The FIG Regime for Returning British Expats: Yes, It Includes You

For decades, UK tax relief on foreign income belonged to non-doms. The remittance basis turned on domicile, and a British expat returning home was almost always UK-domiciled, so the relief genuinely was not available. When the press covered the 6 April 2025 reforms as the end of the non-dom regime, many returners filed the replacement under the same heading: a scheme for wealthy foreigners.

The replacement works on an entirely different axis. HMRC's helpsheet HS266 (GOV.UK) defines a qualifying new resident by residence history alone: you must be in one of your first four tax years of UK residence following at least 10 consecutive tax years of non-UK residence. There is no nationality condition and no domicile condition. The only personal exclusions, set out in HMRC's manual at RFIG44000, are members of the House of Commons or House of Lords, and children under 10 at the start of the tax year.

The practical consequence is striking. A British engineer back from 15 years in Singapore, a returner from two decades in Australia, and a French national arriving in the UK for the first time all stand in exactly the same position: if the 10 prior tax years were non-resident, each can claim full UK tax relief on qualifying foreign income and gains for the first four resident years, and bring the money into the UK freely.

The test counts tax years, not calendar years, and each of the 10 years is judged under the Statutory Residence Test (SRT). The 10 non-resident years must be consecutive and must sit immediately before your first resident year back. Left in August 2012 and returned in September 2025? Your first resident year back is 2025/26, so each of the 10 tax years from 2015/16 to 2024/25 must be non-resident under the SRT; earlier years, including your 2012/13 departure year, sit outside the count.

Three traps catch returners in particular. First, a brief return. If you came back for a year mid-absence and were UK resident for that year, the clock restarts from zero: nine years away, one year back and five more years away gives you five consecutive non-resident years, not fourteen. Second, accidental residence. A year in which family ties, available accommodation and UK days quietly tipped you over an SRT threshold counts as a resident year even if you never thought of yourself as living here, and one such year anywhere in the 10 breaks the run. Third, split years. HMRC's manual (RFIG44000) is explicit that any year in which split-year treatment applies is a full year of UK residence for these purposes. That cuts both ways: the split year in which you originally left the UK counts as a resident year, so your 10-year run only starts with the following tax year, and the split year in which you return still burns a full year of your four-year window even if you landed in March.

Because a single misjudged year can flip the answer, we check the SRT position for each of the 10 prior years before anything is claimed. Our SRT calculator and FIG checker tools will show you where you stand before you commit to a filing position.

For a returner who qualifies, the regime relieves qualifying foreign income and foreign gains arising during the window. HS266 lists foreign pensions among qualifying foreign income (with limited excluded categories), alongside dividends from non-UK companies, foreign interest, overseas property business profits and the profits of a trade carried on wholly outside the UK. Foreign gains qualify where they arise on or after 6 April 2025. Anything with a UK source stays fully taxable throughout.

Two boundaries matter most in practice. UK-source income, including the State Pension and UK rental income, is never relieved, so a returner with a UK let keeps filing and paying on it as normal. And foreign employment earnings sit outside the FIG income claim entirely; they are dealt with under Overseas Workday Relief, a separate election with its own cap.

One more boundary for dual citizens: the FIG regime relieves UK tax only. A US citizen returning to Britain remains taxable by the United States on worldwide income regardless of any UK claim, so the relief changes the UK side of the ledger, not the US side. We coordinate the US filings through our US partners, Enrolled Agents and CPAs, so the two returns tell one consistent story.

Honesty matters here, because the arithmetic is unforgiving for short absences. The FIG regime needs 10 consecutive non-resident years. The temporary non-residence anti-avoidance rules catch people who were UK resident in at least 4 of the 7 tax years before leaving and whose period of non-residence is 5 years or less, pulling certain income and gains realised abroad back into UK tax in the year of return (GOV.UK).

• Away 5 years or less: no FIG regime, and the temporary non-residence rules can tax gains on pre-departure assets, close-company dividends and certain pension lump sums taken while you were away, all in your return year.
• Away more than 5 years but fewer than 10: you escape the temporary non-residence claw-back, but you still do not qualify for the FIG regime; your foreign income and gains are taxable from the day you resume residence.
• Away 10 consecutive tax years or more: you qualify for the FIG regime, and the temporary non-residence rules cannot apply to an absence of that length.

