Form P85: claiming tax back when you leave the UK

Form P85 is HMRC's form for telling the tax office that you have left the UK and for claiming back income tax you overpaid in your final part-year of work here. If you worked in the UK for only part of a tax year, your employer will have taxed you through PAYE as though you were going to earn the full personal allowance over twelve months. Leave in, say, October, and you will usually have paid too much tax for the months you actually worked. Official guidance confirms that you may be entitled to reclaim tax you have paid when you leave by filling in a form P85 and sending it to your Tax Office¹.

The form does two jobs at once. First, it tells HMRC you have gone, which matters because you must tell HMRC if you are leaving the UK to live abroad permanently, or going to work abroad full time for at least one full tax year². Second, it asks for the details of your final employment so HMRC can compare the tax you paid with the tax you actually owed and repay the difference. It is an income tax form: it does not deal with National Insurance, which has its own rules and its own forms for people moving abroad.

There is no deadline for sending a P85 and no penalty for not sending one, because the form is a claim, not a legal duty. The duty that does exist is the narrower one to tell HMRC you are leaving². The practical risk of doing nothing is that HMRC's own year-end calculation, the P800 letter, decides the outcome instead of you, and that letter may go to an address you no longer live at.

What form P85 does when you leave the UK

PAYE spreads your personal allowance evenly across the tax year, which works well if you work all twelve months but overtaxes anyone who leaves part way through. Form P85 is how you put that right. You fill it in after leaving, send it to your Tax Office with the relevant parts of your P45, and HMRC recalculates your tax for the part of the year you actually worked and lived here¹. If the recalculation shows you paid more than you owed, HMRC repays the difference.

The form matters most to people whose UK earnings stop entirely when they go: foreign students finishing a UK job, workers emigrating, or people retiring abroad. Official guidance for foreign students working in the UK states plainly that they may be entitled to reclaim tax paid when they leave by filling in a form P85 and sending it to their Tax Office¹. The same logic applies to anyone whose UK employment ends mid-year.

What the form does not do is decide your residence status. Whether you count as UK resident for a tax year is settled by the statutory residence test, not by a P85, and the answer drives which income the UK can tax at all. If you were abroad for less than a full tax year, from 6 April to 5 April the following year, you stayed UK resident and usually pay UK tax on your foreign income for the entire time away⁵. The P85 claim sits on top of those rules: it deals with the tax already deducted from your UK pay, whatever your residence position turns out to be.

Residence also has a look-back effect worth knowing before you plan a move. If you return to the UK within 5 years of moving abroad, or within 5 full tax years if you left before 6 April 2013, and were UK resident in at least 4 of the 7 tax years before you left, the temporary non-residence rules can apply, and you may have to pay tax on certain income or gains made while you were non-resident. Wages and other employment income are excluded from that charge⁵.

Who can use form P85, and when Self Assessment is needed instead

Form P85 suits people whose UK tax affairs are simple: pay taxed through PAYE, no other UK income that needs declaring, and a clean break. It stops being the right route once your tax position is complicated enough that HMRC needs a full return. You usually have to send a Self Assessment tax return if you live abroad and you rent out property in the UK, you have taxable savings interest from UK banks or building societies, you have a pension outside the UK and were UK resident in one of the 5 previous tax years, or you have any other untaxed UK income³.

Non-residents have three ways to file that return: fill in a Self Assessment tax return and an SA109 form and send them by post, use commercial Self Assessment software that supports SA109 reporting, or get a tax professional to report your UK income for you³. The SA109 is the residence pages of the return, and it is what tells HMRC your residence position rather than a P85.

There is a separate refund route too. Form R43 is for non-residents claiming a refund of overpaid tax, and you can send it to HMRC or claim the refund in your Self Assessment tax return if you are already doing one³. In practice the choice between P85, R43 and Self Assessment comes down to what your income looks like after you leave, not on any preference of HMRC.

Being registered for Self Assessment changes how HMRC deals with you generally. If you are registered for Self Assessment, you will not receive a Simple Assessment, because your tax is handled a bit differently⁴. The same principle applies to the P800 route described later on this page: people inside Self Assessment settle their year through the return instead.

Information and documents to have ready, including your P45

The documents HMRC's claim forms in this family ask for give a reliable picture of what a P85 claim needs. Comparable HMRC claim forms ask for your National Insurance number, your employer's PAYE reference number, and parts 2 and 3 of your P45⁶. Parts 2 and 3 are the sections handed to the employee, so they are the ones you keep and the ones you can send. Your employer gives you a Form P45 when you leave a PAYE job, and official guidance is to keep it safe and give it to your next employer¹.

