US-UK Tax Treaty Guide for Americans: Article by Article

The treaty most people mean when they say "the US-UK tax treaty" is the Convention between the United States and the United Kingdom for the Avoidance of Double Taxation with respect to Taxes on Income and on Capital Gains. It was signed in London on July 24, 2001, amended by a protocol signed on July 19, 2002, and entered into force on March 31, 2003. It took effect in the US for withholding taxes from May 1, 2003 and for all other US taxes from January 1, 2004. In the UK it took effect from April 6, 2003 for income tax and capital gains tax and from April 1, 2003 for corporation tax. It replaced the 1975 convention. Three other agreements sit alongside it and are often confused with it: - The 1978 Estate and Gift Tax Convention, signed October 19, 1978 and in force since November 11, 1979. It covers US estate and gift tax and UK inheritance tax. The income tax treaty says nothing about death or gifts. - The 1984 Social Security (Totalization) Agreement, signed February 13, 1984 and in force since January 1, 1985. It decides whether you pay National Insurance or US Social Security and Medicare tax, and lets you combine contribution records. The income tax treaty expressly excludes social security taxes. - The 2012 FATCA intergovernmental agreement, under which UK banks report US account holders to HMRC, which passes the data to the IRS. Here is the point most guides bury. For a US citizen or green card holder living in the UK, the income tax treaty removes very little US tax. Article 1(4), the saving clause, lets the United States tax you as if the treaty did not exist, apart from a short list of exceptions. What the treaty mainly does for you is decide which country taxes first, cap UK withholding on US-source income, and set the framework for the Foreign Tax Credit that actually prevents double taxation. The exceptions to the saving clause, above all the pension and social security rules in Articles 17 and 18, are where the treaty delivers real money. This guide walks through the treaty article by article so you can see exactly which provisions help you, which do not, and how to claim the ones that do.

Article 1(4) reads, in short: notwithstanding any provision of the Convention except paragraph 5, a Contracting State may tax its residents, and by reason of citizenship may tax its citizens, as if the Convention had not come into effect. The United States uses this to keep taxing its citizens and green card holders wherever they live. Since 2025 HMRC has started using the UK half of the same clause against UK residents too, which matters for US pension lump sums (see Article 17 below). Article 1(5) lists the provisions the saving clause cannot override. The list is the single most useful thing in the treaty for an American in the UK, so here it is in full, taken from the consolidated text as amended by the 2002 protocol. Article 1(5)(a): benefits that survive the saving clause for everyone, including US citizens: - Article 9(2), correlative adjustments between associated enterprises. - Article 17(1)(b), the rule that a pension paid from a scheme in the other country is exempt in your country of residence if it would be exempt in the country where the scheme is established. This is what keeps Roth IRA distributions tax free in the UK. - Article 17(3), social security payments taxable only in the country of residence. - Article 17(5), alimony and child support. - Article 18(1), no tax on investment growth inside a pension scheme until it is paid out. - Article 18(5), US deduction and exclusion for contributions by and for a US citizen employed in the UK to a UK pension scheme. - Article 24, relief from double taxation. - Article 25, non-discrimination. - Article 26, the mutual agreement procedure. Article 1(5)(b): benefits that survive the saving clause only for individuals who are neither citizens of, nor green card holders in, the country doing the taxing: - Article 18(2), continued relief for contributions to a home-country pension scheme while working in the other country. - Article 19, government service. - Article 20, students. - Article 20A, teachers (added by the 2002 protocol). - Article 28, diplomatic agents and consular officers. Everything not on this list, including Article 17(1)(a) on periodic pensions, Article 17(2) on lump sums, Article 14 on employment income and Articles 10 to 13 on investment income and gains, is overridden by the saving clause for US citizens. Those articles still bind the UK when you are a US resident, and they still bind the US for your British spouse, but they do not switch off your own US tax. Two more paragraphs of Article 1 are worth knowing. Article 1(6) keeps former citizens and former long-term green card holders inside the saving clause for ten years on US-source income if tax avoidance was a principal purpose of giving up their status. Article 1(7) limits UK treaty relief on income that is taxed in the other country only when remitted, which is the legacy remittance basis rule.

