Don’t be blown away by UK Wind farmers’ Tax laws
The territorial waters of the UK are widely considered to be the best in Europe for offshore wind farm energy production and the UK overcame Demark as the world leader in offshore wind power generation in 2008. The UK also currently has the largest offshore wind farm site in the world – the London Array wind farm.
Due to the rapid expansion of UK wind farms in recent years, the UK tax legislation surrounding the wind farm worker is still generally untested by UK income tax case law.
Considering the above, after being approached by a Non UK domiciled and Non UK resident wind farm worker to undertake a holistic review of his UK tax affairs, we undertook a detailed review of the UK law and we formed our own interpretation of the UK tax law for UK offshore wind farm workers. The result of which was that we believed there was scope to obtain substantial tax repayments from HMRC for certain UK offshore wind farm workers.
In this initial case our client had been commissioning a new wind farm site partially located inside and outside of UK territorial waters, and during that period he was paid in full via his employer's UK payroll and living on a "floating hotel" located outside of UK territorial waters.
In this particular case we established that the basic UK residency rules and income tax treatment adopted by his previous UK tax advisors, were not in line with our own interpretation of the UK tax law for wind farmers.
Due to the untested area of UK tax legislation and our firm belief that our interpretation of the complex residency laws surrounding windfamers was technically robust, we submitted amended tax returns to HMRC for our client. The result of which was an additional repayment of UK income tax from HMRC to our client of over £57,000!
The average UK tax rebate is £963
Following this successful outcome with HMRC, we have since successfully submitted tax returns for over 50 other wind farm workers in similar circumstances and obtained numerous £1,000's of tax repayments from HMRC, which would not have been issued to our clients without our intervention as UK taxation experts.
At the time of writing it is still possible to claim a backdated repayment from HMRC until the 2010/2011 tax year, even if your 2010/2011 UK tax return has already submitted to HMRC by yourself or even another UK tax advisor.
We can undertake a free and no obligation review of your UK tax affairs, to establish if there is any scope to obtain a tax refund from HMRC on your behalf.
We operate a cost effective flat fee structure of £249 for each tax year we successfully obtain a repayment from HMRC, irrespective the level of the repayment obtained for that tax year.
If you would like any more information on how we can help you obtain any tax repayment due to you from HMRC, please email our UK client relationship manager Lisa Quirke (lquirke@taxback.com).
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