Remittance Basis Claim Time Limit on Late UK Tax Returns

The remittance basis claim time limit is four years from the end of the tax year, under section 43(1) TMA 1970, and it survives the regime's abolition on 5 April 2025. A 2021-22 claim closed on 5 April 2026; 2022-23 closes on 5 April 2027. HMRC can assess offshore income for up to 12 years, or 20 if deliberate.

That mismatch between the two clocks is the whole problem. A late return can still be filed for almost any year. A late claim generally cannot be made. So Americans now bringing their UK affairs up to date keep finding the same thing: years that HMRC can still assess on the full arising basis, but for which the remittance basis can no longer be claimed. This guide explains how the time limit works, what a valid claim needs, what happens to the years that fall outside it, how those years are handled inside a Worldwide Disclosure Facility disclosure, and how each outcome flows through to a US citizen's federal return.

Why the remittance basis still matters after it was abolished

From 6 April 2025 the remittance basis was replaced by the four-year foreign income and gains regime, and nobody can claim it for 2025-26 or later. But abolition only works going forward. Every tax year up to and including 2024-25 is still governed by the old rules: who was eligible, whether a claim was made, what it cost, and how unremitted income is taxed if it is brought to the UK today. For anyone filing those years now, the old regime is not history. It is the law that applies to the returns being prepared.

American nationals are heavily represented in this group. A US citizen with a US domicile of origin was, for UK purposes, normally not domiciled in the UK, which made the remittance basis available to them in principle for most of their early years in the country. Many never filed Self Assessment at all. Their salary ran through PAYE, their US brokerage account, US rental property or third-country savings stayed abroad, and nobody told them that unremitted foreign income still required a decision. They then find out, often through US compliance work, a lender asking for UK returns, or a letter from HMRC based on overseas account data, that several years were never reported properly.

By the time they file, some of those years are already beyond the claim deadline. The remittance basis they assumed they had was never actually claimed, and cannot now be.

What is the remittance basis claim time limit, exactly?

The remittance basis was not automatic for most people. Under section 809B of the Income Tax Act 2007 it applied only if the individual made a claim for the tax year, and the claim is subject to the general claims time limit in section 43(1) of the Taxes Management Act 1970: no more than four years after the end of the year of assessment to which it relates. HMRC's own guidance at RDRM32030 confirms the four-year limit and says that a late remittance basis claim can only be allowed if it falls within HMRC's late claims policy.

Three details regularly catch people out:

• The clock ends on 5 April, not 31 January. The four years run from the end of the tax year, so the 2022-23 claim must be made by 5 April 2027, not by the January filing deadline that follows it.
• The claim lives inside the return. Where HMRC has issued a notice to file for the year, the claim must be made in the return itself, on the residence and remittance basis pages (form SA109), under section 809B and section 42(2) TMA 1970. A covering letter saying "I was a non-dom" is not a claim.
• Filing late does not extend anything. A return filed in September 2026 for 2021-22 is a valid return, and HMRC will process it. The remittance basis claim inside it is simply out of time, because the four-year window closed on 5 April 2026.

HMRC's manual also says that where a claim might not be made within the statutory time limit, the individual must tell HMRC of the intention to make it, identifying the type of claim and the tax year. In a catch-up that is still being prepared when a 5 April deadline approaches, a written notification before that date is a sensible protective step. It does not replace the claim, but it puts the intention on record while the window is still open.

Deadlines for the years most catch-ups now involve

The table below sets out, as at September 2026, when each claim window closed or closes, compared with how long HMRC has to assess offshore income for the same year where the behaviour was not deliberate.