Article 4(1) defines a resident as a person liable to tax in a country by reason of domicile, residence, citizenship or a similar criterion. Article 4(2) adds a rule that surprises many Americans: a US citizen or green card holder counts as a US resident for treaty purposes only if they have a substantial presence, permanent home or habitual abode in the United States. An American who has lived in London for a decade with no US home is therefore a UK resident under the treaty, not a dual resident, even though they file a Form 1040 every year. Genuine dual residence arises when the UK Statutory Residence Test makes you UK resident and you also meet the US substantial presence test or keep a US home, typically in the year of a move or for people who split the year between both countries. Article 4(4) then breaks the tie in strict order: - A permanent home available to you in only one country. - If you have homes in both, the country with which your personal and economic relations are closer (centre of vital interests). - Failing that, your habitual abode. - Failing that, nationality. - Failing that, the competent authorities decide by mutual agreement. For a US citizen the tie-breaker rarely changes the US filing position, because the saving clause taxes you by citizenship anyway. It matters for three groups. Green card holders can use the tie-breaker to file as a non-resident on Form 1040-NR, but that election must be disclosed on Form 8833, and for a long-term resident (green card in 8 of the last 15 years) it is treated as expatriation, triggering Form 8854 and potentially the exit tax. Non-citizen spouses who spend substantial time in the US use it to stay out of the US system. And the UK uses Article 4 to decide whether it must give up taxing rights on your US pensions and investment income. The UK's Foreign Income and Gains (FIG) regime, which replaced the non-dom remittance basis from April 6, 2025, does not change treaty residence. A FIG claimant is a UK resident under Article 4 in HMRC's view. What FIG does is exempt qualifying foreign income and gains from UK tax for the first four tax years of residence, which for a US citizen simply means there is less UK tax to credit against the US tax that the saving clause preserves. If you are in your FIG window, the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion may do more for you than the Foreign Tax Credit for those years.

Article 14 governs salaries and, per the exchange of notes attached to the treaty, share and stock option income. The rule is that employment income is taxable in the country where the work is physically done. If you live and work in the UK, the UK has the first right to tax your salary, and the saving clause means the US taxes it too, with the Foreign Tax Credit or the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion removing the US tax. Article 14(2) is the short-term secondee rule. Your employment income stays taxable only in your home country if all three conditions are met: you are present in the host country for no more than 183 days in any twelve-month period beginning or ending in the tax year concerned, your employer is not resident in the host country, and the cost is not borne by a permanent establishment your employer has there. The twelve-month rolling window catches people who assume the 183 days reset on April 6 or January 1. It does not. Note also that this rule protects a UK employee sent to the US, and a non-citizen on assignment to the UK, but for a US citizen working in the UK on a US payroll it only decides whether the UK can tax, never whether the US can. Article 7 covers business profits, including those of a self-employed person, since the 2001 treaty has no separate independent services article. Profits are taxable in the other country only to the extent attributable to a permanent establishment there, defined in Article 5 as a fixed place of business or a dependent agent who habitually concludes contracts. A freelancer living in the UK and working from a home office has a UK permanent establishment. A UK freelancer who does a two-week project on site for a US client usually does not have a US one, so no US tax applies to that fee and no Form 1040-NR is due, provided a W-8BEN is on file with the client. If you trade through a UK limited company, the treaty does nothing to reduce your US reporting. The company is a controlled foreign corporation if you own more than 50% (or 10% with other US shareholders), you file Form 5471 every year, and its profits can be taxed to you currently under the GILTI rules whether or not you take a dividend. Article 10 caps UK withholding on the dividends you do take, but the UK has no dividend withholding tax in domestic law anyway. The treaty's contribution to a Ltd company owner is Article 23 (limitation on benefits), covered later, which is what lets the company claim treaty rates on any US-source income it earns.

