UK FIG: what the non-dom replacement does not do for your salary
By Skyler Bissell · July 23, 2026 · 6 min read
When the UK scrapped non-dom status in April 2025 and replaced it with the Foreign Income and Gains regime, a lot of people moving to London read the headlines and assumed a new tax break had arrived for them. It had not. FIG is a genuine and generous regime, and it is aimed at a person who is probably not you.
The distinction is one word long. FIG relieves foreign income and gains. Your London salary is not foreign income. It is UK employment income earned for UK duties, and HMRC taxes it in full from your first day, at the same rates your British colleague pays. Our engine models the UK regime as a note rather than a discount for exactly this reason: switch it on against a London salary and the take-home figure does not move by a penny.
TL;DR
- FIG does nothing for a UK-earned salary. Four years of relief, foreign income and gains only.
- Overseas Workday Relief is the one narrow door, covering only duties physically performed abroad and capped at the lower of 30% of qualifying employment income or £300,000 a year.
- A £90,000 London salary keeps £62,757, an effective 24.4% at £60,000 rising to 39.1% at £150,000.
- Watch the £100,000 to £125,140 band: the personal-allowance taper produces a 62.0% marginal rate, well above the 47.0% that applies once you clear it.
- Claiming FIG costs you the personal allowance and the capital gains annual exempt amount, so it can leave a salaried arrival worse off.
What FIG actually relieves
The regime runs for your first four tax years of UK residence, and you qualify only after at least ten consecutive tax years of not being UK resident. Within that window, foreign income and foreign capital gains fall outside UK tax altogether.
That last part is the real upgrade on the old system. Under the remittance basis, foreign money was untaxed only while it stayed abroad, and bringing it into the UK triggered a charge. That produced two decades of expensive structuring advice and a lot of wealthy people who could not spend their own money in the country they lived in. FIG drops the remittance trap: during the four years you can bring foreign income and gains into the UK and spend them freely with no UK tax.
It is a good regime. It is a regime about your assets, and it has an explicit price. Claim FIG for a year and you give up your £12,570 personal allowance and your capital gains annual exempt amount for that year. If your foreign income is modest, that trade runs against you.
Overseas Workday Relief, and why it rarely reaches a relocation
There is one route by which a new arrival's employment income can escape UK tax, and it gets cited constantly in relocation forums as though it were a salary discount. Overseas Workday Relief exempts the share of your pay attributable to duties you physically perform outside the UK, across the same four-year window, capped at the lower of 30% of your qualifying employment income or £300,000 a year.
Read the mechanism carefully. The relief tracks where your body is on each working day. If you moved to London to do a London job, essentially all of your workdays are UK workdays and the relief reaches essentially nothing. It targets a genuinely split role, someone running an Asian desk from London who spends a third of the year in Singapore, and it demands real record-keeping to substantiate. A software engineer who relocated to a London office and travels twice a year is not the intended beneficiary.
What you actually pay
London, single filer, Income Tax plus employee National Insurance, engine-computed. This is the number a FIG claim does not change.
| Gross salary | Effective rate | Take-home |
|---|---|---|
| £60,000 | 24.4% | £45,357 |
| £90,000 | 30.3% | £62,757 |
| £125,140 | 37.6% | £78,111 |
| £150,000 | 39.1% | £91,286 |
Figures rounded, tax and National Insurance only, before living costs. These are the England, Wales and Northern Ireland bands. Scotland sets its own, and they bite harder at these salaries: the same £90,000 in Edinburgh comes out at 33.4% against London's 30.3%, about £2,800 a year of difference.
Compared with the rest of Europe those are mild numbers. The UK takes noticeably less from a professional salary than Germany does, which is worth holding in mind before treating the missing regime as a disaster. A £90,000 London salary surrenders 30.3%; a €90,000 Berlin salary surrenders 49.7%.
The 62% band nobody warns you about
The UK's genuine trap for arriving professionals has nothing to do with FIG. It sits between £100,000 and £125,140.
Above £100,000, HMRC withdraws the £12,570 personal allowance at £1 for every £2 you earn. An extra pound therefore attracts 40% directly, and it simultaneously drags fifty pence of previously tax-free income into the 40% band. Add employee National Insurance and our engine measures the marginal rate across that stretch at 62.0%. Once the allowance runs out at £125,140, the marginal rate drops back to 47.0%.