UK tax year	Remittance basis claim deadline	Claim status (Sept 2026)	HMRC offshore assessment reach (non-deliberate)
2015-16	5 April 2020	Closed	5 April 2028
2016-17	5 April 2021	Closed	5 April 2029
2017-18	5 April 2022	Closed	5 April 2030
2018-19	5 April 2023	Closed	5 April 2031
2019-20	5 April 2024	Closed	5 April 2032
2020-21	5 April 2025	Closed	5 April 2033
2021-22	5 April 2026	Closed	5 April 2034
2022-23	5 April 2027	Open, closing next	5 April 2035
2023-24	5 April 2028	Open	5 April 2036
2024-25	5 April 2029	Open (final remittance basis year)	5 April 2037

Every row from 2015-16 to 2021-22 is a year HMRC can still reach but the taxpayer can no longer claim for. Where behaviour was deliberate, or the loss of tax arose from a failure to notify chargeability, HMRC's reach extends to 20 years instead.

Why can HMRC go back further than you can?

The two time limits come from different parts of the legislation and serve different purposes. The claims limit is fixed at four years. The assessment limits scale with behaviour and, since 2019, with whether the tax involves an offshore matter:

• Four years is the ordinary assessment limit where the taxpayer took reasonable care.
• Six years applies where a loss of tax was brought about carelessly.
• Twelve years applies to lost income tax and capital gains tax involving offshore matters or offshore transfers, under section 36A TMA 1970. According to HMRC's Compliance Handbook at CH53510, it covers careless behaviour for 2013-14 and 2014-15, and applies from 2015-16 onwards regardless of the care taken.
• Twenty years applies to deliberate behaviour and to a failure to notify chargeability.

For a US citizen, almost everything the remittance basis was designed for is "offshore" in HMRC's terms: US brokerage dividends, US interest, US rental profits, gains on US shares. That is worth stressing because the IRS treats a US account as domestic. An American's US brokerage account never appears on an FBAR, yet to HMRC it is precisely the kind of offshore matter that attracts the 12-year limit.

The 12-year limit does have an exception. It does not apply where HMRC received information from an overseas source before the ordinary four- or six-year limit expired from which it could reasonably have been expected to become aware of the lost tax, and it was reasonable to expect an assessment within the ordinary limit. Whether that exception applies depends on facts that HMRC holds and the taxpayer usually cannot see, so it should be tested in a catch-up rather than relied on.

What happens to a year you can no longer claim for?

If no valid claim exists for a year, and neither of the automatic exceptions described below applies, the individual is taxed on the arising basis for that year. All foreign income and gains are taxable in the year they arose, whether or not any of it came to the UK. That has several consequences, and they are not all bad.

• Worldwide income is brought into charge. US dividends, interest and rental profits, and gains on foreign assets, are taxed at the full UK rates for that year, with credit for foreign tax under the US-UK treaty or unilateral relief.
• Allowances are kept. The personal allowance (subject to the income taper) and the capital gains tax annual exempt amount remain available, because they are only lost in years for which a claim is made.
• There is no remittance basis charge. An out-of-time year can never attract the £30,000 or £60,000 charge.
• The income becomes clean. Income and gains taxed on the arising basis are not unremitted foreign income. They can be brought to the UK later without a further UK charge, which simplifies future mixed-fund analysis considerably.
• The UK and US years line up. For a US citizen, UK tax charged in the same year as the US tax on the same income is far easier to credit than UK tax that arrives years later on a remittance.

Consequential claims: a narrow route back in

Where HMRC makes an assessment to recover lost tax, section 43A TMA 1970 allows certain claims that would otherwise be out of time to be made as a consequence, generally by the end of the tax year after the one in which the assessment is made. HMRC's manual at RDRM32035 is explicit about how this applies to the remittance basis. If the loss of tax was not caused by careless or deliberate behaviour, a consequential remittance basis claim is allowed. If the loss was careless or deliberate, it is not, because the remittance basis is an alternative basis of assessment rather than a relief or allowance, and the provision that preserves consequential claims in careless and deliberate cases only covers reliefs and allowances.

In practice, that makes the behaviour classification in a disclosure more than a penalty question. A genuinely non-careless history can keep a consequential remittance basis claim available for an older year that HMRC assesses under the 12-year offshore limit. A careless classification closes that route. The classification has to be supported by the facts, and anyone preparing the disclosure should understand that it has this second consequence.