The treaty caps the tax that the source country can charge a resident of the other country on cross-border investment income: - Dividends (Article 10): 15% in general; 5% where the beneficial owner is a company holding at least 10% of the voting power; 0% where the beneficial owner is a pension scheme, extended by the 2002 protocol to pension funds investing through US regulated investment companies and REITs. Special rules apply to REIT dividends. - Interest (Article 11): 0%, with a 15% carve-out for contingent interest linked to the payer's profits. - Royalties (Article 12): 0%. In practice the direction matters. The UK does not withhold on dividends at all, and withholds 20% on some interest and royalties, so for UK-source income these articles mostly reduce or remove UK withholding for US residents. For US-source income the articles cut the 30% statutory US withholding to 15% or zero for UK residents who are not US persons. How to claim on UK-source income as a US resident: the UK form is US-Individual 2002 (the US-specific version of HMRC's DT-Individual form). You send it to the IRS with Form 8802 to obtain a Form 6166 residency certificate, and then to HMRC. It covers UK pensions (including the State Pension), purchased annuities, royalties and interest. HMRC issues an NT (no tax) PAYE code to a UK pension payer once it approves the claim, and refunds tax already deducted. How to claim on US-source income as a UK resident who is not a US citizen: give the US payer or broker a Form W-8BEN claiming treaty benefits under the UK treaty. The payer withholds at 15% on dividends and 0% on interest and reports it on Form 1042-S. No US tax return or Form 8833 is needed, because reporting is waived for withholding claims made on W-8BEN. This is the route for your British spouse's US brokerage account or US shares. How it works if you are a US citizen in the UK: you cannot use W-8BEN. You give a W-9, the payer withholds nothing (or backup withholding), and you pay US tax at ordinary or qualified dividend rates on your Form 1040. The UK taxes the same dividends too. Article 24(6), covered below, then divides the relief: the UK credits only the 15% treaty rate against its own tax, and the US credits the remaining UK tax on a resourced basis. Nothing in these articles touches the PFIC rules. A UK unit trust, OEIC or ETF held outside a pension is a passive foreign investment company, taxed under Section 1291 with an interest charge and reported on Form 8621, whether or not it sits inside an ISA.

Article 17 is titled "Pensions, Social Security, Annuities, Alimony, and Child Support" and is the article people search for most. Its five paragraphs give different answers for different payments, and three of them survive the saving clause while two do not. Read each one against Article 1(5) before relying on it.

Article 18 deals with the accumulation phase rather than distributions, and two of its paragraphs, 18(1) and 18(5), are saving clause exceptions. This is where a US citizen working in the UK gets the treaty's biggest recurring benefit. Article 18(1): growth inside the scheme. Income earned by a pension scheme may be taxed to the member only when it is paid out, and not when it is transferred to another scheme. The text describes a resident of one country in a scheme established in the other, but the Treasury Technical Explanation gives the example of a US citizen resident in the UK who is a member of a UK scheme and confirms the US will not tax the earnings until distributed, and IRS Chief Counsel memorandum AM2008-009 accepts that reading provided the scheme qualifies. Without this paragraph, US domestic rules on foreign employees' trusts under Section 402(b) can tax growth inside a UK scheme currently, especially for higher earners, and a SIPP has an even weaker domestic footing. Claim 18(1) on Form 8833 every year you have a UK pension. Article 18(5): contributions by US citizens employed in the UK. Where a US citizen resident in the UK is employed in the UK by a UK employer or UK permanent establishment and is a member of a UK pension scheme, their own contributions are deductible in computing US taxable income, and employer contributions and accrued benefits are excluded from US income. The conditions are that the contributions qualify for UK tax relief, the scheme generally corresponds to a US plan, and the relief does not exceed what the US would allow for a corresponding US plan. In practice that means the 401(k) elective deferral limit for your own contributions and the overall Section 415(c) limit for combined contributions in the year. Contributions above those limits are taxable in the US even though they get UK relief. Note the gaps: 18(5) covers employment only, so a self-employed US citizen contributing to a SIPP gets no US deduction, and it does not cover contributions to a personal pension that is not connected to your employment. Article 18(2) to (4): temporary moves. If you were in a home-country scheme before you moved and you continue contributing while working in the other country, the host country must allow relief for those contributions, capped at the relief it gives its own residents, provided the competent authority agrees the scheme corresponds. Under Article 1(5)(b) this survives the saving clause only for people who are not citizens or green card holders of the host country. So a US citizen who keeps paying into a 401(k) while employed in the UK can claim UK relief under 18(2), and a British employee seconded to the US can keep deducting UK scheme contributions against US tax, but a US citizen cannot use 18(2) against the US. What counts as a pension scheme. Article 3(1)(o) defines it as any plan, scheme, fund or trust established in a country that is generally exempt from income tax there and operated principally to provide pension or retirement benefits. The exchange of notes lists the qualifying arrangements on each side: UK registered pension schemes (workplace schemes, group personal pensions, SIPPs and stakeholder pensions) and US qualified plans, 403(b)s, IRAs and Roth IRAs. An ISA is not a pension scheme. It has no retirement restriction, so nothing in Article 18 protects it. A Lifetime ISA is not a pension scheme either, despite the retirement branding. Form 8833 mechanics for Article 18. One form per year, attached to Form 1040. Cite the treaty country (United Kingdom), Article 18(1) and 18(5), the Code sections overridden (Sections 61, 402(b) and 83), the scheme name and employer, and the amounts excluded. Reporting for pension positions is arguably waived under Regulation 301.6114-1(c)(1)(iv), but the exclusion is worth thousands each year and the penalty for guessing wrong is $1,000 per omission, so file it.

