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Moving to Dubai takes most assets out of UK tax. The UK home is the exception. A non-resident still pays capital gains tax on a UK property sale, reports it within 60 days, keeps a UK residence tie for as long as the home is available, and leaves the property inside UK inheritance tax however long they have been gone.
The relocation works on almost everything. A founder or a family that becomes non-UK-resident takes the foreign portfolio, the business shares, the crypto, and the overseas property out of UK income tax and capital gains tax, and after the long-term resident inheritance tax tail has run, out of UK inheritance tax as well. The whole architecture of the corridor move is built on that result, and for most of the balance sheet it delivers. There is one asset where it does not, and it is usually the most visible asset the family owns: the house in London.
The UK home is different from everything else the family holds, because it is UK-situs property, and UK-situs property is the one category where leaving the UK changes very little. A non-resident is outside UK capital gains tax on shares and crypto, but inside it on UK land. A non-resident's foreign estate drops out of UK inheritance tax once the residence tail expires, but UK property stays in the 40% net forever. And the home that the family keeps, rather than sells, is not a neutral asset sitting quietly in London; it is an available residence that creates a tie under the Statutory Residence Test, and a tie can be the thing that keeps the family UK-resident in a year they meant to be non-resident. The house resists the exit on three separate fronts at once.
This is the asset the relocation pitch handles worst, because it runs against the headline. The headline is that moving to Dubai takes the family out of UK tax, and for the Dubai apartment, the offshore portfolio, and the operating business, that is broadly true once the move is genuine and the timing is right. For the Kensington house it is not true, and the gap between the headline and the house is where the expensive surprises sit: the seller who assumed a non-resident pays no UK capital gains tax on the sale, the family that kept the house and quietly remained UK-resident because of it, the estate that found the London property fully taxable at 40% years after the rest of the worldwide estate had dropped out of the UK net.
The contrast with the clean assets is instructive. The decision to sell a business or a crypto position around a move is governed by timing and sequence, and a non-resident can take that gain free of UK tax if the sequence is right, as the analysis of selling a business or crypto after moving to Dubai sets out. The house is the mirror image. It is the asset where becoming non-resident does not remove the charge, where the timing of the sale changes the rate but not the existence of the tax, and where keeping the asset creates a problem that selling it does not. Understanding why the house behaves so differently from the rest of the estate is the whole of the planning.
This article sets out the three ways the UK home resists the exit, the capital gains tax a non-resident pays on the sale and the rebasing that limits it, the way private residence relief shrinks once the family has left, the residence tie that keeping the home creates, the inheritance tax that never lets the property go, the additional cost where the home is held through a company, and the sell-keep-or-let decision that pulls all of it together. The rest of the balance sheet leaves the UK with the family. The house stays behind, and so does the tax on it.
Before the detail, it helps to hold the shape of the problem, because the three exposures are independent and a plan that addresses one can miss the others entirely.
It is taxed when sold. A non-resident selling UK property is within UK capital gains tax on the sale. This is the opposite of the position for shares and crypto, where a non-resident is outside the charge. The move does not take the house out of the capital gains net; it changes the rate and the reliefs, not the existence of the charge.
It keeps a tie if kept. A UK home that the family retains and keeps available to them is accommodation for the purposes of the Statutory Residence Test, and an available home is one of the ties that decides UK residence. The family that sells the house removes the tie; the family that keeps it carries a UK connection that counts against their non-residence every year.
It stays in inheritance tax forever. UK-situs property is within UK inheritance tax regardless of the owner's residence or domicile, and there is no tail after which it drops out. The foreign estate leaves the UK inheritance tax net when the long-term resident tail expires; the UK house does not leave at all.
The three pull in different directions, which is what makes the decision hard. Selling the house removes the residence tie and takes the property out of the estate, but it triggers the capital gains charge now. Keeping the house defers the capital gains charge but maintains the residence tie and leaves the property fully exposed to inheritance tax. There is no option that removes all three exposures, because the asset is UK-situs and the family is leaving the UK, and those two facts cannot both be made to disappear. The planning is about choosing which exposure to accept, not about escaping all of them.
The first and most common surprise is that becoming non-resident does not make the sale of the UK home tax-free.
