The remittance basis does not stop at the British border.
The tax treaty between the UK and Ireland carries a remittance clause twice, once for income and once for gains. It changes how income and gains from Britain are treated once you live in Ireland.
The gap in the usual story
The usual account of the Irish remittance basis runs like this: foreign income stays untaxed as long as it does not come to Ireland, with no charge and no time limit. That is true, and it is the reason Ireland is interesting at all for a family with international wealth.
But the account has a gap, and it lies exactly where most British families keep most of their money: in the income and gains from the country they come from. The let flat in Manchester, the British share portfolio, the savings with a UK bank, the workplace pension.
For the Irish rule does not stand alone. Above it sits the treaty between the two countries, and the UK-Ireland convention contains provisions that deal with exactly this case. Before them stands a piece of Irish history that applies to Britain alone.
Ireland and British income since 2008
For most of the history of the Irish state, British income was the one foreign income the remittance basis did not reach. Revenue’s own manual explains why: under the first tax agreement between the two countries, set out in the Finance Act 1926 and carried into section 73 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, the remittance basis did not apply to UK-source income. A non-domiciled resident of Ireland paid Irish tax on British income as it arose, remitted or not.
That changed twice in 2008. By section 18 of the Finance Act 2008, the remittance basis can apply to UK-source income arising on or after 1 January 2008; by section 42 of the Finance (No. 2) Act 2008, to UK-source gains from disposals on or after 20 November 2008. Since then British income and gains stand where income from any other foreign country stands, with one limit that applies to all of them: pay for work carried out in Ireland is taxed under Schedule E, and the remittance basis does not reach it, even when the employer is British.
| What | Remittance basis possible for non-domiciled residents |
|---|---|
| UK-source income | arising on or after 1 January 2008 |
| UK-source gains | from disposals on or after 20 November 2008 |
| Pay for duties performed in Ireland, also from a UK employer | no: Schedule E, since 1 January 2006 |
Source: Revenue, Tax and Duty Manual Part 05-01-21 “The remittance basis of assessment as regards UK source income and gains” (last reviewed May 2026). As of: read 6 November 2026.
How the same rule works for gains in Ireland, with the question of what exactly is remitted, is on our page on capital gains tax.
What the clause does
The mechanism is the same for income and for gains and is explained in two steps.
Step one: because you are resident in Ireland, the convention requires Britain to exempt certain income and gains, or to tax them only at a reduced rate. So far the good news.
Step two: the remittance clause attaches a condition to that relief. It applies only to the part that is actually remitted to or received in Ireland. What you leave in an account outside Ireland is not relieved in Britain.
At this point the advantage turns round. On income from third countries, not remitting costs nothing and saves the Irish tax. On income and gains from Britain, not remitting costs the treaty relief in Britain.
| What | Provision | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Income | Article 6 | relief in the source country only for what is remitted to or received in the country of residence |
| Capital gains | Article 14(5), proviso | taxation in the country of residence only does not operate for gains not received there |
The clause concerns relief that the convention gives in the country of source. Income and gains from third countries are not touched by it.
Source: Convention between the United Kingdom and Ireland of 2 June 1976 as amended by the 1998 Protocol, HMRC consolidated text on GOV.UK (Ireland: tax treaties); SI 1976/2151 and SI 1998/3151, legislation.gov.uk. As of: read 6 November 2026.
Article 6: income
The convention was signed in Dublin on 2 June 1976 and amended by protocols of 28 October 1976, 7 November 1994 and 4 November 1998. The general clause stands early, in Article 6, “Limitation of relief”: where one country relieves income and the other taxes an individual on that income only by reference to the amount remitted to or received in it, the relief applies only to so much of the income as is remitted or received. It covers every article of the convention that relieves income.
An example of what it means in everyday life. Under Article 12, interest that a resident of Ireland receives is taxable only in Ireland; under Article 17, so is a workplace pension. If you live in Ireland on the remittance basis and leave that interest or that pension in a British account, Article 6 takes the British relief away for the part that stays outside Ireland, and what Britain then charges follows its own rules for non-residents. A different case is the flat you keep and let: under Article 7, Britain may tax income from British property anyway, and the clause changes nothing there. How the let flat is treated as a whole is on our page on rental income.
The wording works in both directions. Since Britain abolished its own remittance basis from 6 April 2025, it matters in practice in one: for a resident of Ireland who uses the Irish remittance basis on British income. The full text is in the consolidated convention on GOV.UK; the other articles that matter for a move are on our page on the UK-Ireland tax treaty.
Article 14: gains, the clause a second time
The convention carries the clause a second time, in the article on capital gains, which the 1998 Protocol rewrote. Article 14(5) assigns gains not covered by the other paragraphs to the country of residence, and its proviso adds: gains not covered by the other paragraphs are taxable only in the country of residence; but where that country taxes an individual only on the amount received there, this rule does not operate for the part not received. For a resident of Ireland on the remittance basis, the protection of Article 14(5) therefore holds only for the proceeds brought into Ireland.
Next to it stands a rule that follows the person who leaves. Article 14(6) keeps each country’s right to tax under its own law the gains of a resident of the other country who was resident in the first at any time in the three years before the disposal. For British leavers this is the treaty’s room for the British rules that tax gains on return; the rules themselves are on our page on leaving the UK and tax.
How much of this bites depends on British law. GOV.UK states that non-residents do not normally pay tax when they sell an asset, apart from UK property or land. Where British law does not reach a gain in the first place, losing the treaty protection costs nothing. Where it does, as with British property and land, or with gains caught by the five-year rule on return, it is the treaty protection that the proviso and Article 14(6) take away.
What follows for planning
Four sentences follow from this.
First: the remittance basis is still strong. It is strong where income comes from third countries, and there neither clause applies.
Second: for families who keep their home in Britain, the clause is even the mechanism that keeps their arrangement clean; that is on our page on two homes.
Third: income from Britain needs every calculation done differently. It can be cheaper to bring it to Ireland and pay Irish tax on it than to leave it outside and lose the British relief. Which of the two calculations works depends on the kind of income and on the rates of both countries. The result is declared through Irish self-assessment; registering with Revenue and the first return we take on as tax registration as a non-dom.
Fourth: advice that explains Irish non-dom status to a British family without these clauses is incomplete advice. That is not a charge against the profession, but an observation: the provisions sit in a treaty from 1976, one of them in an article numbered six that hardly anyone reads, and the British history before 2008 still shapes what many people believe.
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