Do You Need an Accountant for the FIG Regime? An Honest Decision Framework

The question is not whether you are clever enough to complete a tax return. Plenty of people who could master the rules should still not spend their evenings doing so, and some straightforward cases genuinely do not justify a professional fee. The real question is whether your facts contain any of the features that turn a FIG return from form-filling into judgement. The table below is the whole framework in one place; the rest of the guide explains each line.

Be honest about the easy case, because it exists. If you arrived in the UK on a clear date after a long, unbroken period abroad, your only UK income is a salary under PAYE, and your only foreign income is a few hundred or a few thousand pounds of bank interest, the FIG return is within reach of a careful person. You would need to register for Self Assessment, buy commercial software that supports the SA109 because HMRC's free online service does not, complete the residence pages, quantify the interest you want relieved, and check whether claiming actually saves you money once the lost Personal Allowance is counted (GOV.UK).

Even in this case, notice what carefulness means. GOV.UK confirms you can choose which foreign income and gains to claim relief on and do not need to claim on all of your sources (GOV.UK). That flexibility is a gift, but it also means the claim is a decision, not a default. On £2,000 of foreign interest, claiming relief saves at most a few hundred pounds of tax while costing you a £12,570 Personal Allowance, which for most earners is thousands of pounds. Many simple cases are best served by not claiming at all, and a DIY filer who claims reflexively can lose real money on a return that is technically valid. Our guide to FIG regime mistakes covers this trap in detail.

The other requirement for defensible DIY is record keeping. The claim must be quantified source by source, which means statements, dividend vouchers and completion statements gathered and kept, not estimated. If you go this route, our guide to FIG record keeping sets out what to hold on to.

The case for professional help builds feature by feature, and it usually starts before the return does, with residence. Eligibility for the regime requires at least 10 consecutive tax years of non-UK residence immediately before your first resident year, and relief is only available in your first 4 years of UK residence (GOV.UK). Each of those years is judged under the Statutory Residence Test, and a single accidental resident year, a long UK work stint, a family tie you did not think counted, breaks the sequence. If your history has anything to check, the residence analysis alone is specialist work, because getting it wrong does not just misstate a number, it invalidates the whole basis of the claim.

• Multiple income sources: savings interest, dividends, overseas rental profits and foreign trade profits are each quantified and reported separately, and the claim or skip decision can differ for each.
• Capital gains and funds: gains need their own claim, non-UK fund holdings carry their own reporting rules, and foreign losses cannot be claimed in a year you take relief, so disposals need sequencing across the window.
• Split-year arrival: the arrival year still consumes a full year of the four-year window, and the split-year rules decide which income falls in the UK part at all.
• Foreign employment income: salary is not covered by the FIG income claim; it needs the separate Overseas Workday Relief election, capped at the lower of 30% of qualifying employment income and £300,000.
• Prior non-dom history: former remittance basis users have pre-6 April 2025 foreign income and gains that remain taxable if remitted, unless designated under the Temporary Repatriation Facility while the 12% rate lasts, and the designation decision belongs alongside the FIG claim, not after it.
• Trusts and structures: distributions from offshore trusts and closely held companies carry rules layered on top of the regime that no software wizard will surface.

The Overseas Workday Relief point deserves emphasis because it is a one-way door. The OWR election must be made in your Self Assessment return for the qualifying year, and HMRC's guidance states that an employee who chooses not to make an election for a qualifying year cannot claim relief in any future year in which that year's employment income is taxed (GOV.UK). A DIY filer who does not know the election exists has not made a small error, they have permanently priced overseas workdays out of relief for that year. The new OWR rules are covered in our separate guide.

Notice the pattern: none of these are exotic. An arriving executive with a bonus, some restricted stock, an old investment account and a house sale in progress ticks four of the boxes above without trying. Our guide for investors and high earners works through that profile in full.

It is fair to ask what you are paying for, because a FIG return looks, from the outside, like any other tax return with two extra boxes. Here is the actual work, in the order it happens.

First, residence analysis. Your 10 prior years and your current year are tested properly under the SRT, with day counts, ties and any split-year case identified, because everything else rests on this. Second, source mapping and quantification. Every foreign source is identified, the amount to relieve for each is computed from records, and each is reported on the correct supplementary pages, savings and dividends separately on the foreign pages, gains on the capital gains pages. HMRC helpsheet HS266 requires the claim on a source-by-source basis, and the manual confirms that a claim not quantified at all is invalid (HS266, GOV.UK). Third, SA109 completion and filing through professional software, since the residence pages cannot go through HMRC's free online service.