The non-resident charge on UK land. The UK extended capital gains tax to non-residents in two stages. From 6 April 2015, a non-resident disposing of UK residential property came within the charge. From 6 April 2019, the charge was extended to all UK land, residential and commercial, and to disposals of interests in entities that are UK property rich, meaning entities that derive at least 75% of their value from UK land. The effect is that UK property is the asset a non-resident cannot sell free of UK capital gains tax. A non-resident remains outside the charge on ordinary shares and on crypto, but the house, the buy-to-let flat, and the commercial unit are all inside it. The move that frees the rest of the portfolio does not free the property.
The rate. A residential property gain is taxed at the residential rates, which are 18% within any unused basic-rate band and 24% above it for disposals from 30 October 2024, the higher residential rate having fallen from 28% to 24% in 2024. A non-resident individual is generally entitled to the annual exempt amount, which is modest at GBP 3,000 for 2025/26. The rate is the same as it would be for a UK resident; non-residence does not reduce it, and the higher slice of any substantial gain is taxed at 24%.
Rebasing limits the gain to the period since the charge began. The charge does not reach back to the date the property was bought. For residential property that was already within the non-resident charge, the default is that only the gain accruing since 5 April 2015 is taxed, the property being treated as if acquired at its 5 April 2015 value. For property that came into charge in 2019, the default rebasing date is 5 April 2019. The owner can instead elect to use the actual acquisition cost over the whole period, or to time-apportion the gain, where those produce a better result, but the default and usually the favourable position for a long-held home is that the historic gain to 2015 falls away and only the more recent growth is taxed. For a home bought decades ago and grown substantially over that time, rebasing is a significant relief, and it is the reason the charge is often smaller than the headline gain suggests.
The 60-day return is a trap of its own. A non-resident who disposes of UK property must report the disposal and pay the tax due within 60 days of completion, on a standalone UK property return, separately from any annual Self Assessment return. The obligation applies even where no tax is due, for example where rebasing and reliefs reduce the gain to nil, and it applies even where the seller is not otherwise in the UK Self Assessment system. The deadline is short, the penalty regime for missing it is automatic, and a relocated seller focused on the completion and the onward purchase in Dubai frequently misses it. The reporting obligation is a separate compliance event from the tax itself, and it catches sellers who assumed that being non-resident meant being outside UK filing entirely.
The capital gains position, stated plainly, is that the non-resident pays UK capital gains tax on the UK property sale, at residential rates up to 24%, on the gain since rebasing, and must report and pay within 60 days. The move changes the size of the charge through rebasing and the reliefs, but it does not remove it.
The instinct, on learning that the sale is taxable, is to reach for private residence relief, the relief that takes the gain on a person's main home out of capital gains tax. The relief still exists for a non-resident, but it shrinks at exactly the moment the family leaves, because of a specific rule designed to stop a non-resident sheltering a UK home they no longer really live in.
The 90-night occupation test. Private residence relief applies to a property for the periods it was the individual's only or main residence. For a non-resident, a special rule in section 222C of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992 governs whether a property counts as a residence for a tax year at all. A property in a territory where the individual is not tax resident is treated as a residence for a tax year only if the individual, or their spouse or civil partner, was tax resident in the same territory as the property for that year, or spent at least 90 nights in the property during that year. For a family that has moved to Dubai and is tax resident there rather than in the UK, the UK home satisfies the test only in a year in which they spend at least 90 nights in it. A family that has genuinely relocated, and therefore spends well under 90 nights a year in the London house, does not meet the test, and the years after departure do not qualify for relief.
What this means for the former main home. The home that was the family's main residence while they lived in the UK accrues relief for the years it genuinely was their residence, and the final period of ownership is also relieved on the standard rules. But the years after the family leaves, when the house is kept but lived in for fewer than 90 nights a year, do not qualify, and the gain attributable to those years is taxable. The longer the family keeps the house after leaving, the larger the unrelieved proportion of the eventual gain becomes. Private residence relief was generous while the house was genuinely the home; it does not continue to shelter a property the family has moved out of.
The interaction with the residence tie is uncomfortable. There is a structural tension built into the 90-night rule that the family has to confront directly. To preserve private residence relief on the UK home for a tax year, the family would need to spend at least 90 nights in it. But spending substantial time in the UK home is exactly what builds up days and ties under the Statutory Residence Test and threatens the non-residence the whole plan depends on. The family cannot both spend enough time in the London house to keep its capital gains relief and stay comfortably non-resident; the two objectives pull in opposite directions. The honest reading is that a genuinely relocated family will not preserve much private residence relief on a retained UK home, and should plan on the basis that the post-departure gain on the house is largely taxable.
