Moving from the UK to the US partway through a tax year does not make the day of your flight your automatic UK tax cut-off. UK residence is tested for the tax year running from 6 April to 5 April. Split-year treatment can change how a qualifying departure year is handled, but only after the Statutory Residence Test and the relevant split-year conditions have been worked through.
This checklist covers the UK departure decision for a US citizen or resident moving from the UK to the United States. It does not decide your US federal or state tax position, treaty residence or the tax on a particular transaction. Those questions can run alongside the UK analysis, not instead of it.
1. Map the UK tax year before fixing the move date
Start with the whole 6 April to 5 April period, not a calendar-year idea of six months. HMRC's Statutory Residence Test looks at UK days, work and connections with the UK. The sequence is the automatic overseas tests, the automatic UK tests and, where neither decides the result, the sufficient-ties test.
Use the Full Statutory Residence Test as the first planning screen. Gather your expected UK days, UK workdays, available homes, family location and prior UK-residence history before entering anything. Then test the plan again with a later start date, an extra work trip or a delayed home move; a small factual change can matter.
The tool organises the facts and the SRT sequence. It cannot determine whether a home was genuinely available to you, whether a day is exceptional, or whether a particular workday counts. Keep the underlying evidence and take advice where the answer depends on a borderline fact.
2. Test split-year treatment before treating later income as outside UK tax
HMRC's starting point is that you are resident for the whole tax year if the SRT says you are resident. A qualifying year may then be split into a UK part and an overseas part. For departures, you must consider the relevant split-year cases; this is not an election you make simply because you have a US job offer or a US address.
For a UK-to-US move, put the last UK workday, US-home date, family move, overseas-work start and return visits on one timeline. The conditions differ between cases, and ordering can matter if more than one seems possible.
Use the Split-Year & Departure Planner after the SRT screen. Enter dates from documents, rather than estimates: employment contract, travel booking, tenancy or purchase completion, school dates and UK work records. Its output is a planning timeline, not confirmation that a split-year case applies or that a later receipt is outside UK tax.
Do not use the flight date as a proxy for the split date when a bonus, share vesting, pension withdrawal, investment sale or business distribution is close to the move. Put the item, its payment or disposal date and the reason it arises on the same timeline before giving an instruction.
3. Keep a day, work and home record from the first week
Reconstructing UK days from passport stamps at filing time is unreliable. Maintain a live calendar that records every arrival and departure, UK work of more than three hours, overnight stays, and changes to any UK or US home. Save the supporting source with the entry where practical.
The UK Days Abroad Counter is useful once you have the travel log. Use it to see when planned visits are approaching a decision point; it is not a substitute for checking the detailed day-counting and deeming rules in HMRC guidance.
Your departure file should also include:
- UK and US employment and payroll records;
- travel confirmations and a work-location diary;
- evidence of each UK or US home change;
- family or school dates where relevant; and
- payslips, P45/P60, equity documents and HMRC submissions.
The aim is not to manufacture a preferred result. It is to retain a dated record that lets you, HMRC and a cross-border adviser see what actually happened.
4. Use the correct HMRC departure route
Tell HMRC if you leave the UK permanently or go abroad to work full-time for at least one full tax year. If you do not normally file Self Assessment, HMRC says you normally use form P85 and include the relevant parts of your P45 if you have one. If you normally file, report the departure through the residence pages, form SA109, using a filing route that supports it.
Do not treat a submitted P85 or return as HMRC agreeing the residence outcome. Keep the submitted version and the evidence behind it. If you continue working for a UK employer from the US, receive UK rental income, or have a more complicated departure, check the reporting position before the deadline rather than assuming one form settles every issue.
This is also the point to read the broader Americans leaving the UK two-country tax checklist. It covers separate US filing, foreign-tax-credit and account-reporting decisions that the UK split-year analysis does not answer.
5. Check temporary non-residence before a material transaction
Leaving the UK for a short period is not always the end of the UK tax story. HMRC's temporary non-residence rules can apply when a person has sole UK residence in at least four of the seven tax years before departure and the non-residence period is five years or less. They can bring certain income or gains from the absence period into account when the person returns.
That does not mean every US move triggers the rules or that every gain is taxed on return. It means a planned return date should be part of the file before you sell an asset, take a pension lump sum, receive a closely held-company distribution or make another material transaction while away. The statutory detail and treaty position may need specialist review.
When professional advice should come before an instruction
Get coordinated UK-US advice before a large bonus, equity event, investment sale, pension withdrawal, company distribution, property transaction or a likely UK return within five years. Do the same for a UK business, trust, substantial rental income, disputed day count, dual-residence question or incomplete filings.
For a move with several income dates, return visits and a planned return option, use the Personalised Expat Action Plan to assemble the tasks and records across the transition. It helps create an adviser-ready checklist; it does not calculate tax, apply a treaty or decide residence.
Guidance, not advice: ExpatCompass tools help you organise dates, scenarios and records. They do not replace HMRC guidance or advice from a suitably qualified UK-US tax professional.
A practical UK-to-US departure order
- Put the move, work, home and travel dates on one UK-tax-year timeline.
- Run the Full Statutory Residence Test using the real facts and a cautious alternative travel plan.
- Test the relevant split-year cases with the departure planner; do not assume the flight date is the tax cut-off.
- Maintain the day and work log, keeping the evidence for each material entry.
- Identify receipts and transactions close to the move date, then seek advice before changing them.
- Choose the correct HMRC reporting route and retain the complete departure file.
- Coordinate the UK result with the separate US federal and state filing work.
The valuable result is an evidence-backed UK departure record, not a generic “non-resident from the move date” label.