test, double tax treaties, split-year treatment and the FIG regime that arrived when the remittance basis was abolished on 6 April 2025. These rules interact, and applying UK-only assumptions to them can mean tax paid in the wrong country, missed reliefs and penalties across two tax authorities at once. The practical test is to ask how many cases like yours the adviser handles in a typical year: someone who works on residence and treaty questions week in, week out will reason from the current rules, not the regime that existed before 2025.

How fees should work

The strongest model for expat work is a fixed fee agreed upfront in a written engagement letter that states exactly what is and is not included and what would trigger an extra charge. Hourly billing is acceptable if you still get a written estimate, but an open-ended arrangement with no cap should make you pause, and the cheapest generalist quote can be the most expensive outcome once errors are counted. As a guide to what published fixed fees look like, at Horizon UK Tax Solutions personal returns start from £350, non-resident and expat returns from £550 and complex cross-border work from £750, always agreed upfront. Our full guide to choosing an adviser sets out the complete checklist, and a free clarity call at /book lets you put these questions to a Chartered Tax Adviser directly.

Go deeper

Sources and further reading

This is general information for the 2026/27 UK tax year, not personal tax advice; speak to a Chartered Tax Adviser about your own position.

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