Gather before you fill anything in:

• your P45, especially parts 2 and 3⁶
• your National Insurance number⁶
• your employer's PAYE reference number, printed on the P45⁶
• your leaving date and the date you finished working in the UK
• details of where HMRC should send any repayment, including a nominee's name and address if the refund should not go to your own address⁷

Keep your payslips and your P60 for your records as well: you will need them if you ever want to query a calculation or support a refund claim⁹. HMRC's general rule on records is that you can use provisional or estimated figures if you cannot recreate all your records, but you must say so in the 'Any other information' box on the tax return¹⁰. That concession belongs to Self Assessment rather than the P85, but it shows the direction of travel: HMRC would rather have an honest estimate than nothing, as long as you flag it.

If your documents have gone missing in a move abroad, the P45 is the one worth chasing hardest, because it carries both the PAYE reference and the pay and tax figures the claim turns on. An employer's payroll department can often reissue the information, and HMRC can see the pay and tax it received under your reference number even if your copy is lost.

How to fill in and send form P85

The mechanics follow the pattern of HMRC's other claim forms. Comparable forms are filled in online, where you cannot save your progress, or printed and posted to HMRC using the postal address shown on the form⁷. The practical consequence of not being able to save progress is worth taking seriously: assemble everything in the list above before you start, because a half-finished online form left overnight is a form you begin again.

The process in outline:

1. Leave your UK job and receive your P45 from your employer¹.
2. Collect your National Insurance number, PAYE reference and P45 parts 2 and 3⁶.
3. Fill in form P85, online or on paper, in one sitting.
4. Send it to your Tax Office, or to the postal address shown on the form¹.
5. Wait for HMRC to compare the tax you paid with the tax you owed and repay any overpayment.

One point of hygiene: if HMRC sends a refund by cheque, it will send it to you or to a nominee you have named⁷. Someone who has already moved abroad may prefer to nominate a person still in the UK who can bank it, or to make sure HMRC holds an address that still reaches them. Refunds that arrive as a cheque at a vacated flat are a common way for a legitimate claim to fail at the last step.

There is no legal duty to send P85, but there is a duty to tell HMRC

Form P85 carries no deadline and no penalty, because it is a claim form, not a filing obligation. Nothing in the rules fines you for sending it late or never. What the law and HMRC's guidance do require is that you tell HMRC if you are leaving the UK to live abroad permanently, or going to work abroad full time for at least one full tax year². Sending a P85 is one way of discharging that duty, but the duty exists whether or not you claim a refund.

This distinction answers the question people most often ask. "What happens if I don't submit P85?" In strict terms, nothing happens to you: no fine, no surcharge, no interest on a late claim. What happens instead is that you may simply keep money that is yours. HMRC does not chase people to hand back overpaid tax with the energy it chases underpaid tax. Its year-end reconciliation, the P800, may pick up the overpayment automatically, but it is sent to your last known UK address, and a letter to an empty flat repays nobody.

The timing of the duty is worth noting. It attaches to leaving permanently or to working abroad full time for at least one full tax year². Shorter trips, such as a few months abroad with a job to return to, fall outside it, though a P85 claim may still be relevant if UK PAYE tax was overdeducted in a part year.

Working abroad for a UK employer

A P85 claim assumes your UK employment has ended. If instead you keep working for a UK employer from abroad, the tax position changes shape. If you live abroad and are employed in the UK, your tax is calculated automatically on the days you work in the UK³. That day-counting basis is why some people in this position end up with an NT tax code, under which no tax is deducted from UK pay and the position is settled through the return instead, though the details sit with HMRC rather than with the P85.

National Insurance is a separate question with its own rules. If you normally live in the UK and then work abroad for a UK employer, you are required to pay National Insurance while you are abroad¹. Class 1 contributions can continue when you work abroad if your employer has a place of business in the UK, you are ordinarily resident in the UK, you were resident in the UK immediately before starting the employment abroad, and you are not covered by any social security agreement between the UK and other countries¹¹. Where an agreement does cover you, the other country's rules take over instead.

Two related points complete the picture. If you want to fill gaps in your UK National Insurance record while abroad by paying voluntary contributions, and you are applying for the first time or after a break, you use form CF83¹². And if you work outside the UK for a UK employer, you may still be able to get Statutory Maternity Pay if your employer pays National Insurance contributions for you, or would pay if your earnings were high enough¹³.

Residence remains the background question. The statutory residence test works by counting ties to the UK, and if you were not UK resident in any of the 3 tax years before the one you are considering, you check whether you have any of the family tie, the accommodation tie, the work tie or the 90 day tie¹⁴. Special rules also apply at the margins: work on the UK continental shelf but outside the UK's territorial sea, in the oil and gas industry, is treated as duties performed in the UK, with the employment income liable to UK tax even for a non-resident¹⁵.

If you do not send a P85: the P800 tax calculation

If you never send a P85, HMRC's own machinery may still catch the overpayment. If HMRC finds a difference between what you paid and what you owed at the end of the tax year, it sends a P800 tax calculation letter⁴. The letter shows your taxable income, the tax you have already paid, the amount of any tax you owe, and the amount of any tax you have overpaid⁴. P800s are usually sent out between June and March, after the tax year ends⁴.

