Who HS266 says can claim
HS266 opens with the gateway test. You are a qualifying new resident for a tax year if it is one of your first four years of UK residence after a period of at least 10 consecutive tax years of non-UK residence, and you are not a member of the House of Commons or House of Lords. Nationality and your old domicile position do not enter into it, which is why returning British expats can qualify where they could never have used the remittance basis. The helpsheet is written for people who have decided to claim and need to complete the return correctly, so it assumes you have already checked your residence history year by year under the Statutory Residence Test. Our FIG regime guide covers that eligibility check, and our FIG checker will test your dates.
How HS266 says the claim is made
The mechanics are on the SA109 pages, now titled "Residence and foreign income and gains (FIG) regime etc". HS266 tells you to put an X in box 28 to claim relief on foreign income, box 29 to claim relief on foreign gains, and box 30 if you have UK income or gains deemed foreign under the qualifying asset holding company rules. Ticking the box is the start, not the end: the relieved income and gains must still be declared and identified source by source on the relevant supplementary pages, and the helpsheet confirms that what you declare and claim on is what gets relieved. The claim is annual, so it is repeated on each year's return within your four-year window, and it can be made or amended up to the anniversary of the normal 31 January filing date. Our FIG tax return walkthrough takes the boxes in order.
What HS266 says a claim costs
The helpsheet is blunt about the price. If you claim relief under the FIG regime for a year you lose your personal allowance and your capital gains tax annual exempt amount, and it stresses that those allowances go regardless of whether you claim for only foreign income, only foreign gains, or only Overseas Workday Relief. For someone with modest foreign interest and UK earnings that still use the allowance, that trade can cost more than it saves; for someone with a large foreign gain or substantial overseas investment income it is usually clearly worthwhile. Because the claim is made year by year, the sum should be redone each January rather than assumed. HS266 is the authority for the return itself; the deeper rules, including what counts as qualifying foreign income and gains, sit in the Residence and FIG Regime Manual from RFIG41000, and that is where an adviser goes when a source is unusual.