if you're a PAYE worker and work for all of January, your credits will likely be averaged over the course of the year so that you will be likely to get a portion of the tax paid in January only repaid. You'll have to fill in a P50 after you move and then wait a while for a repayment - they may insist that you wait until 2012 as they couldn't be certain you wouldn't come back to work in 2011.