My girlfriend has had a Monzo account since January but has only recently started using it as a daily account for ‘fun money’, all salary and bills still go out another account.
Whilst British, she is also a Canadian citizen, qualifying due to her father and she has a Canadian passport but has only ever visited once, on holiday, for 2 weeks. She has lived and worked in the UK all her life.
So, when she signed up and the question of citizenship was asked, she declared her Canadian citizenship but she would not be considered a Canadian tax resident.
It appears when she signed up, by declaring herself a Canadian citizen, the Monzo app automatically declared her as tax resident in Canada. She only recently realised this and has corrected this information so she is listed only as being tax resident in the UK.
I can’t imagine any more than £400 has passed through her account since it was created and all details are now correct. Is this likely to have caused any issues? Can someone clarify whether Monzo automatically lists you as ‘tax resident’ in a country if you declare citizenship? Seems a bit confusing as of course, many people have dual citizenship without ever being tax resident in one of the countries!
I’m not asking for tax advice, we know she is only tax resident in the UK. I’m just quering the way Monzo appear to automatically list you as ‘tax resident’ if you disclose any other citizenship.
Ah I see, in most cases your citizenship would also determine your tax status/residency, which is why this happened automatically.
We’re required to provide tax information to HMRC for users that are tax resident in certain countries, including Canada. HMRC then forward this data onto the appropriate countries at the beginning of the next tax year, and receive data from those countries about UK tax resident people at the same time.
Almost all tax reporting relies on people being honest with agencies like HMRC and reporting their income properly (in the UK this normally done vie PAYE or self assessments). The incentive for honestly is the avoidance of very large fines if you’re caught miss-reporting your finances. If HMRC suspects foul play, they may decide to investigate you, at which point you will be forced to repay missing taxes plus fines etc.
Unfortunately that just about reaches the full amount of advice we can give out this, but if your girlfriend has any concerns then she should contact HMRC for a better answer!
I wonder if there isn’t some confusion here. I read this more as feedback on the flow in the app. It seems that you’re inferring tax residency from citizenship - but if the only reason Monzo needs to know citizenship for is for tax residency, wouldn’t it be easier to just say that?
If I’m reading it correctly it’s essentially a bit of wording/language/content feedback for whoever looks after that in the app, rather than anything to do with tax per se!
