SSC/NI and Dual Tax relief? (UK & Malta)

if you live here, you are taxed here.  If you live here and tax resident here and employed outside of malta your employer via you establish a presence here and needs to be registered locally and file payrolls locally.

It's important to note the whole 'any income' thing doesnt mean any and all income, it means income not earned here.  If you live here, working here full time but for a foreign entity, its taxed here.

Thanks for replying,

I guess I should have been more specific with my situation. I am self-employed (or self-occupied under Maltese Gov definitions) as a freelance artist, all my commissions come from outside of Malta and are currently being paid into a UK bank account.

The thing I am concerned about is that if I spend more than 90 days back in the UK I will be liable to pay tax and NI in both countries, of course the tax is covered by the dual tax relief treaty but if NI/SSC is not then I will be paying  25% before tax in combined SSC/NI.

You can only be tax resident in one place. If your movements makes that the UK then that's where you are and won't pay tax here.

Suggest you speak to a specialist instead of randoms on the internet.

Hmm, OK, confusing, because you can certainly meet the requirements for being considered a tax resident in multiple countries in one tax year. As previously stated I would only have to spend 91 days in the UK to be considered a tax resident there.

No need to be snarky, never hurts to ask publicly in case the answer turns out to be very simple.

Was not being snarky. But good luck to you.

My apologies then.

volcane wrote:

You can only be tax resident in one place. If your movements makes that the UK then that's where you are and won't pay tax here.

Suggest you speak to a specialist instead of randoms on the internet.

Everyone who lives here has to complete a Maltese tax form regardless if you work here or not.

GozoMo: 'live here' is about residency and for the purpose of tax returns, tax residency.  So you are correct in saying if he lives here he has to do a tax return.

However you gain residency by being somewhere for a period of time.  If he isn't here constantly and travels back to the UK for long periods, he could trigger tax residency there - he'll then effectively be living there and holidaying here. You may well then have to fill in forms to declare this to the maltese but taxes are there then.

Many tax exiles count their days super carefully to not automatically trigger becoming tax resident again in the UK which can have dire consequences on things like taxes on dividents (20+% difference) for which you have to be resident of the UK for 5 to 6 years for instance - you can go there, but not be there for more than 6ish months for example, get it wrong and they declare you resident there and it could code 100s of thousands.

Tax treaties are there to handle things like income tax paid on property rental which are always paid in the UK and exempt here for instance.

It's all a pain in the arse and needlessly complicated - and getting more given Brexit.  Careful thought and talking to professionals pays off in the long run, OP might think this is snarky advise but it's his eventual loss if he does not do that since everyone is different and tax codes are thousands of pages.

Hello thanks for the reply. To be clear it wasn't the advice of talking to a tax adviser I found snarky, obviously that's never a bad idea, it was the wording used that came across snarky/condescending.

Anyway I found the information I was looking for elsewhere. I will just copy and paste what I was told in case anyone else comes here wondering the same:

"National Insurance Contributions are not a tax for the purposes of the UK - Malta Double Tax Treaty.
Instead, they are governed by EU Regulations and are a social security levy.
The general principle is that you pay to only one national authority, and in the case of a multistate worker like you, you pay to where you are usually resident.
However, since you are dual tax resident, the determination is about where you have your centre of habitual interests.
That determination cannot be made by you: it must be made by agreement between HMRC in the UK and the Inland Revenue of Malta.
Usually you would apply to one or both for a determination of social security status - they will ask for quite a lot of information about your activities and residence details (i.e. where you were at midnight every day of the year) to make a judgement about whether they think you should pay them or not.
HMRC have an online form to ask for the determination - https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati … ea-ca8421i - but for Malta you'd probably have to call or write in.
HMRC and the Maltese authorities will decide between them. If they disagree it will go to the European Commission for a decision.
You will then be issued a document by the main authority to which you are liable which exempts you from social security contributions in every country you work in the EEA, but you are still liable to make them before that is issued."