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What does claiming the FIG regime cost?

Answered by Jordan Onraet-Wells, Founder & Chartered Tax Adviser (CTA). Published 28 July 2026. Last reviewed 28 July 2026.

The short answer

Claiming the FIG regime costs you your tax-free allowances for the year: the £12,570 Personal Allowance and the £3,000 Capital Gains Tax annual exempt amount are given up in full, however small the claim. Foreign losses of the claim year also become non-allowable. There is no upfront fee, so the question is simply whether the UK tax saved on the relieved foreign income and gains beats the cost of the lost allowances.

  • A claim forfeits the full £12,570 Personal Allowance for the year, even on a small amount of foreign interest.
  • The £3,000 CGT annual exempt amount goes too, plus the married couple's tax reductions and the transferable Marriage Allowance.
  • The allowances are lost whether you claim on foreign income only, foreign gains only, or make only an Overseas Workday Relief election.
  • Foreign losses of the claim year cannot be used, carried forward or carried back.
  • The claim is annual, so you can rerun the sums each year and skip years where claiming does not pay.

The real cost: allowances you give up

HMRC's helpsheet HS266 is blunt about the price. For each year you claim, you lose the full £12,570 Personal Allowance, the £3,000 CGT annual exempt amount, blind person's allowance, the married couple's tax reductions and the transferable Marriage Allowance. Foreign income and capital losses arising in the claim year cannot be relieved, carried forward or carried back. All of this applies however you claim: income only, gains only, or an Overseas Workday Relief election on its own still costs the lot. What a claim does not cost you is a fee. There is no equivalent of the old remittance basis charge, and for the highest earners the cost is smaller than it looks: once UK income passes £125,140 the Personal Allowance is tapered to nil anyway, leaving little more than £720 of CGT on the lost exempt amount.

When the trade is worth it, and when it is not

The test is simple arithmetic: the UK tax saved on the relieved foreign income and gains must beat the tax the lost allowances would have saved. Someone with £2,000 of foreign interest whose UK earnings still use the Personal Allowance saves at most £600 at 40%, since the £500 personal savings allowance already shelters part of the interest, yet gives up allowances worth over £5,000, so claiming leaves them worse off. Someone with a large offshore bonus, a foreign property sale or substantial investment income usually comes out far ahead. Split-year arrival years need care, because little foreign income may fall in the UK part of the year yet a claim still costs the full allowances. The window is also fixed: the regime runs from 6 April 2025 and your four years count from your first year of UK residence, so a 2023/24 arriver can claim only for 2025/26 and 2026/27.

How the cost lands on your return

You claim year by year on the SA109 pages of your Self Assessment return, box 28 for foreign income and box 29 for foreign gains, and every relieved amount must be quantified source by source or the claim is invalid. Because it is an annual decision, you can claim in a big year and skip a modest one. Our SA109 walkthrough covers the mechanics box by box, and our FIG regime guide covers who qualifies in the first place.

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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