A tax treaty allocates taxing rights on income. It does not import one country's reliefs into the other's system. The following UK reliefs and US rules are untouched by the treaty, and each catches Americans in the UK every year: - ISAs. There is no ISA article. Interest in a Cash ISA is taxable US interest income. A Stocks and Shares ISA holding UK funds is a collection of PFICs, each reported on Form 8621 and taxed at the highest ordinary rate plus an interest charge on sale. The UK charges nothing, so there is no credit. - Lifetime ISA bonus. The 25% government bonus is taxable income in the US in the year it is credited, and the account is a PFIC wrapper if it holds funds. - Premium Bonds. NS&I prizes are tax free in the UK and fully taxable in the US, and the holding counts toward the FBAR threshold. - PFIC rules. Nothing in the treaty overrides Section 1291. The only mitigations are domestic: a mark-to-market election for exchange-traded investment trusts, or simply holding US-listed ETFs in a UK general investment account. - FBAR and Form 8938. The treaty has an exchange of information article (Article 27) that works with the FATCA agreement to send your UK account data to the IRS. It does not reduce your reporting. UK current accounts, ISAs, pensions, SIPPs and Premium Bonds all go on FinCEN Form 114 above $10,000 aggregate, and on Form 8938 above the expat thresholds. - Net Investment Income Tax. The 3.8% NIIT applies to a US citizen in the UK with modified adjusted gross income above $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (joint) on dividends, interest, capital gains and rental income. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion does not reduce it, and the Internal Revenue Code allows no foreign tax credit against it. Two taxpayers, Christensen (under the France treaty) and Bruyea (under the Canada treaty), won in the Court of Federal Claims on the argument that the treaty's relief article created an independent credit. On August 31, 2026 the Federal Circuit reversed both decisions, holding that the treaty credit articles are subject to the Code's own limitations. Article 24(1) of the UK treaty carries the same "subject to the limitations of the law of the United States" language, so a Form 8833 position claiming UK tax against NIIT now runs against controlling appellate authority. Our position is to pay the NIIT and to expect protective refund claims to be denied unless the Supreme Court takes the cases. - Council Tax and Stamp Duty Land Tax. Not income taxes, not covered, not creditable. - National Insurance. Excluded from the treaty by Article 2(3)(a)(i). It is not creditable on Form 1116, ever. The Totalization Agreement, not the treaty, is what stops you paying both NIC and US Social Security tax. - Capital gains on your home. The UK's principal private residence relief has no US equivalent beyond the $250,000 ($500,000 joint) Section 121 exclusion, and Article 13 gives no exemption to a US citizen. Gains on a London home, including currency gain on repaying a sterling mortgage, are US-taxable above the exclusion.