So a returner after four years abroad does not simply miss out on a relief; they can face a positive claw-back charge as well. If you are still abroad and near either boundary, the exact SRT and split-year dates of departure and return are worth establishing before you book flights, because both tests are measured on those dates rather than on calendar anniversaries.

The figures below are round-number illustrations for 2026/27, not advice, and real pension cases also involve treaty and lump-sum analysis that this example deliberately leaves out.

Alison, a British citizen, returns to the UK in 2025/26 after 14 consecutive non-resident tax years in Australia. Her window runs 2025/26 to 2028/29. In 2026/27 she draws £48,000 of foreign pension income and receives £10,000 of UK rental profit. With a FIG claim, the £48,000 foreign pension is relieved in full. She gives up her £12,570 Personal Allowance, so her £10,000 UK rent is taxed from the first pound: £10,000 at 20% is £2,000 of UK tax.

Without the claim, her taxable income is £58,000. After the £12,570 Personal Allowance, £45,430 is taxable: £37,700 at 20% is £7,540, and the remaining £7,730 at 40% is £3,092, a total of £10,632. Claiming saves her £8,632 that year, and she can repeat the exercise in 2027/28 and 2028/29. The same drawdown taken in 2029/30, the first year after her window closes, would be taxed in full, which is why the timing of discretionary pension and super withdrawals is the single biggest planning lever for a qualifying returner.

The claim is made on the SA109 pages of your Self Assessment return: box 28 for relief on foreign income, box 29 for relief on foreign gains. It is not automatic, and it is annual; a claim for one year does not carry into the next, and HS266 requires each relieved amount to be identified source by source on the relevant supplementary pages (SA106 for foreign investment and property income, SA108 for gains, SA103F for a wholly overseas trade). A claim that is not quantified is invalid, so relieved income must still be fully reported; the relief removes the tax, never the disclosure. Note that the SA109 cannot be filed through HMRC's free online service, so you need commercial software, an agent or a paper return. The claim itself can be made or amended up to the anniversary of the normal 31 January deadline, which for 2026/27 means 31 January 2029.

The price is fixed and applies in full however small the claim: for each year you claim you lose the £12,570 Personal Allowance and the £3,000 Capital Gains Tax annual exempt amount, along with blind person's allowance and the transferable marriage allowance, and that year's foreign losses become non-allowable. For a returner drawing a substantial foreign pension the trade is overwhelmingly favourable, as the example above shows. For a returner whose foreign income is a few hundred pounds of offshore interest, the lost allowances usually cost more than the relief saves, and the right answer is not to claim that year. Because the claim is annual, the sums should be redone every year; our full SA109 walkthrough covers the box-by-box detail.

The regime took effect on 6 April 2025, but the four-year window is fixed by your first year of UK residence after the 10-year absence, not by the regime's start date. GOV.UK confirms that people who became resident before 6 April 2025 can use the regime from 2025/26 for whatever remains of their original window, and that no relief is available for income arising before 6 April 2025. The years the regime did not exist are simply gone.

For a 2023/24 returner the practical point is plain. The current tax year, 2026/27, is the last year of the window, and it ends on 5 April 2027. The claim itself can be filed later, but the income cannot: only foreign income and gains actually arising by 5 April 2027 can ever be relieved. Anyone in that position with a discretionary foreign pension drawdown, an offshore fund disposal or a foreign dividend they control the timing of should decide before that date, with the claim-versus-allowances arithmetic done properly, rather than discover the window has closed when the return is prepared in late 2027.

One final signpost: the regime only ever covers income and gains arising on or after 6 April 2025. Money accumulated abroad before that date is not within a FIG claim at all. For most 10-year returners it is simply clean capital that can be brought to the UK without a charge, but former remittance-basis users with older untaxed foreign income may instead need the Temporary Repatriation Facility, which runs on its own timetable.