The consequence is worth stating in plain terms: a pound earned at £110,000 is worth less to you than a pound earned at £140,000. If you are negotiating an offer that lands inside that band, pension salary sacrifice is the standard route out, because it reduces the income that drives the taper. That is a conversation to have with an adviser before you sign, since it is one of the few places where the structure of an offer changes its value more than the headline number does.
So who is FIG for?
People arriving with substantial income-producing assets outside the UK. Foreign rental portfolios. Offshore investment income. Distributions from a business you still own abroad. Large unrealized gains you plan to crystallize inside the four-year window. For those people FIG is worth serious money and serious planning.
For a salaried professional moving to London for a job, the honest summary is that the UK offers you no inbound tax break at all. It belongs in the same category as Germany on our map: a country whose take-home you should evaluate on its ordinary rates, with no regime discount waiting to improve the picture. The good news is that the UK's ordinary rates start from a friendlier place than most of Western Europe.
Run your own numbers
- Run your salary in the calculator → (London, Manchester and Birmingham run the England and Wales bands; Edinburgh runs Scotland's own)
- Expat tax breaks, decoded: every European regime and whether it is worth moving for
- Every regime ranked by take-home on $150k: where the UK places against countries that do offer relief
- Germany has no expat tax break: the other big European economy with nothing on offer, and a much heavier ordinary rate
- NYC vs London: a US salary against London with housing, healthcare and childcare counted
- United Kingdom money hub: taxes, childcare, healthcare and leave across our UK cities
FAQ
Does the UK FIG regime reduce tax on a UK salary?
No. FIG relieves foreign income and gains only. Salary you earn for work done in the UK is taxed in full at ordinary Income Tax and National Insurance rates, exactly as it is for a lifelong UK resident. In cityparity's engine the UK regime is modeled as a note rather than a discount, because applying it changes a London take-home figure by zero.
What is the UK FIG regime?
The Foreign Income and Gains regime replaced the non-domiciled remittance basis on 6 April 2025. For your first four years of UK tax residence, after at least ten consecutive years of non-UK residence, foreign income and foreign capital gains are not taxed in the UK, and unlike the old remittance basis you can bring that money into the country freely. Claiming it costs you the personal allowance and the capital gains annual exempt amount for those years.
What is Overseas Workday Relief and does it help?
Overseas Workday Relief exempts the portion of your employment income that relates to duties physically performed outside the UK during the same four-year window. It is capped at the lower of 30% of your qualifying employment income or £300,000 a year. If you moved to London to do a London job, your workdays are UK workdays and the relief reaches nothing. It matters for genuinely split roles, not for relocation.
What is the UK effective tax rate on a professional salary?
By cityparity's London engine, a single filer pays an effective 24.4% on £60,000, 30.3% on £90,000, 37.6% on £125,140 and 39.1% on £150,000, counting Income Tax plus employee National Insurance. Take-home on £90,000 is £62,757.
Why is the UK marginal rate 62% between £100,000 and £125,140?
The £12,570 personal allowance is withdrawn at £1 for every £2 of income above £100,000, so each extra pound is taxed at 40% and also drags half a pound of previously tax-free income into the 40% band. Add employee National Insurance at 2% and cityparity's engine measures a 62.0% marginal rate across that band, falling back to 47.0% once the allowance is fully gone at £125,140.
Who is the FIG regime actually good for?
People arriving with substantial income-producing assets outside the UK: foreign rental portfolios, offshore investment income, foreign business distributions, or large unrealized gains they intend to realize within the four-year window. For a salaried professional whose income is a UK payslip, FIG is close to irrelevant, and giving up the personal allowance to claim it can leave you worse off.
Take-home figures come from cityparity's London engine (single filer, Income Tax plus employee National Insurance, England/Wales/NI bands, before living costs) using 2026 rates, and are rounded. FIG eligibility, Overseas Workday Relief limits and the interaction with double-tax treaties turn on your own residence history and duties, so confirm your position with an adviser who does UK returns before relying on any of it. General information, not tax advice. See the methodology.