The letter works in both directions. If your P800 shows you owe tax, HMRC will usually change your tax code for the following year so it can collect the money that way⁴. HMRC's own worked example shows how this feels in practice: a taxpayer who owes £300 in tax has it collected as an extra £25 each month through a changed tax code for the next tax year⁴. Someone who has left the UK may find that mechanism does not fit their situation, since there may be no UK pay left for a code to act on, in which case HMRC will make other arrangements and the letter explains them.

If the letter shows a refund, you may be able to claim it online. The service for checking how much income tax you paid last year can also be used to get a tax refund or pay tax you owe, if you have a P800 that says you can do this online¹⁰. That is the fastest route to the money, and the letter itself tells you whether it is available to you.

The weakness of the P800 route for someone who has emigrated is delivery. The letter goes to the address HMRC holds, which is often the last UK home. A P800 you never receive is a refund you never claim, and an underpayment you never see can still accrue interest. This is the strongest practical argument for sending a P85 promptly with a forwarding or overseas address, rather than leaving the outcome to a letter that may not find you.

Where the P800 falls short

The P800 is a useful safety net, but it has limits worth understanding before you rely on it. It is an income tax calculation: it reconciles what was deducted through PAYE against what was owed, and it does not deal with National Insurance, capital gains tax or anything outside income tax. Questions about National Insurance while abroad belong with the rules described earlier on this page, and with form CF83 for voluntary contributions¹².

Its figures can also be built on incomplete information. HMRC calculates from what it has been told by employers and other payers, and if it is missing a leaving date, a final pay figure or a change of circumstances, the P800 can be wrong in either direction. That is why the letter invites you to check it, and why keeping your own records matters: HMRC's guidance on record keeping is to keep payslips and your P60, because you need them if you want to get a refund or query a calculation⁹.

The P800 also sits inside a wider set of HMRC letters, and it helps to know which one you are holding. A Simple Assessment, for example, is a different letter for people who owe tax that cannot be collected through a code, and if you are registered for Self Assessment you will not receive one, because your tax is handled a bit differently⁴. If you receive more than one P800, each covers a different tax year, and each must be read and acted on separately: one may show a refund while another shows tax owed.

For people with more complex affairs, the P800 route is not available at all. If you live abroad with UK rental income, taxable UK savings interest, a foreign pension with UK residence in one of the last 5 tax years, or any other untaxed UK income, you usually have to send a Self Assessment return instead³, and the year is settled there rather than by a reconciliation letter.

Stuck in the UK by COVID-19: the non-resident concession

The pandemic produced a specific problem: people who had planned to leave the UK and become non-resident, but were trapped here by travel restrictions. HMRC introduced a concession for them. It applies if you are a non-UK resident and were stuck in the UK because of COVID-19 between 5 April 2020 and 5 April 2022, you earned employment income between the dates you intended to leave and when you actually left, and you paid tax on that income in your home country³.

The concession means you will not have to pay UK tax on that employment income³. But it is not automatic and it is not claimed on a P85. You must file a Self Assessment tax return, together with a completed SA109 form, using the 'other information' section to include the dates you were stuck in the UK, what you earned in that time, and confirmation that you paid tax on these earnings in another country³.

The burden of proof sits with you. HMRC may ask you for proof that you could not leave the UK when you intended, that you paid tax in another country on what you earned while stuck in the UK, and that you left the UK as soon as you reasonably could³. The warning that comes with the concession is explicit: you may have to pay tax in the UK if you cannot prove you were unable to leave the UK and did not leave as soon as you could³.

Anyone still sorting out a 2020 to 2022 tax year on these facts should gather that evidence before filing: boarding passes and booking confirmations showing the intended departure date, the home country's tax documents showing the earnings were taxed there, and anything showing when travel actually became possible.

Where to get help

The official guidance pages cited throughout this article are the primary reference for each point: HMRC's guidance on tax when you live abroad covers the Self Assessment triggers, the day-counting basis and the COVID-19 concession³, while the tax basics pages explain the P800 and other common HMRC letters in plain terms⁴. The nidirect service carries the equivalent guidance for Northern Ireland¹.

For the wider money questions that follow a move abroad, the site's money abroad section covers banking, tax and protection overseas, including foreign income and UK tax, double taxation relief when income is taxed in two countries, and National Insurance after you move abroad. The general personal tax guide explains how PAYE, tax codes and the personal allowance work for people who want the background before reading about leaving.

If your position is complicated, by rental property, a foreign pension or the residence test itself, the Self Assessment route with an SA109 is the mechanism HMRC provides, and a tax professional can report your UK income for you³. That is a matter of what the rules require, not a recommendation: simple part-year cases are handled by the P85, and the pages above set out which is which.