Double taxation for early retirement

You could find out more on … saga.co.uk

I think this is where you need to look first, Crete4ever.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/app_dtt.htm

Look under Specialised Income and Royalty Claims, your LA pension comes under UK Gov. Pensions. The forms may be downloaded from the site.

Kathleen

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/uk_gov_pensions.htm

Gives the details of which types of income fall under the DT treaty. As I understand it, government pensions need to be declared & taxed in the UK, and private pensions here. The DT form (downloadable) has a declaration which the tax authorities in Greece need to sign. I translated it into Greek and took it into our local tax office for signature – no problem. Many Greek accountants seem very wary of the DT process though, so be warned that you might encounter some resistance, if you need to use it!

I translated it myself – just the declaration at the bottom of page 1 of the form – here http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/dtindividual.pdf, so that the officials knew what they were signing! It was stamped with the official tax authority stamp, from what I remember. We’re now in our 3rd year of being officially tax resident and declaring the pension here. The only "quibble" we’ve had to deal with is to obtain from the pension provider a statement giving the payments over the calendar year, rather than April-April, as is normal in the UK. We submit the figures in sterling, and there is an "official" conversion rate into Euros, which is what goes on the tax return.

Maybe I’m lucky in that the people in the tax office in Sitia are helpful, and that there is a lady there who speaks very good English, but this really should not be difficult. Certainly once I’d had the form signed and submitted it to HMRC action was swift and (surprisingly) profitable!

Good luck.

The English speaker was able to understand enough of the document (once I had explained it to her clearly) to be happy with the translated declaration – she then went through it all with her colleague, who was the one to sign & stamp it.

The P60, as you say, only shows tax April/April, how did you get round this to claim the extra 4 months?

Once we’d filled in the form and sent it off to HMRC, they did the rest – dealt with the pension company direct and gave a refund of overpaid tax. No tax is now paid in the UK on this pension – it is declared here and therefore subject to Greek tax rules. Hope you can get sorted – if you look at the declaration, all it says is that the Greek authorities are asked to declare that you are resident in Greece under the terms of the DT treaty and that you are, therefore, liable for tax. Given the legislation which is pending, all foreigners living here full time will soon have to deal with this, so it is to be hoped that the tax offices will get their acts together!

I have been advised by my IFA that I may be beeter off by taking my private pension as a gross figure and paying tax in Greece. What is the maximum pa that you can take without being liable to pay tax in Crete and what is the base rate of tax? I can arrange my monthly pension to arrive at a figure that in theory avoids tax and my wife can draw from her pensions to the same effect. It’s just a question of knowing what the maximum levels are so any feed-back would be appreciated.

Thanks

Paul

Thank you, this ties in exactly with our plans and pleased to know it actually works.