LSR Partners LLP

LSR Partners LLP Bringing UK tax clarity to global clients

16/06/2026

Your tax code is wrong. Your payroll department cannot fix it.

Not because they do not want to. Because they have no choice. Payroll applies the code HMRC has issued. There is no discretion. There is no override. However wrong the code might be, applying it is the entire extent of payroll's responsibility.

Simon describes this from personal experience running LSR Partners' own payroll. The payroll provider looks at the code, says that is what I have to do, and does it.

HMRC gets things wrong. It is not rare. It is documented and widespread. The practical consequence is that if your tax code is wrong, the only person who is going to catch it is you or someone acting on your behalf.

Episode 21 of the Tax Compass Podcast explains the PAYE system, why it fails, and what you need to watch for.

Watch here: https://buff.ly/rNk2hoR or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time. Book a call at lsrpartners.com.

Most employed people assume their tax is handled. Payroll runs every month. HMRC reconciles at the year end. Everything ...
12/06/2026

Most employed people assume their tax is handled. Payroll runs every month. HMRC reconciles at the year end. Everything is sorted.

Episode 21 of the Tax Compass Podcast makes the case that this assumption is wrong more often than people realise.

600,000 people are estimated to have overpaid tax through PAYE. HMRC uses estimated figures for tax codes. Payroll applies whatever code it is given with no ability to override it. Simple assessment does not always catch the errors. And the people who discover problems are usually the ones who looked rather than those who assumed.

This carousel covers the four areas where employed people most commonly get caught out: tax codes, benefits in kind, pension contributions and equity awards crossing the £100,000 threshold.

It also flags the salary sacrifice cap that is coming and why the window to maximise employer contributions is closing.

Link in comments.

11/06/2026

Most employed people assume their tax is sorted because their company runs payroll. In many cases that assumption is wrong.

Payroll is mechanical. It applies the tax code it has been given and processes your salary accordingly. What it cannot do is catch the situations where the code is wrong, where a benefit has not been accounted for, or where your employment situation is more complicated than a standard domestic arrangement.

Simon opens Episode 21 of the Tax Compass Podcast with exactly this point, and it sets up an episode that covers everything from PAYE and tax codes through to pension contributions, salary sacrifice, benefits in kind and equity awards.

Watch the full episode here: https://buff.ly/rNk2hoR or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time. Book a call at lsrpartners.com.

10/06/2026

If you had only spoken to us six months ago, we could have told you not to do X, Y and Z. That conversation would have saved you a lot of tax.

This is the message Simon comes back to at the end of every conversation about the Statutory Residence Test. And it is always true. And it is always avoidable.

The test is complicated, fact-specific and unforgiving. Once decisions have been made and days have been spent, the position is fixed. There is nothing to unwind.

LSR Partners do more residency work than probably any other area of their practice. The clients who get the best outcomes are consistently the ones who had the conversation before they acted. Not after.

If you are leaving the UK, arriving in the UK, or already overseas and unsure where you stand, get in touch now.

Watch the full Episode 20 of the Tax Compass Podcast here: https://buff.ly/6u90LCm or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time. Book a call at lsrpartners.com.

09/06/2026

Most countries operate a binary residency system. You are either tax resident or you are not. There is no middle ground.

The UK has split year treatment. The tax year can be divided into two distinct periods. For part of the year you are UK tax resident. For the rest you are treated as UK tax non-resident. Both in the same tax year.

Without it, someone who leaves the UK in October would be UK tax resident for the entire year, with worldwide income potentially in scope throughout.

But the routes into split year treatment are not equal on the way out and on the way in. Leaving the UK offers three cases. Arriving in the UK offers five. More ways in. Fewer ways out. The same directional imbalance that runs through the entire Statutory Residence Test.

Watch Episode 20 of the Tax Compass Podcast here: https://buff.ly/6u90LCm or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time. Book a call at lsrpartners.com.

05/06/2026

Received a chargeable event certificate from your insurer or bond provider? Before you decide how to treat it on your tax return, there are several things you need to understand.

Chargeable event gains are not capital gains. HMRC taxes them as income. And the rules around how much tax you actually owe depend on whether the gain is onshore or offshore, how long the policy has been in force, and whether you were UK tax resident throughout the period the gain was building up.