The capital gains charge is the cost of selling. There is a different and subtler cost in not selling, and it is the one most likely to undo the whole relocation: the retained home keeps a UK residence tie.
The accommodation tie. The Statutory Residence Test decides UK residence partly through a set of connecting factors called ties, and one of them is the accommodation tie. An individual has an accommodation tie for a tax year where they have a place to live in the UK that is available to them for a continuous period of at least 91 days in the year and where they spend at least one night there. A house the family owns and keeps available to themselves is accommodation for this purpose. The family that keeps the London home, furnished and available, and stays in it even for a single night during a visit, has an accommodation tie for that year. The mechanics of the ties and the day counts are set out in the analysis of the Statutory Residence Test for the internationally mobile, and the accommodation tie is one of the easiest to acquire without noticing.
Why one tie can decide residence. For a departing UK resident, the number of ties they can have before they become UK resident falls as the days they spend in the UK rise. A leaver with three ties becomes UK resident at 46 days in the UK; with two ties, at 91 days; with one tie, at 121 days. The accommodation tie is one of those ties, and for a family that keeps the London house it is a tie they carry every year automatically. In a borderline year, where the family is spending time in the UK for business or family reasons, the accommodation tie from the retained home can be the tie that tips them over the threshold into UK residence, with the result that the worldwide income and gains the relocation was meant to protect are back in UK tax for that year. The house that was kept for sentiment or as a base on visits becomes the reason the family is taxed as UK resident.
The home and the automatic UK test. Keeping a UK home can matter even before the ties test is reached. One of the automatic UK residence tests turns on having a home in the UK in circumstances where the individual has no overseas home, or spends time in the UK home over a period while having no comparable presence in an overseas home. A family that retains the London house and has not yet genuinely established a settled home in Dubai can find the home itself driving the residence conclusion. The safe position is that an available UK home is a residence factor that has to be actively managed, by genuinely establishing the Dubai home and by controlling the time spent in the UK property, rather than treated as a dormant asset.
The point is that the house is not passive. Selling it removes the accommodation tie and simplifies the residence position. Keeping it carries a tie that counts against non-residence every year and that can, in the wrong year, defeat the non-residence the entire corridor structure depends on. The decision to keep the London home is not only an investment decision; it is a residence decision.
The third front is the one that outlasts everything else. The capital gains charge is paid once, on a sale. The residence tie disappears once the house is sold. The inheritance tax exposure on UK property has no such endpoint, because it does not depend on the owner's residence at all.
UK-situs property is always within inheritance tax. UK inheritance tax reaches UK-situated assets regardless of the owner's domicile or residence. This was true under the old domicile regime and it remains true under the residence-based regime introduced on 6 April 2025. A non-domiciled, non-resident individual was always within UK inheritance tax on their UK assets, and a long-term UK resident is within it on their worldwide assets, but the UK house is caught either way. There is no version of the analysis in which UK property sits outside the UK inheritance tax net. The 40% charge on death applies to the London house whether the owner is a UK resident, a long-term resident running the tail, or a person who left the UK two decades ago.
The contrast with the foreign estate is the whole point. The relief that a relocating family is counting on for inheritance tax is the long-term resident tail: once the individual has been non-resident long enough to shed long-term resident status, their worldwide, non-UK estate falls out of UK inheritance tax. The mechanics of that tail are set out in the analysis of the long-term resident inheritance tax tail, and for the foreign portfolio, the Dubai property, and the overseas business it delivers: after the tail, those assets are outside UK inheritance tax. The UK house is the exception that the tail does not touch. The family that has carefully run down the tail on the foreign estate, and assumes the whole estate is now outside UK inheritance tax, has forgotten that the UK house was never going to leave, because its exposure was never about residence.
The offshore-company route was closed in 2017. For years the standard answer to UK inheritance tax on a UK home was to hold it through an offshore company, so that the asset in the estate was the foreign company share, which was excluded property for a non-domiciled owner, rather than the UK house itself. That route was closed for residential property from 6 April 2017 by the Schedule A1 look-through in the Inheritance Tax Act 1984, which provides that an interest in a close company or partnership is not excluded property to the extent its value derives from a UK residential property interest. The offshore company holding the London house is looked through, and the value attributable to the house is within UK inheritance tax as if the individual held the house directly. Holding the home through a company no longer takes it out of the inheritance tax net; it only adds a layer of cost, as the next section sets out.