The income tax treaty excludes social security taxes, so the Totalization Agreement is the only thing standing between you and paying both National Insurance and the 15.3% US self-employment tax. Its rules: - Employees pay into the system of the country where they work. A US citizen employed by a UK employer pays Class 1 NIC and owes no US Social Security or Medicare tax. - A worker sent by a US employer to the UK for up to five years can stay in the US system with a certificate of coverage from the Social Security Administration, and is then exempt from NIC. The reverse applies to a UK employer sending staff to the US, with HMRC issuing the certificate. - Self-employed people are covered by the country where they reside. A self-employed American living in the UK pays Class 2 and Class 4 NIC and is exempt from US self-employment tax. Attach a statement to Schedule SE citing the agreement; a certificate from HMRC is the proof if the IRS asks. - Contribution records combine. If you have at least six US quarters of coverage, UK qualifying years count toward the 40 quarters needed for US retirement benefits, and vice versa for the ten UK years needed for any State Pension. Each country then pays a benefit based on its own record only. No Form 8833 is needed for a totalization position; reporting under Regulation 301.6114-1(c)(1)(vii) is waived. Do not confuse the agreement with the treaty when you fill in Form 1116: NIC is never a creditable income tax, and UK income tax never reduces self-employment tax.

Article 24 is in the Article 1(5) list, and it is the article that does most of the work for Americans in the UK, because it is the treaty basis for crediting UK tax against US tax and US tax against UK tax. Article 24(1): the US credit. The United States allows a resident or citizen a credit for UK income tax and capital gains tax, "in accordance with the provisions and subject to the limitations of the law of the United States". That phrase means the credit is the ordinary Form 1116 credit with all its Code rules: separate baskets (general for salary and pensions, passive for interest, dividends and rents), the limitation to US tax on foreign-source income, a one-year carryback and ten-year carryforward, and no credit against NIIT. The treaty guarantees the credit exists; the Code decides its size. Article 24(2): resourcing for US residents. Income of a US resident that the UK may tax under the treaty is deemed UK-source for credit purposes, which matters when US domestic sourcing rules would otherwise call it US-source and leave no room for a credit. Article 24(4) and (5): the UK credit. The UK allows US tax paid on US-source income as a credit against UK tax on the same income, subject to UK rules, which cap the credit at the UK tax on that income and allow no carryforward. Income the US may tax under the treaty is deemed US-source for this purpose. Article 24(6): the three-step rule for US citizens living in the UK. Because the saving clause lets the US tax a UK-resident citizen on US-source income at full rates, the treaty needs a rule to stop each country crediting the other's tax in a loop. Paragraph 6 provides it: - The UK credits only the tax that the US could charge a UK resident who is not a US citizen, meaning 15% on dividends and 0% on interest and most other income. - The US then credits the UK tax that remains after that UK credit. - To make that possible, the US-source income is treated as UK-source to the extent necessary, which is why Form 1116 has a separate "certain income re-sourced by treaty" category. You file one Form 1116 for that category, and we disclose the resourcing on Form 8833 even though individuals are not specifically required to. Worked example. You are a US citizen in the UK receiving $10,000 of US dividends. The US taxes them at your qualified dividend rate, say 15%, or $1,500. The UK taxes them at your dividend rate, say 33.75% for a higher-rate taxpayer, or $3,375, and credits $1,500 of US tax, leaving $1,875 of UK tax. The US then credits that $1,875 against its own tax on the resourced income. Net result: you pay the higher of the two rates once, not both. Get the order wrong and you either double pay or claim a credit that will be denied.