Onshore gains usually come with a 20% basic rate tax credit. Offshore gains do not. For gains that have accrued over many years and land in a single tax year, top slicing relief can significantly reduce the effective rate of tax by spreading the gain across the years it built up. For offshore bonds held during periods of non-residence, time apportionment relief may also be available.

The order in which these reliefs are applied matters. Getting it wrong is costly. And none of them apply automatically.

If you have received a chargeable event certificate, get specialist advice before you file your tax return.

Book a call with us on our website. LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

You receive a chargeable event certificate from your insurance company or bond provider.Your first instinct might be to ...
04/06/2026

You receive a chargeable event certificate from your insurance company or bond provider.

Your first instinct might be to treat it as a capital gains matter. It is not. Chargeable event gains are taxed as income. And the rules around how much you actually pay are considerably more complicated than that starting point suggests.

Whether the gain is onshore or offshore changes the picture significantly. An onshore gain usually comes with a 20% basic rate tax credit because the provider has already paid tax before passing the money to you. An offshore gain carries no such credit. The full amount is taxable at your marginal rate.

If the product has been building for years and the gain is crystallised all at once, top slicing relief can reduce the effective rate of tax by spreading the gain across the number of years it accrued. But it does not apply automatically. It has to be claimed correctly and the order in which it interacts with other income in the same tax year affects the calculation significantly.

For offshore bonds there is also time apportionment relief to consider if you were not UK tax resident for part of the period during which the gain built up.

Chargeable event gains are one of the most consistently mishandled areas of UK personal tax. If you have received a chargeable event certificate and you are not certain how it should be treated on your tax return, get advice before you file.

Watch our Chargeable Event video: https://buff.ly/eGAEWFn

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time. Book a call at lsrpartners.com.

03/06/2026

In theory, an arriver with just one tie to the UK can spend up to 182 days here without becoming UK tax resident.

In practice, spending 182 days in the UK while avoiding an accommodation tie requires moving between hotels and short-term rentals constantly, never staying anywhere consistently for more than 90 nights. It is possible in principle. It is burdensome and logistically complicated in practice.

Simon references the controversy around Sean Connery and the claim that he only ever spent 182 days in the UK. The point is not the number. The point is that the Statutory Residence Test is designed to make this kind of arrangement genuinely difficult to sustain. The ties and day counts interact in a way that closes off the obvious routes to manipulation.

Watch Episode 20 of the Tax Compass Podcast here: https://buff.ly/6u90LCm or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time. Book a call at lsrpartners.com.

02/06/2026

How many days can you spend in the UK without becoming UK tax resident?
The answer depends entirely on how many ties you have to the UK.

Four or five ties: 15 midnights maximum before triggering UK tax residency.
No ties: up to 282 days.

But almost nobody with any connection to the UK genuinely has zero ties. And spending close to the upper day count limit creates a tie for the following year, reducing the days available in year two.

The sufficient ties test does not reset cleanly between years. What you do in one tax year affects the thresholds that apply in the next.

Watch Episode 20 of the Tax Compass Podcast here: https://buff.ly/6u90LCm or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time. Book a call at lsrpartners.com.

29/05/2026

Many non-residents assume that after enough time outside the UK, capital gains tax on UK property eventually stops applying. It does not. There is no time limit after which the liability disappears.

But if you owned UK property before April 2015, reliefs are available that can significantly reduce what you owe. Rebasing allows you to treat the April 2015 value as your base cost. Time apportionment relief taxes only the proportion of the gain that arose after April 2015. You choose whichever produces the better outcome.

There is also a trap that catches people out regularly. Return to the UK within five years as a temporary non-resident and any gain that was not fully taxed during your period of non-residence can fall back within the scope of UK capital gains tax. Most people understand this rule in relation to shares. Far fewer realise it applies to UK property gains under the non-resident CGT rules as well.

If you are a non-resident with UK property and you are considering selling, or thinking about returning to the UK, get the full picture before you act.

Book a call with us on our website. LSR Partners help you pay the right tax in the right place at the right time.

Address

Stafford

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when LSR Partners LLP posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category