The 2026 extension confirms the direction. The Autumn Budget of 26 November 2025 extended the Schedule A1 look-through to UK agricultural property with effect from 6 April 2026, and confirmed the government's intention to legislate against arrangements that exploit the situs of personal and trust assets to reduce inheritance tax. The direction of travel is consistent and one-way: UK land, in whatever form it is held and by whomever, is being drawn firmly and permanently into UK inheritance tax. A family planning on the basis that some structure will take the UK house out of the net is planning against the current of the legislation.
The inheritance tax position is therefore the starkest of the three. The capital gains charge can be limited by rebasing and timed by the sale. The residence tie can be removed by selling. The inheritance tax exposure on the UK house cannot be escaped by leaving, by waiting out a tail, or by holding the property through a company. It is the most durable UK tax the family carries, and it is carried for as long as the house is owned.
A particular version of the problem affects families who hold, or are advised to hold, the UK home through a company. The structure was once efficient and is now actively expensive, and the family that arrives in the UAE holding a London house in an offshore or UK company has a specific decision to make.
The annual tax on enveloped dwellings. Where a UK residential property worth more than GBP 500,000 is held by a company, a partnership with a corporate member, or a collective investment scheme, it is within the annual tax on enveloped dwellings, an annual charge that rises in bands with the value of the property. A high-value London house held in a company attracts a significant ATED charge every year it remains enveloped, unless a relief applies, and the reliefs are generally for genuine commercial uses such as letting to third parties, not for a home occupied by the family that owns the company. The family home held in a company is the paradigm case the charge was designed to reach.
The 17% enveloping rate on acquisition. Where a company acquires a UK residential property worth more than GBP 500,000, the purchase attracts the higher single rate of stamp duty land tax on enveloped dwellings, which rose to 17% with effect from 31 October 2024. A company buying a high-value London home pays 17% of the price in stamp duty, a punitive rate compared with the rates an individual buyer pays, and again the reliefs are for commercial uses rather than for a family home.
The de-enveloping decision. A family holding the UK home in a company faces a decision about whether to de-envelope, that is, to extract the property from the company into personal ownership. De-enveloping removes the recurring ATED charge and the inheritance tax complexity of the looked-through structure, but the extraction itself can be a taxable event, potentially triggering a capital gains charge within the company and other costs, and it has to be modelled rather than assumed. The interaction of the corporate wrapper with the tax on the underlying property mirrors the analysis of the UAE property SPV and the 9% corporate tax, where a wrapper chosen for one purpose carries an unexpected recurring tax, and the wider comparison of corporate and trust wrappers for family wealth is set out in the analysis of the family investment company and the trust. The conclusion for a family home is usually that the corporate wrapper is the wrong place for it: it does not remove the inheritance tax exposure since 2017, it adds ATED annually, and it taxed the acquisition at 17%.
The enveloped home is the worst version of the UK house problem. It is taxed on sale through the company, looked through for inheritance tax, charged ATED every year, and was bought at a 17% stamp duty rate. The family that holds the London home in a company is paying for a structure that no longer delivers the protection it was built for.
The three exposures converge on a single decision: what to do with the UK home on the way out. There are three options, and each accepts a different combination of the exposures.
Sell before or around the departure. Selling the house removes the accommodation tie, takes the property out of the estate for inheritance tax, and converts the asset into cash that can move with the family. The cost is the capital gains charge, limited by rebasing to the post-2015 gain and by whatever private residence relief accrued while the house was genuinely the home. Where the sale can be timed so that the disposal falls while the family is still UK resident and the home still qualifies for private residence relief, the relief can be larger than it would be after departure, and the interaction between the disposal date and the residence date has to be planned in the same way as any other disposal, as the analysis of timing a sale around a move describes. Selling is the option that resolves all three exposures, at the cost of crystallising the capital gains charge.
Keep the house. Keeping the home defers the capital gains charge, but it maintains the accommodation tie every year, it leaves the property fully within UK inheritance tax, and it earns little private residence relief for the years after departure because of the 90-night rule. Keeping the house is defensible where the family genuinely intends to return, or where the house is held as a long-term family asset whose retention is worth the tie and the inheritance tax exposure, but it should be a deliberate decision made with the residence consequence in view, not a default born of not deciding. The family that keeps the house by inertia carries the tie and the inheritance tax exposure without having weighed them.
