What does the SA109 actually cover?

Four different things on one form: your residence status (boxes 1-19), split year treatment if you arrived or left partway through the year (boxes 3, 6, 10, 12), your FIG regime claim on foreign income and gains (boxes 23-39), and Overseas Workday Relief specifically (boxes 40-49). A temporary repatriation facility section (boxes 50-53) applies only to former remittance basis users.

Is claiming OWR the same as making my FIG regime claim?

No — they're two separate claims on the same form. Box 28 (foreign income) and box 29 (foreign gains) are the general FIG regime relief, reported source by source on your other supplementary pages (SA106, SA103F, SA104F, SA107). OWR — boxes 40, 41, and 44-49 — is a distinct claim specifically for employment income you earned by working outside the UK, sourced by workday. HMRC's notes are explicit that you make these as separate claims.

Which SA109 boxes are for Overseas Workday Relief?

Box 2 flags OWR eligibility on the residence-status page. The formal election and claim sit in boxes 40 through 49: box 40 is the election, box 41 the claim, boxes 44/46 the qualifying income figures, box 47 the financial limit, and boxes 48-49 the amount actually claimed.

Can I claim OWR without making the election first?

No. Per the SA109 notes, box 41 (the claim) is only valid if box 40 (the election) has also been made. The election is what allows a claim for that qualifying year's income in any tax year it's charged to tax — including, but not limited to, the year the election itself is made.

What's the difference between box 44 and box 46?

Box 44 is your total qualifying employment income after deductions, from all employments, for the tax year. Box 46 is the subset of that which is qualifying foreign employment income — the portion relating to duties performed outside the UK, worked out on a just and reasonable basis. Box 46 is always less than or equal to box 44, and it's box 46 (via the 30% calculation) that feeds the box 47 cap.

How to fill in the SA109 (Residence and FIG regime pages), box by box

The Residence and foreign income and gains (FIG) regime pages — SA109 — answer four different questions on one form: are you UK resident at all, does split year treatment apply, what's your FIG regime claim on foreign income and gains generally, and separately, what's your Overseas Workday Relief claim specifically. Per HMRC's SA109 Notes 2025-26, those four zones sit end to end across 54 boxes, and it's easy to land on this page from an OWR search and miss that OWR is only ten of them.

The four zones of the form

Residence status — boxes 1-19. Are you UK resident at all, do you qualify for OWR in principle (box 2), and — if you're a non-resident claiming personal allowances or dual-resident relief under a double taxation agreement — boxes 15-22 with the relevant country codes.
Split year treatment — boxes 3, 3.1, 6, 10, 12 (plus the SRT day counting that boxes 10-13 draw on). Covered in full in split year treatment when you move to the UK and the SRT deeming rule.
The FIG regime claim — boxes 23-39. Your arrival date and FIG regime eligibility (boxes 23-24), domicile-related boxes now mostly vestigial since domicile stopped mattering for eligibility (boxes 25-27), the actual claim on foreign income and gains (boxes 28-30), and legacy remittance-basis boxes for pre-6 April 2025 amounts (boxes 37-39).
Overseas Workday Relief — boxes 40-49. The section this page originally covered, and still covers in full detail below.

Boxes 50-53 (the temporary repatriation facility) apply only to former remittance basis users designating pre-2025 capital — out of scope here unless that's you, in which case HMRC's HS264 is the starting point.

OWR is a separate claim from your general FIG regime claim

This is the part that trips people up most: ticking box 28 or 29 doesn't cover your employment income. HMRC's notes state it directly — "you must make separate claims for relief under the FIG regime on foreign income, foreign gains and under OWR." Box 28 relieves foreign income reported on SA106/SA103F/SA104F/SA107 (bank interest, dividends, foreign self-employment, and so on); box 29 relieves foreign gains reported on SA108. Neither touches the employment income you earned by working outside the UK — that's what boxes 40-49 exist for, sourced by workday rather than by asset or account.

If you're logging both kinds of income in FIG Tracker, this maps directly onto the app: the Income tab's RSU and bonus sourcing feeds your OWR claim (boxes 40-49), while the separate Foreign income tab (bank interest, dividends, capital gains, rent) feeds your general FIG regime claim (boxes 28-29) instead — two different totals for two different boxes.