Fourth, and this is where a specialist earns the fee rather than merely deserving it, claim strategy across the window. The claim is made year by year, and HMRC's manual confirms both that a claim for year 1 will not automatically apply to years 2, 3 or 4, and that an individual who claims for year 1 but chooses not to claim for year 2 can still claim for years 3 and 4 (RFIG42100, HMRC). Skipping a year is allowed, and sometimes it is the right answer: claim in the years foreign income is large, keep your allowances in the years it is small, and time disposals and distributions into claimed years. A software wizard fills in the year in front of it; a specialist plans all four, using your arrival-year deadlines as the frame.

Fifth, coordination. If you kept the old remittance basis before 2025, the comparison between the two systems matters and pre-2025 money may need a TRF designation before 5 April 2027. If you are a US citizen, the UK claim needs to sit consistently beside the US return. None of this appears on the SA109 itself, and all of it changes what should go on it.

Strip the question down to numbers and it usually answers itself. A FIG claim that relieves £100,000 of foreign dividends saves UK tax at dividend rates that reach 39.35%, comfortably north of £30,000 in a single year for an additional-rate taxpayer, and the claim repeats for up to four years. Against that, a professionally prepared FIG return is a fixed fee from £750. When the relief is worth five or six figures, the fee is a rounding error, and the real risk is not the cost of advice but the cost of an invalid or badly judged claim.

The downside is just as concrete. An unquantified claim is invalid, which converts relieved income into undeclared taxable income of a UK resident, with interest and penalties on top; our guide to FIG penalties sets out how expensive that gets. A reflexive claim on small foreign income burns £12,570 of Personal Allowance to relieve a few hundred pounds of tax. A missed OWR election closes the door on overseas workday relief for that year permanently. And a mistimed disposal, realised one year after your window closes, gets no relief at all however perfect the paperwork. The asymmetry is the point: the fee is fixed and known, the errors are open-ended.

There is also a timing reason not to defer the decision. The first year the regime covers is 2025/26, the return is due online by 31 January 2027, and paper returns are due earlier, by 31 October (GOV.UK). This first FIG filing season is happening now, which means residence analysis, records and the claim or skip arithmetic all need doing this season, not next.

If you decide you want help, do not stop being sceptical just because the adviser is friendly. The FIG regime is new, most general practices have prepared few or none of these returns, and a generalist learning on your file is not obviously better than careful DIY. Ask three questions before engaging anyone, including us.

• Are you a Chartered Tax Adviser? The CTA is the gold-standard UK tax qualification, and residence and the FIG regime are precisely the kind of technical territory it exists for. An accountancy qualification alone is not the same thing.
• How many FIG returns have you prepared, and what did the residence analysis involve? The regime started on 6 April 2025, so nobody has decades of experience, but a specialist should be fluent in the SRT, the SA109, quantification and the claim or skip decision, and should be able to explain each without notes.
• Will you quote a fixed fee upfront? A quantified annual claim is a definable piece of work; an hourly rate with no cap tells you the adviser cannot scope it, which is itself information.

A good adviser should also be willing to tell you that you do not need them, that this year's numbers do not justify a claim, or that your case is simple enough to do yourself. If everyone you speak to says yes to everything, keep looking. Our general guide on choosing an expat tax adviser expands on the wider checklist.

Horizon UK Tax Solutions is a founder-led Chartered Tax Adviser practice with over 10 years of experience, including 7 at a Big Four firm, and FIG returns are exactly the returns we specialise in. The work follows the sequence set out above: residence analysis against the SRT for your prior 10 years and your arrival year, source-by-source quantification from your records, the claim or skip arithmetic done explicitly and shown to you, the SA109 and supplementary pages completed and filed through professional software, and a claim strategy mapped across your remaining window rather than one year at a time.

Fees are fixed and agreed upfront, always. Personal tax returns start from £350, non-resident and expat returns from £550, and complex returns, which is where most FIG cases with multiple sources, gains or OWR sit, from £750. You will know the full cost before we start, and it will not change.

If you are still deciding which side of the DIY line you are on, that is precisely what the free call is for. Book a free 30-minute clarity call and we will tell you honestly whether your case justifies a specialist, or read more about the practice on our non-dom and residency services page. Either way, with the first FIG filing season closing on 31 January 2027, decide now rather than in January.