Seriously thinking about leaving the UK

Yes that could be a shock. I know a couple who lived the high life as ex pats then when they retired and I'll health kicked in they started to run through their money so came back to get NHS treatment and got a council flat as the money they had left wouldn't buy much. They thought it was all very unfair but it was their decisions.

What it stops is people flipping property for quick gain and helps keep property prices lower, so the market is more stable and don't get the bubbles we often get.

Btw i'm not suggesting we do this, i was pointing out that whilst there are lower taxes in some countries, they are often offset by taxes that we don't have.

PP might have a shock when/if they decide to move back to the UK, they find they are now out of the UK market and will have a bill for any gain they may have made on the house they sell.

You’re probably thinking of another poster tbf going by this.

In a rising market people couldn't afford to move could they. Say property has gone up by 50% while you e lived there, then tax takes 50% of that plus agents fees, legal fees, moving costs. How could you afford a new house at new prices?

Oh my christ that poster is still going, she is batshit!😂 she was raging at someone earlier that any DC growing up in the UK will have no opportunities and also society will have collapsed around us all.

Yesterday the UK posted stronger 2025 growth than the USA, France, Canada, Germany and Italy (bbc report) .... no point telling her that though, she'd have to take a break from screaming about UK taxes and us all living off benefits for long enough to read the article.

Yep, maybe they can find others to reply to.

Yep same posters going on and on alright!!

Same posters going on about more taxes and OYF

Its almost as if the UK does nothing at all to attract foreign inward investment isn't it?

No EIS no SEIS... nothing at all...... 😂

Germany and France both apply tax rates to property sale profits of around 36%, Portugal 50%, 27% in Italy, on gains.... UK is 0% primary residence.

The OYF stuff is self defeating for the UK as annoying it is to see. Some prefer to drive out taxpayers to their own detriment.

You'll pay around 50% on capital gain when or if you come to sell and IHT if the property is sold is also 50% on the gain.

Since Brexit, not everyone is going to be able to go to Europe either, not least the cost of health ins until residency.

Around 100k pa left the UK for Europe pre Brexit

Bu good luck to you, its great to live or work abroad.

Us inheritanxe taxes start at like 12 million, federally. Portugal did away with IHT a few years ago. Also, no tax on sales of foreign assets and no tax on long term crypto. After our 10 years of tax incentives are up, we will be retiring before we are 50. I could never see that happening in the UK for us, despite both being hugh earners. I suppose if we never got a house and rented forever we may have a chance but that comes with it's own issues and still doesn't solve the other tax problems.

Obviously by my post you can probably tell that we are planning to move to Portugal and get out of our UK tax residency immediately. Just an FYI, I work for a tech company. When I raised a request to start this process, I was told 4 other senior engineers have asked to do the same. All on high salaries like me. I am also getting loads of calls from recruitiers and when I tell them I want a UK contract that will allow me to live and work in portugal, 98% of the responses have been, yeah, you and everyone else, let's see what we can find, wish i could do the same. I know 4 people and some recruiters does not an exodus make, but I'm certainly seeing a trend and wonder how people will deal with that. Prob say off you fuck, like one poster has to me already. Once we leave, our taxes leave, the companies leave, what will be left and how will everyone get their benefits?

And most countries (including the UK I think) won’t grant visas for individuals with conditions such as Down’s syndrome.

Thinking back to when I first came here...I think most of what you have mentioned above is true. Its a different system. You need social security number. You need credit history. Its not easy to get used to a new system, or to get established in it. My Neighbor just got a knee replacement. He had to wait 8 days. If you play by the rules here, and adapt to the system....its a level of service that beats anywhere in the world.

Dc is in the us at the moment. We’re finding it a massive struggle as it is so different, and honestly it’s much worse.

tax system is a nightmare. Makes me appreciate PAYE. Banks are a nightmare- no bank transfers, everything has to be done through third party apps. For a non-us citizen opening an account and the apps is a logistical nightmare as you don’t have a social security number which they use to verify your identity. they still use cheques, setting up payment straight into a bank account is also difficult.

healthcare navigation- dc gets there’s through their job, but there’s in network and out of network and copays, deductibles…. If they use the work occupational health there’s nothing to pay, but even for minor things they get referred. Dc had an issue where here it would be a go, prescription, and self care. But there it’s see occupational health, who refer to for example ortho or seem, then it’s $500 for the prescription the occ. health could have given for free.

people keep asking whether they’ll stay when their contract is up and so far they think the UK is the better option.