Residence status, briefly

Per the notes: box 1 is ticked if you were not UK resident at all for the tax year. Box 2 is a separate flag — tick it if you're eligible for OWR for the year, ahead of the formal election in box 40 further down. Box 4 records whether you were UK resident the previous tax year, for continuity across years. Boxes 15-22 (personal allowances as a non-resident or dual resident under a double taxation agreement, and DTA relief claims) apply to a different population than most FIG Tracker users — new UK residents claiming FIG regime relief, not people claiming non-resident allowances — so they're only relevant if that's your specific situation; HMRC's Helpsheets 302 and 304 cover the claim forms they require.

The FIG regime claim, briefly

Box 23 is your most recent UK arrival date, and box 24 the tax year you were last UK resident before that, if any — these are what actually establish your FIG regime eligibility on the form itself; see the qualifying new resident test for the 10-consecutive-year rule behind them. Boxes 25-27 are domicile-related (domicile of origin, born-in-UK-never-domiciled, date you came to live in the UK) — largely legacy now that neither nationality nor domicile affects FIG regime eligibility, but still asked for. Box 28 claims relief on foreign income, box 29 on foreign gains, and box 30 covers UK income or gains deemed foreign under qualifying asset holding company rules — a narrow case most people won't hit. Boxes 37-39 are legacy remittance-basis mechanics (remitted nominated income, business investment relief, an investment that's stopped qualifying) — relevant only if you have pre-6 April 2025 arrangements still in play.

Overseas Workday Relief: the boxes, in order

Per HMRC's SA109 Notes 2025-26:

Box 40 — the OWR election itself. This is what unlocks a claim on that qualifying year's income in any tax year it's later charged to tax, not just the year of the election. Electing also forfeits your personal allowance and several other allowances for that year — see the £300,000/30% cap page for when that trade-off matters.
Box 41 — the OWR claim. Only valid if box 40 is also completed.
Box 43 — transitional provisions, for anyone who became UK resident and qualified for the old-rules version of OWR while electing the remittance basis in 2023-24 or 2024-25. Tick this and box 47 is left blank — the financial limit doesn't apply to transitional claims.
Box 44 — total qualifying employment income after deductions, across all employments, for the tax year.
Box 46 — the subset of box 44 that's qualifying foreign employment income: the portion relating to duties performed outside the UK, determined "on a just and reasonable basis."
Box 47 — the financial limit: the lower of 30% of box 44 or £300,000. Left blank if box 43 applies.
Box 48 — the OWR actually claimed on the qualifying employment income. Cannot exceed box 47.
Box 49 — the total OWR claimed for the tax year, across every qualifying year an election has been made for (relevant if you have trailing income — see below). This is the figure that actually feeds your tax calculation.

Worked example

Someone earning £150,000, first year of the FIG regime, 60 of 230 workdays overseas, no trailing income from a prior qualifying year:

Box 40: X (electing)
Box 41: X (claiming)
Box 43: left blank (no transitional provisions)
Box 44: £150,000 — total qualifying employment income
Box 46: £150,000 × (60 ÷ 230) = £39,130 — the foreign-sourced portion, on a just-and-reasonable workday basis
Box 47: lower of 30% × £150,000 (£45,000) or £300,000 → £45,000
Box 48: £39,130 — under the £45,000 limit, so the full sourced amount is claimed uncapped
Box 49: £39,130 — nothing else to add for the year

When trailing income adds a second claim

EIM43590 gives the case that trips this up: a bonus paid in one tax year for work done in an earlier qualifying year. HMRC's own example has an employee receiving a £100,000 bonus for the prior year's performance, part of which qualifies for OWR relief — that relief is a separate claim, sourced against the earlier qualifying year's own limit, not folded into the current year's box 44/46/47/48 figures. Box 49 is where both claims get totalled for the return you're actually filing. This only works if you made the OWR election in the original qualifying year's return — without that, later claims on income relating to it aren't valid, however it's eventually taxed.

Where FIG Tracker fits in

Getting box 46 right — the "just and reasonable basis" fraction — is the part FIG Tracker exists for: sourcing each RSU tranche and bonus over its own period rather than the tax year it happens to be taxed in, so the figure that lands in box 46 actually reflects the workdays behind it. See how RSU and bonus sourcing periods work for the detail behind that number. For the boxes outside OWR — residence status, split year, and your general FIG regime claim on non-employment foreign income — the linked posts above walk through each in the same level of detail. One asset class that never reaches box 28 or 29 at all: cryptoassets, which HMRC treats as UK-situs for a UK resident regardless of which exchange holds them, so there's nothing there for the FIG regime to relieve.

FIG Tracker is a calculation aid, not tax advice. Always verify your figures with a qualified tax advisor before filing with HMRC.