- The P85 tells HMRC you are leaving the UK and claims back income tax you have overpaid in the year you leave.
- You file it after you have left, online via your Government Gateway or by post. There is no fee.
- If you already file Self Assessment, you usually report leaving through the return (SA109) instead.
- Leaving part-way through the year often means a refund, because PAYE spreads your allowance across the whole year.
- Split-year treatment can stop your overseas income being taxed in the UK after you leave.
Estimate your refund
What the P85 is for
The P85 does two things at once. It formally notifies HMRC that you have left, or are about to leave, the UK to live abroad, and it lets you claim a refund of income tax you have overpaid in the tax year of departure.
Why the refund? UK PAYE spreads your tax-free personal allowance (£12,570) evenly across the year. If you leave part-way through, you have often paid tax as though you would earn a full year's salary when you did not. The P85 squares that up.
Who needs to file one
You would typically file a P85 if you are leaving the UK and:
- You were employed under PAYE and do not complete a Self Assessment return, and
- You are leaving to live abroad permanently, or to work full-time abroad for at least a full UK tax year
You usually do not file a P85 if you already complete a Self Assessment return. Instead you report your departure and claim any refund through the return itself (using the residence pages, SA109). If you run a UK limited company and file Self Assessment, this is normally your route.
How to file it
You file the P85 after you have left, through your Government Gateway account, or on paper. You will need:
- Your P45 from your last UK employer (parts 2 and 3), or the details from it
- The date you left the UK
- How much time, if any, you expect to spend in the UK going forward
- Whether you will keep any UK income (rental property, a UK salary, a pension)
There is no fee. HMRC uses the answers to work out your residence position and any refund due.
How the tax refund works
HMRC recalculates the tax year of departure on the basis that you only earned UK income for part of it, then refunds the difference. The size depends on when in the year you left and how much you had earned.
Worked example: you leave the UK on 5 October, half-way through the tax year, having earned £30,000 of salary and paid PAYE as if you would earn £60,000 for the full year. Your actual UK liability on £30,000 is far lower than the tax deducted, so you would reclaim a meaningful four-figure sum. The exact figure depends on your tax code and any other income. The estimator above gives you a rough idea.
Split-year treatment
Normally you are either UK-resident or not for a whole tax year. Split-year treatment is the exception. In the year you leave, the year can be split into a UK part (taxed as resident) and an overseas part (taxed as non-resident), provided you meet one of the statutory cases, typically starting full-time work abroad or ceasing to have a UK home.
Split-year treatment is decided under the Statutory Residence Test, not the P85 itself, but the P85 (or your Self Assessment return) is how you flag it. Getting the date and the case right matters, because it determines which income falls into the UK tax net.
What comes after the P85
Leaving the UK is the start of a tax position, not the end of one. Once you are abroad you will need to keep an eye on:
- The Statutory Residence Test day-counts that keep you non-resident
- Any UK-source income you retain (rent, dividends, a UK pension) and how it is taxed
- If you run a UK limited company, whether running it from abroad creates risks around where the company is tax-resident, covered in our guide to running a UK Ltd from abroad
If you are moving somewhere specific, the destination's own rules matter just as much, for example our guide to moving to Dubai from the UK.