Expat Contractor Advice

[Karpov]

I have a contract with an employment agency who required me to set up a Ltd company. The client for the agency is based in the UK and this client sends me to work on a monthly rotation to work for a company outside the UK/EU. I do all my work outside of the UK and the company I work for outside UK pay all my local taxes tax for me. I think I can meet the requirements for UK non-residency (as per HMRC statutory residency test) and I'm looking for advice on how I should have things set up to minimize tax. Currently my proposed set up is this:

1. Keep my existing Ltd company and pay myself as an employee of my company a bonus equivalent to all corporation profit. Because I am non-resident I won't need to pay any UK income tax/NI. My main expenses doing it this way are going to be accountancy fees, which aren't that much in the big picture.

2. The alternative option is to work with an offshore company (set up something in Dubai?) but I know little about how that works and I'm not sure if that brings much benefit to me if the only costs with option 1 are to do with accountancy fees.

I assume IR35 is no longer an issue with the above plans if you're a UK non-resident. A key concern for me is if I have to come back to UK for an emergency and no longer considered a UK non-resident in which case I won't pay myself an end of year bonus and will just have to pay corporation tax for my Ltd company.

Obviously I need to see an accountant about all this - any recommendations?

[ASB]

If you are non resident then just pay everything as salary. Of course this may impact your tax affairs in your host countries.

the brave may pay themselves rather more accumulating tax losses as a result for carry back against previous ct or forward against future uk profits. Hard to get past hmrc if challenged but not necessarily impossible.