When considering any form of offshore tax planning you need to essentially wear 'two hats'. The first hat is the UK hat, and the second is your offshore hat. You need to ensure that you consider the total tax impact, both in the UK, as well as offshore to decide whether your tax planning strategy is worthwhile or not.

Different offshore tax planning strategies

Firstly, you could move overseas. Essential to this is that you need to ensure you cease to be UK resident and ordinary resident. If you do, you can usually avoid UK Capital Gains Tax provided you're absent for at least five complete tax years. Of crucial importance here is the overseas dimension. In particular you need to ensure that you're not going to suffer taxes overseas or if you do you're fully aware in advance of the tax burden you face.

When considering moving overseas, there are a number of traditional tax havens that are continually popular with tax savvy expats such as Switzerland, Monaco, Cyprus, Malta and Andorra.

Secondly you could consider using an offshore company. If you are going overseas, using an offshore company is pretty much standard practice for international trading. If though, you're remaining to live and work in the UK it is much more difficult to use an offshore company tax efficiently, at least for UK tax purposes. That's not to say it's impossible, just that it will be looked at closely by the tax authorities.

There are a raft of anti avoidance rules to consider. Essentially you've got the best chance of obtaining tax benefits with an offshore company if you can show it's controlled from outside the UK, and that you are either non UK domiciled or that you had a sound business motive for incorporating the company overseas. If you can achieve this, the benefits can be huge as any overseas profits will escape UK tax altogether (and in most cases any tax overseas as well). Using an offshore company in conjunction with an offshore trust (see below) can assist in obtaining these benefits as well.

Thirdly you could use an offshore trust. Offshore trusts (and their 'cousin' the foundation)are an old favourite for international tax planners. There's been a global clampdown on using trusts (given the perception that they were established for tax avoidance motives) -- so are they still an effective tool in reducing UK & overseas tax liabilities?

The answer -- yes they are but in pretty limited circumstances. If you're a UK citizen born and bred the anti avoidance provisions that apply to any offshore trusts you form are in some ways stricter than if you formed a UK trust. So you could find yourself in a worse tax position than if you established a UK trust. It's not always like this though and there are circumstances where offshore trusts can still be used tax efficiently.

Most notably, there's the position of non UK domiciliaries. Again they are in a privileged position as many of the tax anti avoidance rules don't apply to them so they can obtain tax benefits from using trusts much more easily. There are also specific tax exemptions and opportunities for trusts that are for income tax avoidance only (as opposed to capital gains tax avoidance) or where close family won't be listed as beneficiaries.

Offshore trusts are however still popular for people coming to live in the UK. Settling overseas assets into an offshore trust before obtaining UK residence or domicile status can lead to big tax savings in the long term (particularly in terms of inheritance tax).