Article 25 says nationals of one country may not be taxed more burdensomely in the other than that country's own nationals in the same circumstances, and it extends to taxes of every kind, not just income tax. Both paragraphs survive the saving clause. For an individual it is rarely the basis of a return position; its usual value is in the estate tax context and for UK companies with US shareholders. It does not, for example, give a UK resident US citizen a right to ISA-style treatment for US purposes, because a US citizen resident in the US does not get that either. Article 26 is the mutual agreement procedure (MAP). If you believe the actions of one or both tax authorities will tax you in a way the treaty does not permit, you can ask the competent authority of your country of residence (or of nationality for Article 25 issues) to take up your case with the other side, and the treaty says the competent authorities should resolve it irrespective of domestic time limits. In the US, MAP requests go to the IRS Advance Pricing and Mutual Agreement office under the current revenue procedure; in the UK, to HMRC's competent authority team. The US-UK treaty has no mandatory arbitration clause, unlike the US treaties with Canada, France and Germany, so an unresolved case can stay unresolved. When MAP is worth it for an individual: - Both countries treat you as resident and neither will apply the Article 4 tie-breaker in your favour. - HMRC and the IRS characterise the same payment differently, for example one calls a payment a lump sum under 17(2) and the other periodic income under 17(1). - A UK enquiry or IRS examination adjusts income that was already taxed in the other country and the credit cannot be recovered because of time limits. File domestic protective refund claims in both countries at the same time as the MAP request. MAP is slow, typically two to three years, and it does not stop domestic statutes running.

Article 23 stops third-country residents from routing income through a UK or US entity to get treaty rates. Individuals who are residents of either country are automatically "qualified persons" under Article 23(2), so you never fail it personally. It matters if you own a UK limited company or a UK partnership that receives US-source income. A UK company qualifies if it passes one of the tests: its shares are regularly traded on a recognised exchange; at least 50% of its shares are owned by qualified persons and less than 50% of its gross income is paid out as deductible payments to non-qualified persons (the ownership and base erosion test); it is engaged in an active trade or business in the UK and the US income is connected with that business; or it satisfies the derivative benefits test through owners resident in EU or EEA states with equivalent treaties. A one-person consultancy owned by a UK resident (including a US citizen resident in the UK) normally passes on ownership and base erosion, or on the active trade test. State the provision on the company's W-8BEN-E and on line 4 of Form 8833 if the company files a US return. Where LOB bites is a UK holding company with substantial non-UK, non-US shareholders, or a company whose UK profits are largely paid out as interest or royalties to related parties abroad. If your structure looks like that, the treaty rates on US dividends, interest and royalties are not available to it.

The income tax treaty does not apply to death or gifts. The separate Convention on Taxes on Estates of Deceased Persons and on Gifts, signed October 19, 1978 and in force from November 11, 1979, does. It covers US estate tax, gift tax and generation-skipping transfer tax, and UK inheritance tax (which replaced capital transfer tax). It is domicile-based. Article 4 decides where you are domiciled for treaty purposes. You are treated as US-domiciled if you are domiciled there under US law, or if you are a US national who has been resident in the US within the preceding three years; you are treated as UK-domiciled if you are domiciled there under UK law. If both apply, the tie-breaker runs: permanent home, closer personal and economic relations, habitual abode, then nationality, with the competent authorities deciding otherwise. A US national who is not a UK national and has not been UK resident in seven of the ten preceding tax years is generally treated as US-domiciled. Why domicile matters. Under Article 5, if you are treaty-domiciled in the US, the UK may charge inheritance tax only on limited categories of UK property, chiefly UK real estate and business property of a UK permanent establishment. UK shares, UK bank accounts, ISAs and pensions in your estate escape UK inheritance tax. With the US exemption at $15 million per person from 2026 and the UK nil-rate band frozen at £325,000, this is worth a great deal. Article 8: the marital deduction. Property passing to a spouse from a person domiciled in or a national of the UK, which the US may tax, qualifies for a US marital deduction to the extent it would if the decedent had been US-domiciled and the estate limited to US-taxable property. This helps a UK-domiciled person with US assets, but it does not override the US rule that a bequest to a non-citizen spouse only qualifies for the unlimited marital deduction through a qualified domestic trust (QDOT). On the UK side, the spouse exemption is capped at £325,000 for transfers to a spouse who is outside the UK inheritance tax net, unless the spouse elects in. Article 9: credits. Where both countries tax, the country of domicile credits the tax of the situs country on property it was entitled to tax, and there are ordering rules for dual-domicile cases. April 6, 2025: residence replaces domicile. The UK abolished domicile as the basis for inheritance tax. Your worldwide estate is now within UK inheritance tax if you have been UK resident for at least ten of the previous twenty tax years, with a tail of three to ten years after you leave. HMRC's published position is that the treaty continues to apply by reading long-term residence in place of domicile. The practical consequence for a long-term American resident is that you now become UK treaty-domiciled on the ten-out-of-twenty test and must rely on the Article 4 tie-breaker, where the permanent home test comes first. Giving up your last US home while keeping a UK one can make your whole worldwide estate UK-taxable at 40% above £325,000, with no US estate tax to credit because of the $15 million exemption. Keep a US permanent home, or plan for the exposure, and make sure your executors will be able to prove your treaty domicile facts. Treaty positions under this convention are also disclosed on Form 8833, attached to Form 706 or Form 709.