Overpayment relief is not a back door

Overpayment relief under Schedule 1AB TMA 1970 cannot be used to repair remittance basis claim errors, and HMRC's manual says so directly. The schedule also excludes relief where the taxpayer could have obtained the result by making a claim within a time limit that has since expired. A missed remittance basis claim therefore cannot be turned into a four-year overpayment claim.

Will HMRC accept a late remittance basis claim?

Rarely. HMRC's late claims policy, set out in the Self Assessment Claims Manual at SACM10040, accepts claims outside the statutory limit in two main situations:

• Official error. Where the claim was late because of an error by HMRC or another government department, for example an officer wrongly advising that a claim could be made later or was not possible, provided the facts are not in dispute.
• Circumstances beyond the taxpayer's control. Where serious illness or another compelling reason genuinely prevented the person from dealing with their affairs, or from getting someone else to deal with them, before the deadline.

The same guidance lists the reasons that do not work: carelessness or administrative oversight by the taxpayer or an adviser, uncertainty about how the legislation applied, an adviser's illness or absence, and waiting to see the effect of the claim or for precise figures. Not knowing that a claim had to be made falls squarely in the rejected category. The tribunals have consistently treated statutory claim deadlines as strict, and generally decline to extend them on grounds of fairness or hardship. For planning a catch-up, a late claim should be treated as unavailable unless there is a documented official error.

Years that never needed a claim

Two exceptions sit outside the time limit altogether because the remittance basis applied without any claim being made:

• Unremitted foreign income and gains under £2,000 (section 809D ITA 2007). If a non-domiciled UK resident's unremitted foreign income and gains for the year were below £2,000, the remittance basis applied automatically. The personal allowance and annual exempt amount were kept and no remittance basis charge arose, however long the person had been resident. Foreign losses cannot be netted against foreign gains to get under the threshold.
• No UK income or gains beyond small taxed investment income, and no remittances (section 809E). This covered people with no UK income or gains other than taxed investment income of £100 or less, who remitted nothing and had been resident for no more than six of the previous nine years, and also covered certain under-18s. Allowances were preserved.

For an American whose only foreign income in an early year was a small amount of US bank interest, section 809D may resolve the year without any claim at all. It is always worth testing these before accepting that a year falls to the arising basis.

What does a valid claim require for years still in time?

For 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25, a claim can still be made, but only if every element is right, because once a late return is filed there is usually no second attempt. The amendment window under section 9ZA TMA 1970 runs for 12 months from the statutory filing date, not from the date the return is actually filed. For a return filed years late, that window has usually already closed, and HMRC's manual confirms that once the amendment period has passed a claim cannot be withdrawn even if making it turns out to have been a mistake. The claim in a late return is therefore effectively final when it is filed.

A valid claim requires:

1. Eligibility for the year. The individual must have been UK resident and not domiciled in the UK. From 2017-18 onwards, anyone UK resident for at least 15 of the previous 20 tax years was deemed domiciled and could not claim, and neither could someone born in the UK with a UK domicile of origin. A dual US-UK national born in London may be excluded on that second ground alone.
2. A return containing the claim. The SA109 pages must be completed and submitted as part of the return for that year, within four years of the year end.
3. A nomination, if the charge applies. A long-term resident must nominate foreign income or gains under section 809C, as explained below.
4. The foreign capital loss election, if this is the first claim year. Under section 16ZA TCGA 1992, the election that allows foreign losses must be made for the first year in which the remittance basis is claimed. It is irrevocable, and if it is not made, foreign losses for that year and later years generally cannot be used. In a catch-up, the first year in which a claim can still be made may become the "first claim year" for this purpose, so the election has to be considered on that same late return.
5. Correct figures for remittances. Foreign income and gains actually brought to the UK in the claim year are taxable in that year, and mixed-fund accounts are subject to strict statutory ordering rules. The claim does not shelter money that was used in the UK.

