Running a UK limited company while living abroad

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Your company stays UK-resident

A company incorporated in the UK is, by default, UK tax-resident, wherever its owner lives. So if you move to Lisbon, Dubai or Madrid and keep running your UK Ltd, the company still owes UK Corporation Tax on its worldwide profits.

For 2025/26 that is 19% on profits up to £50,000, 25% above £250,000, and an effective 26.5% marginal rate on the slice in between. "There is no tax where I live now" does not make this go away. The company is still British.

Central Management & Control, the test that catches people

Here is where it gets serious. A company can also become tax-resident in another country if its Central Management and Control (CMC), the place where the real strategic decisions are made, is exercised there.

If you are the sole director and you make every key decision from your sofa in Dubai, a tax authority can argue the company is centrally managed and controlled in the UAE, not the UK. The result can be dual residence, with two countries each claiming the right to tax the company. A double-taxation treaty's tie-breaker usually resolves it, often in favour of where CMC actually sits, which can move your company's residence overnight.

CMC is about substance: where board decisions are genuinely taken, not where the registered office is. This is the single most expensive thing to get wrong when running a UK Ltd from abroad.

Permanent Establishment, a slice of profit for your new country

Separately, your activity abroad can create a Permanent Establishment (PE), a taxable presence, for the company in your country of residence. A fixed place of business (an office), or habitually concluding contracts on the company's behalf from that country, can be enough.

If a PE exists, your new country can tax the profits attributable to the activity carried out there, even though the company remains UK-incorporated. You can end up filing in two places and splitting the profit between them.

Your personal tax is a separate question

Do not conflate the company's residence with your own. Your personal UK tax position turns on the Statutory Residence Test (SRT), a day-count and ties test that decides whether you are UK-resident as an individual.

You can be personally non-UK-resident while your company is still UK-resident. The two are decided by different rules and need to be tracked separately, which is precisely why a single combined view matters.

Taking dividends as a non-resident

If you pass the SRT as non-UK-resident, dividends from your UK company are generally "disregarded income" for UK tax. Broadly, the UK does not tax them beyond the tax treated as paid at source. Whether they are taxed where you now live depends entirely on that country's rules and any tax treaty.

So the headline "no UK tax on my dividends" is often true, but it is only half the picture. The Corporation Tax on the company's profits is still due first, and your new country may tax the dividend on the way in. The net result is specific to your country pair.

How to keep it clean

• Mind where decisions are made. If you can keep genuine strategic management and board decisions in the UK, with UK-resident co-directors and board meetings held in the UK, you strengthen the case that CMC stays British.
• Watch your day-count. Both the SRT (for you) and CMC (for the company) are sensitive to where you physically are and for how long.
• Map both regimes. Your UK position and your host country's position need modelling together, not one at a time.
• Get specialist input early. A cross-border accountant is worth their fee here. The cost of getting CMC or PE wrong is five figures.

Take Home is built for exactly this. It maps your UK company position and your personal residence side by side, and flags when your pattern is drifting toward a CMC or PE problem, before it costs you.