I have lived in the US for 26 years now. You have to work. Simple as that. Once you hit 65, you are fine as you will get Medicare. There is medicaid for poor/disabled but this is marginal at best. Its not a bad system. So long as you have a job...Healthcare is fantastic.

I agree about the grass not always being greener.
I gained some perspective when researching the possibility of emigrating abroad with one of the criteria being suitability for my disabled child especially in areas such as education, support and acceptance.
It turns out that the UK is one of the best places to live for a person with disabilities which while not very apparent when actually living here at the moment (thanks to service education and funding cuts) when you compare it worldwide it becomes very obvious.

Every country has its own problems and there’s always going to be pros and cons so it’s a good idea to do some careful research.

@Emilysmum90 the problem is in saying - well just FO then - are that there are many many more options to FO for people paying the vast amount of the tax needed. Not as many as there were, but still options - I’m not talking about the super rich and their off shore accounts - I’m talking the 60k plus earners with businesses paying corp tax or those with PAYE jobs - an awful lot of non rich middle earners - if you end up with a country full of seriously rich who ‘often’ pay little tax as they have multiple homes and ways of hiding wealth or those claiming top ups - the country has a big tax take issue - I’m not saying anywhere is perfect but if you travel around a bit to non tourist destinations and city’s it’s not difficult to see why many in the middle think the UK is on a bit of a hiding to nothing - Brexit was a huge mistake in my opinion as there are few tangible benefits , personally I would be doing a Norway type EEA half way house as soon as possible - it’s crippled a lot of middling businesses - especially ones with a lot of exports or mail order ,

No, it really isn’t.
It won’t be that much, incidentally. But as a limit it doesn’t seem ungenerous.

Half a million isn't bad is it.

I’m a single parent, so it’s half that for me/DD. But I still think that’s pretty good going.

So just googled it and each partner can leave £325k tax free and a home valued at £175k so a couple can pass on a million IHT free.

Can't parents leave something like a million without paying IHT? Depending on value of their home. To be honest if my kids get quarter of a million each I don't think they need to moan, if I only had one and they got the full million I'd think they were bloody lucky. Of course I could also use annual gifts or sign over assets while I'm fit and well. So no I won't weep about IHT.

I'm off to Google the actual figures.

But it's not just income tax. It's tax on everything else, but most important IHT.

Take Germany as an example - it's not just land ownership (self-use) and prime residence are exempt and many other assets. Then each recipient has personal exemption (400k children, 500k spouse).

But for all remaining assets which aren't exempt there is only 15% IHT on the amount below 600k (remember that's does not include prime residence) and then 19% for amounts between 600k and 6m if passed to spouse or direct descendants. The max IHT in this case is 30% which only kicks off after 26m!

Germany isn't exactly the worst place to live and not too fat to fly if you miss London, but where would you rather be if you have something to pass on to your kids?

Everywhere is stuffed and the reasons are very complex.

I was walking around my home town the other day (don’t usually live there) and I realised we don’t have a housing problem in the way everyone is talking about it.

we have a very generous tax payer funded system that was funded to provide X to y and we are now being asked to provide 100 times x to 500 times y.

the solution can’t be to tax the working population more and more while everyone else carries on.

about 20 years ago I made a post on here where I demonstrated how much better off the average person would be on benefits, unless we can have a serious discussion about these things I can’t see any meaningful change happening anytime soon.

more households are net takers than net contributors to the economy and the amount of money you need to earn to become a contributor is seriously huge. Looking around unless we can reverse that in some way we are just on a slippery slope down. It can’t be any other way, running a country is comparable to running a bank account in that if you take more than you contribute your money eventually runs out.

all the comments that are usually seen in these discussions about Nordic countries or little Islands where everyone picks up the rubbish (let’s face it they don’t usually drop rubbish!) are generally ignoring the reasons why those places are able to move forward in a cohesive fashion (it isn’t because Mr and Mrs average work harder and harder for less and less)

one thing that would help enormously is to stop striving for endless economic growth, we had a good thing, endless growth was not what was needed to keep it going endless economic growth has destroyed it!