What a claim costs: allowances and the remittance basis charge

Under section 809G ITA 2007, a claim costs the personal allowance, the blind person's allowance, the married couple's reductions, the transferable marriage allowance and the capital gains tax annual exempt amount for that year. For many high earners the personal allowance loss is academic, because the allowance is withdrawn at £1 for every £2 of adjusted net income above £100,000 and disappears entirely at £125,140. The annual exempt amount was £12,300 in 2022-23, £6,000 in 2023-24 and £3,000 in 2024-25, so its loss only matters where there were UK-taxable gains.

The remittance basis charge was the larger cost. For the years now in time, a claimant aged 18 or over who had been UK resident in at least 7 of the previous 9 tax years paid £30,000, and one resident in at least 12 of the previous 14 tax years paid £60,000, in addition to tax on UK income and remitted foreign income. Residence-year counting has to be done carefully, because arrival years, split years and years of non-residence all affect the count, and a claim that triggers the charge unnecessarily cannot be undone.

Nomination: small, deliberate and US-aware

A long-term resident's claim must nominate foreign income or gains of the year. The nominated amount is taxed as if the arising basis applied, and the tax on it, topped up where necessary, makes up the £30,000 or £60,000 charge. Two technical points shape how nomination is done:

• Ordering rules. If nominated income is later remitted before other unremitted foreign income, section 809J treats unnominated income as remitted first, which can create unexpected tax. From 2012-13 onwards those rules only bite where more than £10 of nominated income is remitted in a year, which is why nominations are often kept to a modest, identifiable amount held in a separate account.
• US creditability. The IRS has ruled (Revenue Ruling 2011-19) that the UK tax payable by a long-term non-domiciled claimant, including the remittance basis charge, is a creditable income tax under Section 901. The ruling adds an important condition: a foreign tax is only a compulsory payment to the extent the taxpayer applies foreign law, including elective provisions, so as to reduce their reasonably expected foreign liability over time. A US citizen who pays a charge that exceeds the tax the arising basis would have produced may struggle to credit the excess.

How does a Worldwide Disclosure Facility disclosure handle remittance basis years?

Where the catch-up involves offshore income, the usual route is HMRC's Worldwide Disclosure Facility. The taxpayer or their agent notifies HMRC through the Digital Disclosure Service, receives disclosure and payment reference numbers, and then has 90 days to calculate and submit the tax, interest and penalties due. An extension can be requested for complex cases.

The disclosure itself is not a claim to the remittance basis. It is a calculation of what is owed, based on the correct law for each year. That means each year has to be sorted into one of four categories before any figures are prepared:

1. In-time claim years (2022-23 to 2024-25). The claim is made on the return for the year, which is filed alongside the disclosure, and the disclosure figures reflect the remittance basis only if that return is valid.
2. Automatic years. Years covered by section 809D or 809E are computed on the remittance basis without a claim.
3. Out-of-time years with a non-careless history. These are computed on the arising basis, but a consequential claim may become available if HMRC assesses. This needs to be addressed in the disclosure narrative, not left to chance.
4. Out-of-time years with careless or deliberate behaviour. These are computed on the arising basis, with no route back to the remittance basis.

The behaviour classification then sets how many years are included and the penalty range. Where offshore tax non-compliance from before 6 April 2017 was not corrected by 30 September 2018, the failure-to-correct regime applies instead of the normal penalty rules. Its standard penalty is 200% of the tax, which can be reduced to no less than 100% for an unprompted disclosure, or 150% for a prompted one. For an American with arising-basis years in 2015-16 and 2016-17 that are still assessable under the 12-year limit, this can be the most expensive part of the whole disclosure, and it is why the pre-2017 years need particular care on reasonable excuse.

Interest runs on each year's tax from the normal payment date, so the older the year, the larger the interest in proportion to the tax.

How do US and UK treatment compare for the same years?

The two systems approach the same income from opposite directions. The US taxes a citizen on worldwide income every year and offers no election. The UK, up to 2024-25, allowed a non-domiciled resident to keep foreign income outside UK tax if a timely claim was made.

