You may not know how self-imposed tax works if you are familiar with automatic tax filing. In general, you must self-report any income that is not automatically reported and taxed.
It is difficult to know what to declare and what to keep private, but you have to know the rules. If you don’t disclose it, be sure to fix it as quickly as possible.
When to include your foreign income
Foreign income is not automatically taxed by HMRC, so you will likely have to report it on your self-assessment tax return form. However, there are exceptions to the need to disclose foreign income. For example, if your dividends are £2000 or more, then only you may have to declare them as foreign income. But that’s all dividends, not just foreign dividends. That means you must declare any dividends over £2000 from both UK and overseas companies.
If you rent out property in other countries, this constitutes foreign income and you should make sure you report that on your self-employment tax return. Tax on rental income is the same as in the UK.
How to submit your self-assessment
Filing a self-directed tax return is not complicated and you can access all the information online. That’s why services like UK tax accountant exists: to help you file your taxes correctly.
When you need to file a tax return, you can either do it online from the gov.uk website or you can mail it in using a paper form. Which option is easier for you, as long as you can accurately send with the correct data over either channel. If this is your first time submitting your return online, it will take some time to complete your registration before you can submit your self-assessment.
While filling out your self-assessment, you should add foreign income on SA106 and SA109 for Trusts if you need to declare residency, unless, of course, you are exempt due to factors that have been set forth previously.
It’s easy and done after you’ve filled out your self-assessment and submitted it electronically or on paper.