Form 8833, Treaty-Based Return Position Disclosure, is how you tell the IRS that a treaty overrules or modifies the Code on your return. Section 6114 requires it; Section 6712 imposes a $1,000 penalty per failure for individuals ($10,000 for corporations), with a reasonable cause exception. Attach it to Form 1040 (or 1040-NR, 706 or 709). One form per treaty position, filed every year the position is taken. Line by line: - Line 1: treaty country (United Kingdom) and the article(s) relied on, for example Article 17(3) or Articles 18(1) and 18(5). - Line 2: the Code provisions overruled or modified, for example Sections 61 and 402(b) for pension positions, or Section 86 for Social Security. - Line 3: name, address and identifying number of the payer, if the position concerns a specific payment. - Line 4: the Article 23 limitation on benefits provision you qualify under. Individuals cite Article 23(2)(a). - Line 5: tick "Yes" only if the position is one specifically listed in Regulation 301.6114-1(b), such as a dual-resident tie-breaker claim under (b)(8). Most individual pension and Social Security positions are "No". - Line 6: a plain-English explanation of the facts, the treaty reasoning and the amounts. Give the gross amount and the amount excluded. When Form 8833 is not required. Regulation 301.6114-1(c) waives reporting for, among others: positions that a treaty reduces or modifies tax on dependent personal services, pensions, annuities and social security (c)(1)(iv); totalization agreement positions (c)(1)(vii); withholding-rate claims made on Form W-8BEN; and for individuals, positions where the income items concerned total no more than $10,000 in the year, or $100,000 for a residency position (c)(2). Two points on the waivers. First, the Form 8833 instructions carve back some waived positions, and the waivers are read narrowly on audit. Second, a waiver only removes the penalty; it does not make your position right. We file Form 8833 for every Article 17(3), 18 and 24(6) position regardless, because it is free, it stops IRS matching notices, and it documents the claim if the position is later questioned. Green card holders using the Article 4 tie-breaker must file Form 8833 under Regulation 301.7701(b)-7, are not covered by any waiver, and should take advice first because of the expatriation consequences described above. The HMRC side. If you are UK resident you claim treaty relief through Self Assessment: the foreign pages (SA106) for US pensions, Social Security, dividends and interest, with Foreign Tax Credit Relief on the US tax and a note in the white space for Article 17(1)(b) Roth or 17(3) positions. If you are a US resident with UK-source income, use form US-Individual 2002 with an IRS Form 6166 certificate (apply on Form 8802) to obtain relief at source or a refund; UK pension payers cannot stop deducting PAYE until HMRC issues the NT code. Non-residents letting UK property use the Non-Resident Landlord Scheme forms, and US-resident non-residents with UK income file SA100 with the residence pages (SA109) to claim treaty relief. Record keeping. Keep, for at least six years: P60s and payslips showing employer pension contributions; annual pension scheme statements; 401(k) and IRA Forms 1099-R; Forms SSA-1099; copies of Form 6166 and HMRC NT code letters; your Article 4 residence analysis for any year you were dual resident; and the Form 1116 carryforward schedules. Treaty positions are only as good as the evidence behind them when the IRS or HMRC asks.