Readers’ forum: Foreign income

Our client has recently come to live in the UK from Egypt where she had lived since birth. Her financial arrangements (bank accounts employment pensions and the like) are being established in the UK but she had left in Egypt some interest-bearing bank deposits and a portfolio of stocks managed by a local investment house.

Having considered the statutory resident tests we are comfortable that our client would be tax resident in the UK in 2020-21.

The client does not wish to trouble herself with the complexities imposed by the ‘separation of funds’ requirements for a remittance basis treatment to be effective and given the small amounts involved she is willing to be taxed on an arising basis on her worldwide income.

It seems clear that interest and dividend income arising in her former home country would now be taxed in the UK subject...