Dragon 501. Many years ago I worked for a UK company on a permanent overseas contract. I was on a no-tax code and therefore did not have tax deducted at source. However, because the company was UK based, I did pay NI. We have crews currently resident in the UK who are paying UK tax but not paying NI because their employer, ie CX, is not a UK company.
A no-tax code will have to be agreed with the Inland Revenue, but can be done quite quickly. If you live overseas and can prove it, you simply write to the tax office dealing with CX affairs, and request a no-tax code. My employer was familiar with the procedure. It may be that CX are entering, for them, uncharted waters and have not yet grasped all the possibilities. There are British Airways crew, based London but living outside of the UK, who are on a no-tax code.
As far as HK tax is concerned; we have North American based crew, for whom withholding tax was introduced some time ago. Some of them applied to the HK tax authorities to have the HK tax liability removed and were granted exemption.
Studi; not sure about your situation in Switzerland. There is no withholding tax applied by the Swiss against CX and therefore I suspect you will still pay HK tax and then ask Swiss authorities for a corresponding reduction. This latter case has been the system operated by UK based and UK resident crews up until now.
Gilhooley; thanks for that definition. My understanding was that you need not be resident anywhere, but had to be domiciled somewhere. For example, if you were living in a boat in the Channel, you would not be resident anywhere, but by the definition given, neither would you be domiciled anywhere. If I were to die on my boat and I had stashed 5 million dollars under my bunk, where would the death duties be paid?
One of the problems, when dealing with taxation, is that there is tax law and tax precedent. If there is a precedent that the taxman does not like, he can change it. Gordon Brown recently decided, following a ruling from a tax commissioner that the 90 day rule in the UK was to become 90 nights. Historically, day of arrival and day of departure did not count, so if you arrived in London on Friday and left on Monday, that was two days. Under the nights rule it will now be three accountable days. If you took Brown to court and won, tax precedent would become tax law.