I lived for four years in the IoM, had an amazing time (until Bushy's closed anyway). But in the process, I opened an IoM bank account to pay my salary into. I carried on using this account for years afterwards (it was with the IoM branch of a UK bank).
I benefited from not paying any tax on the interest on my savings account, because tax haven. Not a huge perk, but a nice one anyway.
And then, in the wake of the tax haven scandals around 2005/6, the HMRC wrote me a nice letter explaining that, while I had obeyed all the rules at the time, they were retroactively changing the rules and I needed to declare all the interest I had earned on my offshore account over the last 8 years. The final bill came to about fifty quid, so no major damage done. But the lesson has stuck with me.
HMRC can and will change the rules at any time, and apply them retroactively. Getting super smart about taxes, especially by using loopholes and tax havens, can be counter-productive. Unexpected tax demands are not fun.
And then, in the wake of the tax haven scandals around 2005/6, the HMRC wrote me a nice letter explaining that, while I had obeyed all the rules at the time, they were retroactively changing the rules and I needed to declare all the interest I had earned on my offshore account over the last 8 years. The final bill came to about fifty quid, so no major damage done. But the lesson has stuck with me.
HMRC can and will change the rules at any time, and apply them retroactively. Getting super smart about taxes, especially by using loopholes and tax havens, can be counter-productive. Unexpected tax demands are not fun.