Tax free salary???

[mikeodude]

Hey, Is it true that as a Deck/Engine Officer outside the UK for 6months and 1 foreign port avoid tax payments?

Does this follow for all the other following years? or are there rules.....

cheers anyone!

[CharlieDelta]

It's a bit more complicated than that but, essentially, yes.

Working deep sea/international trade and you should be pretty safe. Offshore or short sea then you might run into problems.

[mikeodude]

thank you for replying. is there anywhere where i can get more information about this.
It looks like i will be working offshore Boston Putford, 6 months totalling onboard working out of the Year. - with a foreign exchange per year, should i be okay?

[swishwellingtons]

It's all here dude:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/seafaq2.htm

not too complicated - period of at least 365 days...within which you must always have spent at least one more day out of the country than in it, each employment must include a foreign port, and you gotta be working on boats...done.

[mikeodude]

cheers swishwellingtons ! 365 days huh ??? so spend at least 6 months outside the country, and each consequative year spend a day more out ???

[swishwellingtons]

as far as i know, you start counting the qualifying period from the first time you leave the country; each time you come back to the UK, you need to make sure you've spent more days out of the country than in...at least one more. best bet is to read the bumpf on that link about seven times and it should sink in.
Make sure you're on it though - get the number of days out of the country wrong and you can miss out entirely...

[CharlieDelta]

Holidays abroad do count, however, so you can make the odd tactical jump across the Channel when neccesary.

[chris]

there was an older post with a useful SED calculator spreadsheet attached

[swishwellingtons]

yeah there was but I can't seem to get the search function to work on this site at the mo....
so the best available is on HMRC...these may be of assistance: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/EIM33006.htm and http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/helpsheets/hs205.pdf

[Faust]

With Boston, as long as you have the days out the country you're fine. Managment make sure everyone gets a foreign change each year; or should anyway.

Sometimes you might have to go to Holland for a weekend to get the days, but just keep the tickets for the travel as proof you were out the country.

[Chiefy]

et voila...I think

[steamer]

Everyone gets their tax back at Putfords-you should be able to do the same in phase 4 realistically.