Retain residency status - Hungarian national

[DKB-Sheffield]

Dear All,

First post and... what a valuable resource this is!

I am an accountant and have been approached by a client.

He (and his wife) are both of Hungarian descent and have lived in the UK for a good number of years. Whilst the UK is their permanent residence, they do not hold British passports as they are EU nationals.

Now, they are looking to return to Hungary for an unspecified period of time for personal (family) reasons but are concerned that, if this extends beyond 2 years, their UK permanent residency status will be lost. They clearly have concerns that they will not be able to return to the UK after this time without having to apply for leave to remain/ residency. This is clearly an issue as.. who knows what will happen now we're exiting the EU!

So... as it stands, they have a UK limited company. My client is a shareholder and director and his wife is also a shareholder. They are, as yet, unsure as to whether they will run the company from Hungary, make it dormant or simply dissolve it - that is my domain and I'm comfortable with the options in that case.

However, my main question is... if they were to retain the company and take a salary taxable under PAYE (including NICs), would that satisfy the requirements of residency or do they actually need to reside here (I am expecting this to be the latter). Alternatively, is there something else they could do to preserve their residency status and, if so, what would that be?

I'm looking forward to hearing from you all!

Many thanks in advance

Dave

[noajthan]

Dear All,

First post and... what a valuable resource this is!

I am an accountant and have been approached by a client.

He (and his wife) are both of Hungarian descent and have lived in the UK for a good number of years. Whilst the UK is their permanent residence, they do not hold British passports as they are EU nationals.

Now, they are looking to return to Hungary for an unspecified period of time for personal (family) reasons but are concerned that, if this extends beyond 2 years, their UK permanent residency status will be lost. They clearly have concerns that they will not be able to return to the UK after this time without having to apply for leave to remain/ residency. This is clearly an issue as.. who knows what will happen now we're exiting the EU!

So... as it stands, they have a UK limited company. My client is a shareholder and director and his wife is also a shareholder. They are, as yet, unsure as to whether they will run the company from Hungary, make it dormant or simply dissolve it - that is my domain and I'm comfortable with the options in that case.

However, my main question is... if they were to retain the company and take a salary taxable under PAYE (including NICs), would that satisfy the requirements of residency or do they actually need to reside here (I am expecting this to be the latter). Alternatively, is there something else they could do to preserve their residency status and, if so, what would that be?

I'm looking forward to hearing from you all!

Many thanks in advance

Dave

There's 2 parts to free movement: treaty rights/PR status and residency.

Residency means physical presence in country.

Over 6 months absence in any 12 month period and continuity of residence is broken, PR clock reset to zero.
No time to recover from that with all this wild talk of Brexit.
Personal reasons is not good enough to invoke the one-off 'exceptional reasons' exception to the rule.

Over 2 years absence and any PR status they may have is lost. No time to recover from that with all this wild talk of Brexit.

So if they leave UK now its pretty much game over.
The way around it is to apply for the privilege of citizenship.

[DKB-Sheffield]

Thanks noajthan,

Thank you for your detailed explantion. That clears everything up perfectly.

Kind regards

Dave