Let the house. Letting the property produces UK rental income, which is taxable in the UK regardless of the owner's residence under the non-resident landlord rules, and the new separate rates of tax on property income announced for April 2027 raise the cost of holding a let UK property. Letting does not remove the accommodation tie if the home remains available to the family, though a genuine commercial letting to a third party that makes the property unavailable to the family can break the tie. Letting leaves the property in the inheritance tax net and keeps the capital gains charge in suspense until an eventual sale. Letting suits a family that wants to retain the asset for income and long-term growth and is prepared to accept the UK rental tax and the deferred capital gains charge, and it changes the residence analysis only if the letting genuinely removes the family's access to the home.
The decision is not the same for every family, and that is the point. A family that wants a clean exit and has no intention of returning usually sells. A family that wants to keep a London base accepts the tie and the inheritance tax exposure as the price of it. A family that wants income retains and lets. What does not work is treating the house as an afterthought, because each of the three options carries a different combination of the capital gains charge, the residence tie, and the inheritance tax exposure, and the right answer depends on which of those the family is willing to carry.
Five patterns produce most of the avoidable UK tax on the family home in a corridor move. Each is a version of assuming the house behaves like the rest of the estate.
Trap one: assuming the sale is tax-free because the seller is non-resident. The family sells the London house after moving to Dubai and assumes that, like a sale of shares or crypto, it is outside UK capital gains tax. UK property is within the non-resident charge, taxed at up to 24% on the gain since rebasing. The architectural answer is to model the capital gains charge before the sale, using the rebased value and any available private residence relief, and to treat the house as the one asset where non-residence does not remove the charge.
Trap two: missing the 60-day return. The family completes the sale, focuses on the onward purchase in Dubai, and misses the requirement to report the disposal and pay the tax within 60 days on a UK property return. The obligation applies even where no tax is due, and the penalties are automatic. The architectural answer is to diarise the 60-day deadline from completion and to file even where rebasing and relief reduce the gain to nil.
Trap three: keeping the house and quietly staying UK-resident. The family keeps the London home as a base, spends time in it on visits, and does not register that the available home is an accommodation tie that, combined with their UK days, can make them UK resident for the year. The worldwide income and gains the move was meant to protect are then back in UK tax. The architectural answer is to treat the retained home as a residence factor to be actively managed, and to count the tie into the day-count planning every year.
Trap four: assuming the foreign-estate inheritance tax relief covers the house. The family runs down the long-term resident tail, watches the foreign estate fall out of UK inheritance tax, and assumes the whole estate is now outside the net. The UK house is UK-situs and never leaves UK inheritance tax, whatever the residence position. The architectural answer is to analyse the UK property separately from the worldwide estate and to plan its inheritance tax exposure as a permanent feature, not one that the tail removes.
Trap five: leaving the home in a company. The family holds the London house through an offshore or UK company, believing the wrapper shelters it. Since 2017 the company is looked through for inheritance tax, the home attracts ATED every year, and the wrapper was bought at a 17% stamp duty rate. The architectural answer is to model the de-enveloping decision rather than leave the home in a structure that adds cost without delivering the inheritance tax protection it was chosen for.
The common thread is that the family home is UK-situs and the family is leaving the UK, and those two facts make the house behave in the opposite way to the rest of the relocating estate. The traps all come from treating it as though it left with everything else.
The UK home decision is not a standalone transaction; it sits inside the corridor exit and interacts with the residence, the capital gains, and the inheritance tax planning that the rest of the move turns on.
The residence position frames the house decision. Whether the house is sold, kept, or let, the consequence runs through the Statutory Residence Test, because the retained home is an accommodation tie and the time spent in it counts towards UK days. The house decision and the day-count plan are one analysis, and the broader exit is engineered backwards from the residence date in the pre-exit year architecture.
The sale timing sits with the other disposals. If the house is to be sold, the timing of the disposal relative to the residence change affects the private residence relief and the rate, and it should be planned alongside the sale of the business or the portfolio, as the analysis of selling a business or crypto after moving to Dubai sets out. The house is one disposal in a sequence, not a separate matter.
The inheritance tax exposure joins the wider estate plan. The permanent UK inheritance tax exposure on the house sits alongside the long-term resident analysis for the rest of the estate, addressed in the analysis of the UK inheritance tax tail on moving to Dubai, and the two have to be planned together because the house is the part of the estate the tail does not relieve.