Issue	United States (IRS)	United Kingdom (HMRC)
Basis of tax on foreign income	Worldwide income every year for citizens, whatever happens in the UK	Arising basis by default; remittance basis only with a valid claim (to 2024-25)
Time limit to secure the treatment	No election; income is taxable in the year it is received or accrued	Four years after the end of the tax year (s43(1) TMA 1970)
How far back the authority can assess	Generally three years from filing; never starts for an unfiled return; six years for substantial omissions; kept open while certain information returns are missing	4, 6, 12 (offshore) or 20 years, depending on behaviour
Cost of the favourable treatment	Not applicable	Loss of allowances and annual exempt amount; £30,000 or £60,000 charge for long-term residents
Credit for the other country's tax	Foreign tax credit on Form 1116, with a 1-year carryback and 10-year carryforward	Treaty or unilateral credit, restricted for US-source income of US citizens
Correcting past years	Amended returns, foreign tax redeterminations, Streamlined Procedures	Late returns, Worldwide Disclosure Facility, consequential claims only in non-careless cases

The US side: what late UK tax does to a US citizen's federal returns

The US position for remittance basis years is simple on the income side and difficult on the credit side. The income was always taxable in the US in the year it arose. What changes, when UK returns are caught up, is the amount and timing of UK tax available for credit.

Out-of-time years: new UK tax for old US years

When an out-of-time year is assessed on the arising basis, UK tax appears for a year the US return has already dealt with, often with no UK credit claimed. How that tax reaches the US return depends on the taxpayer's method, as IRS Publication 514 explains:

• Accrual method (including anyone who elected to claim credits as they accrue). The credit belongs to the year in which the UK tax accrues, which is generally the US year in which the UK tax year ended. A change in foreign tax after filing is a foreign tax redetermination. If it changes US tax, it is reported on Form 1040-X with a revised Form 1116 and a statement explaining the redetermination.
• Cash method. The credit is claimed in the year the UK tax is actually paid, which in a 2026 catch-up means the 2026 US return, subject to that year's limitation. The election to switch to accrual can only be made on a timely filed original return, not an amended one.

Where the UK tax supports a larger credit than was claimed, the US allows 10 years from the original due date of the return to file a refund claim, which is considerably longer than the ordinary three-year period. For a US citizen who paid full US tax on US-source dividends in, say, 2018, the treaty gives the US the primary right to that income. The UK credits US tax only up to the amount the US would have charged a non-citizen, and the treaty's re-sourcing provisions then let the US relieve part of the remaining UK tax. The combined result usually tends towards the higher of the two countries' rates, not the sum of them. The calculation needs to be done year by year, not estimated.

Unremitted income brought to the UK now: the timing mismatch

Income that arose in an in-time claim year, and was left abroad, remains unremitted foreign income. If it is brought to the UK on or after 6 April 2025 it is taxed at the ordinary UK rates in the year it is remitted, unless it has been designated under the Temporary Repatriation Facility at 12% for 2025-26 or 2026-27, or 15% for 2027-28. The US taxed that income years earlier. The UK tax arrives now.

US regulations treat this as a timing difference. Under Treas. Reg. section 1.861-20(d)(2)(ii)(A), the UK tax is assigned to the category the underlying income would fall into if recognised in the year the foreign tax is paid or accrued, but it is credited in that later year. The credit can then only be used against US tax on foreign-source income in the same category in that year, plus the one-year carryback and ten-year carryforward. For a retired or lower-income year, much of that credit may never be usable. The IRS has not published guidance addressing whether the TRF designation charge is creditable at all.

This is the counter-intuitive point for American clients. A year that falls to the arising basis because its claim window closed can produce a better US credit match than a year in which the claim was made, because the UK tax sits in the same year as the US tax. The four-year limit sometimes removes a UK advantage that, for a US citizen, was worth less than it appeared.

