Disposals of UK residential property must be reported to HMRC via a UK property account, with tax due at the same time. However, for non-resident taxpayers, HMRC has confirmed the service may not calculate the gain correctly, and might even say there is no tax to pay. This is not a bug as such, just the way the system is designed.
The problem arises because non-resident taxpayers can use a rebased value – 6 April 2015 for residential property – instead of acquisition value and the help sections of the UK property service do not give guidance for non-residents to calculate gains. The system will always calculate the gain on the figure entered as the initial gain or loss, so an accurate calculation is dependent on nonresident taxpayers inserting the correct figure based on the rebased value at the outset.
