Hey, we have a UK limited company and our directors aren’t UK residents. A quick google search lends me this result.
No. You must live in the UK as the screenshot says.
That looks like personal account screenshot
The business account info is here https://monzo.com/i/business/eligibility/
Also looks like a no
What is considered tax residency then?
Where you tax obligations are in a different country.
When you google, tax residency shows up as what we just describe residency normally.
I already meet the business requirements if I can get a personal account.
It says your business must be tax resident in the UK which it is, I pay corporation tax to HMRC and to no other countries.
You don’t live in the UK so not advisable to try
Run the risk of them closing it at short notice if they find out you don’t actually live here
Is there a place where I can confirm if I’m eligible or not? The article just tells that you are required to have an address at UK, if it means not tax resident, living can only refer to having an address. But of course, I can’t fully be sure.
You could email help@monzo.com and confirm with them. Might take a couple of days for a reply
I will do so and update here for reference in the future.
The screenshot you posted is clear. If you try and get around it you just risk your account being closed.
You don’t live in the UK, so that’s the end of it really
You are dealing with two different things here, the business maybe UK tax resident but as you’ve said some of the directors aren’t. You’d have to check specifically with Monzo whether all directors have to be UK tax residents and residents as well as the business, I’d suspect they do.
Tax residency generally (and this can vary from country to country) means that you spend more than 183 days in a country, your centre of interests (so primary home, job, generally life, is in that country. If I move from Germany to the UK, for the first 182 days I am in the UK I could still be German tax resident. On the 183rd day I become uk tax resident, even though I have already been UK resident for 6 months. For that first year I may still have to file a tax return and pay taxes in Germany even though I am living in the UK. This is a very basic explanation and is too simplistic really but residency and tax residency are two very different things.
Covid has caused much confusion with this recently as people have found themselves in a different country to the one they live and pay taxes, be it because they got stuck at a second home, were abroad for work, were travelling, or whatever, borders closed and they were unable to return home at the intended time and could find that they end up becoming tax resident in a different country, at least for a year, and have to file a tax return in that country.
Contacting support is normally worthwhile, but they won’t be able to advise on tax residency, just to prepare the OP for a generic response on that one. A chartered accountant would be the person to go to for that.