The corporate wrapper decision connects to the wider structuring. Where the home is enveloped, the de-enveloping decision interacts with the family's wider use of corporate and trust structures, analysed in the comparison of the family investment company and the trust. The home is rarely the right asset for a wrapper, and unwinding the wrapper is part of the corridor clean-up.
The theme that runs through the corridor analysis holds for the house as clearly as anywhere. The move is the easy part. The UK home is the asset that does not move with the family, and planning the exit as though it does is what turns the most visible asset on the balance sheet into the most overlooked tax exposure in the plan.
Yes. A non-UK resident is within UK capital gains tax on the sale of UK property, unlike a sale of shares or crypto, which is outside the charge. Residential property has been within the non-resident charge since 6 April 2015. The gain is taxed at the residential rates of 18% and 24%, but in most cases only the gain since 5 April 2015 is charged, because the property is rebased to its value on that date, so the tax is often smaller than the whole-period gain would suggest.
Within 60 days of completion. A non-resident disposing of UK property must file a UK property return and pay the capital gains tax due within 60 days of the sale completing, on a standalone return separate from any Self Assessment return. The obligation applies even where no tax is due after rebasing and reliefs, and even where you are otherwise outside UK Self Assessment. The penalties for missing the deadline are automatic, and it is a frequent oversight for sellers focused on an onward purchase abroad.
Only partly, once you have left. Private residence relief covers the years the property was genuinely your main residence and a final period of ownership, but for a non-resident a year counts as a year of residence in the property only if you or your spouse were tax resident in the same country as the property or spent at least 90 nights in it that year (section 222C TCGA 1992). A family that has moved to Dubai and spends fewer than 90 nights a year in the London house does not qualify for those years, so the gain attributable to the period after departure is largely taxable.
Yes. A UK home that is available to you is accommodation for the Statutory Residence Test, and where it is available for at least 91 days in a tax year and you spend even one night in it, you have an accommodation tie for that year. For a departing resident, the number of ties you can have before becoming UK resident falls as your UK days rise, so the tie from a retained home can tip you into UK residence in a borderline year. Keeping the house is a residence decision as well as an investment one.
No, not since 6 April 2017. The Schedule A1 look-through in the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 provides that an interest in a company is not excluded property to the extent its value derives from UK residential property, so the company holding the home is looked through and the value of the house is within UK inheritance tax as if you held it directly. The company also brings the annual tax on enveloped dwellings every year, and a company acquiring a high-value home pays stamp duty at 17%. The wrapper adds cost without delivering inheritance tax protection.
No. UK-situated property is within UK inheritance tax regardless of your residence or domicile and regardless of how long you have been gone. The long-term resident tail that takes your foreign estate out of UK inheritance tax once you have been non-resident long enough does not apply to UK property, because the UK charge on UK assets was never based on your residence. The house stays in the 40% net for as long as you own it.
It depends on which exposure you are willing to carry. Selling removes the residence tie and takes the property out of your estate, at the cost of the capital gains charge now. Keeping defers the capital gains charge but maintains the accommodation tie and leaves the property in inheritance tax, with little private residence relief for the post-departure years. Letting produces UK rental income taxed regardless of residence and keeps the property in the estate, but a genuine commercial letting that removes your access can break the accommodation tie. A clean exit usually points to selling; a long-term family base points to keeping with the consequences accepted.
Yes, and that is the central point. Most assets, including shares, crypto, the foreign portfolio, and overseas property, leave the UK tax net when you become non-resident, and the foreign estate leaves the inheritance tax net once the long-term resident tail expires. UK property does not follow that pattern: it is taxed on sale even for a non-resident, it keeps a residence tie if retained, and it stays in UK inheritance tax permanently. The UK home is the one significant asset where leaving the UK changes very little, which is why it has to be planned separately from the rest of the estate.
The relocation takes the portfolio, the business, and the overseas property out of UK tax, and for those assets the move does what it promises. The London house is the exception the plan keeps forgetting. It is taxed when sold, it anchors a residence tie when kept, and it stays in inheritance tax whatever the family does. The wealth leaves the UK with the family. The house, and the tax on it, stays where it is.
Moving to Dubai does not make the sale of a business or crypto tax-free. What makes the gain free of UK tax is the sequence: becoming non-resident before the disposal, staying non-resident for more than five years, and not selling through a UAE company the UK still controls or whose value was built in the UK.
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