If US filings are also behind

Many UK catch-ups run alongside missing US returns or FBARs. The Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures require three years of amended or delinquent returns, six years of FBARs and a certification that the failure was non-wilful. The narrative in that certification and the behaviour classification in the HMRC disclosure describe the same years and the same person, so they have to be consistent. A claim of reasonable care to HMRC and a wilfulness problem with the IRS cannot both be right. Our IRS Streamlined filing team prepares both sides from a single set of facts.

Worked example: an American in London who arrived in 2017

Consider a US citizen, UK resident from 2017-18, with a UK salary of £180,000 taxed under PAYE and about £45,000 a year of dividends and interest from a US brokerage account that has never been moved. No Self Assessment return has ever been filed. The catch-up begins in September 2026 through the Worldwide Disclosure Facility. The figures are illustrative.

• 2017-18 to 2021-22 (claim window closed). No remittance basis claim is possible. Each year is computed on the arising basis: the US investment income is taxed at UK dividend and savings rates, with credit for US tax restricted under the treaty rules for US citizens. All five years remain within HMRC's 12-year offshore reach. The 2021-22 claim window closed only five months earlier.
• 2022-23 and 2023-24 (claim window open, no charge). Before 2022-23 the individual had been resident in 5 of the previous 9 years, and before 2023-24 in 6 of 9, so no remittance basis charge applies. The personal allowance is already lost at this income level, and the cost is the annual exempt amount, which only matters if there were UK-taxable gains. A claim would keep the unremitted US income outside UK tax for those years, but that income would then be taxed if brought to the UK later. The 2022-23 return must be filed with its claim by 5 April 2027.
• 2024-25 (claim window open, £30,000 charge). By now the individual has been resident in 7 of the previous 9 years, so a claim carries the £30,000 charge. On the arising basis, £45,000 of dividends taxed at the 39.35% additional rate produces roughly £17,700 of UK tax before relief, and nearer £11,000 after the treaty credit for US tax. A claim would cost more than it saves, and under the revenue ruling's compulsory-payment principle the excess could be hard to credit in the US. The arising basis is the right answer.

The result is a mixed set of returns: five arising-basis years dictated by the time limit, two claim years that must be filed in time and modelled against the US credit position, and a final year where the charge makes the claim uneconomic. The last three years each require a decision. The first five do not allow one.

A sequence for getting remittance basis years right

1. Map status year by year. Residence under the statutory residence test, domicile, deemed-domicile counts, split years and residence-year totals for the charge.
2. Date every claim window. Identify which years can still be claimed and which deadline arrives first. As of this writing, 5 April 2027 for 2022-23 is the next one.
3. Protect the nearest deadline. If the 2022-23 return cannot be completed in time, notify HMRC in writing of the intention to claim before 5 April 2027.
4. Test the automatic exceptions. Check section 809D and 809E for every out-of-time year before accepting arising-basis treatment.
5. Model claim against arising basis for each in-time year, including allowances, any charge, future remittance exposure and the US foreign tax credit outcome.
6. Settle nomination and the foreign loss election before the first claim return is submitted, because neither can be revisited later.
7. Classify behaviour honestly and consistently across the HMRC disclosure and any IRS certification.
8. Carry the UK results into the US returns through Form 1116, amended returns for accrual-method years, and a record of the unremitted balances that remain.

This is careful, technical preparation work rather than planning. The years have already happened, and the only question is how they are reported. Clients with substantial investment portfolios and several unfiled years usually benefit from a single team handling both returns. That is the model our US-UK tax accountants and high-net-worth practice are built around.

How our cross-border team prepares remittance basis catch-ups

Jungle Tax prepares late UK returns, Worldwide Disclosure Facility disclosures and the matching US filings for American clients whose UK history includes remittance basis years. We date every claim window, protect the ones still open, compute the closed years on the correct basis, and reconcile the UK tax into the US foreign tax credit so that neither return undermines the other.

If you have unfiled UK years from before April 2025, the 2022-23 claim window is the next to close, on 5 April 2027. To review your years in confidence before that date, contact our cross-border team for a private consultation.