How to Fill Out and Submit HMRC Form R43: Sections and Deadline

To fill out HMRC Form R43, gather the gross amount and tax deducted for every source of UK income you received in the tax year, then work through the form’s eight lettered sections either online through GOV.UK or on the downloadable PDF, and submit within four years of the end of the tax year you’re claiming for.¹ The form is how non-residents reclaim overpaid UK income tax and apply for the £12,570 personal allowance, and if your total UK income for the year fell below that threshold, you may be owed back everything that was withheld.

Check That R43 Is the Right Form for You

R43 is for non-residents only. If you are UK-resident, use R40 instead. If you already file a UK Self Assessment tax return, your personal allowance claim goes through that return, not through R43. You also cannot use R43 if you have UK rental income above £2,500 or income from a UK trade or profession — those situations require Self Assessment.¹

To qualify for the personal allowance as a non-resident, you need to fit one of the recognized categories: British citizen, national of an EEA country, someone who worked for the UK government at any point in the tax year, or a resident of a country whose double taxation agreement with the UK specifically grants personal allowance rights.² Residents of the Isle of Man or Channel Islands, people who left the UK for health reasons (their own or a family member’s), and Crown servants and their spouses also qualify.³ The allowance is £12,570 and frozen at that level through at least 2027–28.⁴

What to Have Ready Before You Start

The online version of R43 cannot be saved partway through, so pull everything together first. You will need:¹

Your National Insurance number, if you have one. The form marks it optional, but leaving it blank when you do have one forces HMRC to match your claim manually.
The gross amount and tax deducted for each UK income source: pension statements, bank interest certificates, dividend vouchers, end-of-year summaries.
Parts 2 and 3 of the P45 issued by the payer, if you received a trivial pension commutation or a flexible pension payment.⁵
Gross rental receipts and allowable expenses, if you have UK rental income of £2,500 or less.
Proof of tax residence in your home country, if HMRC asks for it. US residents obtain this via IRS Form 6166.

Use the actual figures on your payer statements. If your numbers don’t match what payers have already reported to HMRC, the claim stalls.

Working Through the Eight Sections

Form R43 runs A through H. The online questions and the PDF cover the same ground; the guidance notes explain each box in detail.⁵

Section A: Residence

Confirm you were not UK-resident during the tax year and name the country where you lived. Answering that you were resident sends you back to R40.

Section B: Personal Details

Full name, date of birth, current overseas address, nationality, phone number with international dialing code, and your National Insurance number if you have one. Adviser details also go here if a tax adviser is filing on your behalf.

Section C: UK Income

This is the longest part of the form. It splits into eight subsections, and you only fill in the ones that apply.

C1 covers UK dividends and any tax credit or notional income tax shown on your dividend vouchers.
C2 covers interest, split between interest paid without tax deducted (typical for UK bank and building society accounts since 2016) and interest that had tax taken off. Gross, net, and tax deducted go in separate boxes.
C3 is for UK rental income of £2,500 or less: gross rents, allowable expenses, and any tax already withheld. Above £2,500 you must use Self Assessment instead.
C4 is the UK State Pension, any state pension lump sum, and other Department for Work and Pensions benefits such as Incapacity Benefit.
C5 is for work pensions and annuities: total pension before deductions and tax taken off. If you are claiming treaty relief on the pension, include your double taxation treaty reference number.
C6 is income from UK trusts, settlements, or estates.
C7 is the catch-all — flexible pension payments and any other UK income not captured above, with the tax deducted.
C8 is chargeable event gains on UK life insurance policies or capital redemption policies.

Copy the figures straight from payer statements. Entering a net pension amount where the form wants gross is one of the most common errors and triggers a follow-up letter from HMRC.

Section D: Deductions

Deductions from UK income, including donations to UK charities under Gift Aid.

Section E: FOTRA Securities

Only relevant if you received income from UK government “free of tax to residents abroad” securities and tax was taken off. Most claimants skip this section.

Section F: Which Allowance You’re Claiming

Tick F1 for the personal allowance — this is what most claimants are here for. F2 covers Married Couple’s Allowance and F3 covers Blind Person’s Allowance if you qualify. If you don’t qualify for any allowance but still overpaid tax, tick F4 and F5 to claim a straight repayment.

Section G: Payment

Nominate someone else to receive the repayment on your behalf, or give an alternative address for HMRC to post it to. Refunds to non-residents typically go out as a sterling cheque, so factor in the time your local bank needs to clear a foreign-currency cheque.

Section H: Declaration

Sign, date, and confirm the information is correct. Use the actual figures from your statements rather than estimates. Careless inaccuracies can carry a penalty, and deliberate ones carry a heavier one, though HMRC reduces penalties when you disclose errors voluntarily.⁶

How to Submit the Form

Two options:¹

Online through the GOV.UK portal. Faster and avoids international postage, but you cannot save your progress, so have every figure to hand before you start.
By post. Download the PDF from GOV.UK, complete and sign it, and send it to Pay As You Earn, HM Revenue and Customs, BX9 1AS, United Kingdom. Use a tracked mailing service; international post to HMRC can take weeks and you want proof of delivery.⁷

HMRC does not publish a fixed processing time. GOV.UK points to its service dashboard for current expected reply times, which move with demand, and claims filed just after the 5 April year end tend to wait longer. If HMRC needs anything more from you, they will write.

The Four-Year Deadline

You can claim for the current tax year or any of the previous four. The deadline is four years from the end of the tax year the overpayment relates to.⁸ A claim for the 2022–23 tax year, which ended on 5 April 2023, must reach HMRC by 5 April 2027. If you have been overpaying for several years and never filed, submit a separate R43 for each year, starting with the oldest one still in date.

Mistakes That Delay R43 Claims

A handful of errors account for most delays. Filing the wrong form is the biggest: UK residents belong on R40, and non-residents with rental income above £2,500 or business income belong on Self Assessment. Leaving the National Insurance number blank when you have one adds weeks. Entering a net pension figure where the form asks for gross throws the tax calculation off and produces a follow-up letter. Filing for a tax year more than four years old simply gets rejected.

If you aren’t sure which form fits your situation, HMRC’s non-resident helpline is +44 135 535 9022, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm UK time.⁹

If You Live in the United States

Two US-side issues catch American claimants out. HMRC may want proof you are US tax-resident, and the document they accept is IRS Form 6166. You obtain it by filing IRS Form 8802 with the Philadelphia Accounts Management Center; the user fee is $85 per application for individuals, and processing takes several weeks, so request it well ahead of your R43.¹⁰

Separately, if you previously took a foreign tax credit on IRS Form 1116 for the UK tax that HMRC is now returning, the refund triggers a “foreign tax redetermination.” You have to report the change by filing Form 1040-X, and failing to notify the IRS can bring a penalty. Schedule C of Form 1116 is where the redetermination details go.¹¹

1
HM Revenue & Customs. Claim Personal Allowances and Tax Refunds if You Live Abroad (R43)
2
GOV.UK. Tax on Your UK Income if You Live Abroad – Personal Allowance
3
GOV.UK. Residence and FIG Regime Manual – Individuals Not Resident in the UK
4
GOV.UK. Income Tax Rates and Personal Allowances
5
HM Revenue & Customs. Guidance Notes for Form R43
6
Legislation.gov.uk. Finance Act 2007 Schedule 24
7
GOV.UK. Repayments – Where to Send Claim Forms
8
GOV.UK. SACM12155 – Overpayment Relief – Time Limits for Making a Claim
9
GOV.UK. Non-UK Residents Income Tax and Capital Gains – Enquiries
10
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8802
11
Internal Revenue Service. Foreign Tax Credit