Settling in Northern Ireland for favourable taxation

[alwaysonit]

Firstly, is there a Northern Irish specific financial forum one can recommend to ask this question?


With ETFs taxed like standard shares, a yearly tax free ISA allowance of £20k, CGT tax free credit of £12.3k, and standard CGT at 10% up to £50k (assuming it is your only income), am I missing anything in weighing up settling north rather than south of the border?

There also seems to be no “ordinary residence” rule in UK, meaning if one wanted to change country of residence for efficient asset disposal, it would only take 1 year of exile, rather than 4 from ROI.

I know there is an estate tax over 325k (couple of ways to minimise this, including relocating when in old age), but this is the only financial con I can find when weighing them up.

 

[alwaysonit]

Couple of corrections on the above, if anyone is interested;

UK does have an "ordinary residence" rule - called "temporary non residence".
To avoid it, one would either have to cease being a UK tax resident before the 4th year of residency, or spend 5 years non being a UK tax resident before returning.
This only applies if one plans to become a UK resident again.

Tax if you return to the UK

Paying tax if you come back to the UK after living abroad - tax status, temporary residence, tax if you return to the UK within 5 years, tax returns, National Insurance

www.gov.uk

Estate tax can be passed on to the spouse to double it. It increases from £350k to £500k if your main residence is passed onto your children as part of your estate. Which passed onto the longest surviving spouse would leave £1m tax free for the kids.

 

[Zenith63]

Is this not a case of the tax tail ferociously wagging the life dog? Decide where you’ll live based on where you want to live and what suits your family. Tax regime should have a very low weighting in that decision, not least because there’s no guarantee it will look remotely like it does today when you’re disposing of or passing on assets in 30/40/50 years time.

 

[alwaysonit]

Yes it is, but the deemed disposal rule means this will come into play every 8 years, unless I want to hold a unit trust or make my own portfolio instead.
Unit trust is the best option now but I am not confident of it remaining distinct from ETFs in the tax scope.

The 10x higher CGT allowance alone will allow me to sell and rebuy a similar ETF each year in UK up to this allowance, bringing my net cost up, and this would begin in the first year of residence.