This page details my real life experience, as a British Citizen, in becoming self employed in Gibraltar, thereby receiving the same rights and benefits as residents (ID card, free medical, school etc).
One option is to use a paid service from a law firm but these are insanely expensive.
Here’s how I registered all by myself, and succeeded first time around, despite the reputation that registering as self employed is extremely difficult.
Can British Citizens Live in Gibraltar?
British Citizens do not require a formal visa or permission to legally move to Gibraltar or to rent or buy a home. However, you need to register as resident if you plan on staying longer than 3 months. The paperwork for registration needs to be presented within 6 months of having arrived.
While that paperwork is processing you’re allowed to continue living here. If your residence gets refused then you can always do a cross border run to renew your permission to stay. Simply exit to Spain and reenter Gib. Then, legally speaking, the 3 month residence clock starts again. Gibraltar law specifies that the border must allow you entry as a British Citizen unless there’s a compelling reason otherwise.
Will You Be Deported if You Don’t Register?
A British Citizen in Gibraltar will not be deported for failing to register as resident. Note that the government has the right to deport you but they have never deported a Brit due to their close relationship with the UK. This is what I’ve heard from multiple sources here in Gib.
NOTE: If you choose to not register then you will have zero access to public health, ID card, schools and benefits, but are still entitled to emergency medicine.
Not registering in Gib could present problems if you are not resident elsewhere in the world and may cause issues with bank accounts, driving licenses etc.
How to Become Resident in Gibraltar
1. Register a Company and be a Director
This is the most straightforward option. You register a company and employ yourself as director. However, you will pay about 50% higher social insurance than if you were self employed, even if you don’t actually do any work (28% of your salary capped at £381 p/m).
Additionally, from year 2, the employment office will enquire about “having local contracts”. If you don’t have these then they can refuse renewal, which would cancel your right to reside here.
If that sounds expensive (£4,700 in mandatory social insurance payments!!) then it makes a lot more sense, and is a lot cheaper to become self employed.
2. Become Self Employed in Gibraltar
Self employed people are subject to much lower social insurance rates, 20% of income capped at £221 p/m. That’s a lot less than employed persons or directors.
Additionally social insurance is only payable during the weeks in which you do some work. Therefore, if you go on holiday for 2 weeks then you pay zero.
Important note: If you would like to become permanent resident in Gib, you should have an unbroken line of social insurance and tax payments. I’d advise paying monthly, every month, even if you don’t work in a particular month.
Can British Citizens Work in Gibraltar?
Yes. You can freely work in Gibraltar without permission of any sort apart from registering with the Office of Fair Trading. Every occupation in Gib requires a license which is free if self employed and revenue under £20k per year.
If you go over £20k then you have to pay an annual fee of between £180 – £250 for registration.
How to Get Self Employed Contracts in Gibraltar
Get some local work (I will detail how to easily do this below) and register as self employed, working under your own name.
How to get local work
Any EEA or British citizen can work in Gib without needing a work permit. Therefore you can start working before you register with employment / tax etc.
Before you start you need to know the Gibraltar has a love affair with Facebook, everyone is on it and uses it regularly.
To do that I uploaded a picture of my handsome face 😉 to Facebook ads and created a very simple advert for the absolute minimum of £25 p/m. For the headline I simply put “[my industry skill] Based in Gibraltar”. The call to action is to contact me on messenger. All this is incredibly easy, and I can help you with it.
From there I got several queries of which I have now converted 3 into paying clients.
When you do get a client, ensure you have a contract with them. That local contract is the key piece of evidence for registration. Without it they will refuse registration! Note that they only want to see the contract, and do not ask for evidence of client payments.
From there it’s simply a case of doing the correct paperwork in the correct order. For sake of brevity I’ll summarise the entire process:
- Rent or buy a home in Gibraltar. Yes you have to actually be resident here.
- Get a local work contract via Facebook ads
- (Optional) get a premises waiver or rent a small office (I can direct you to one for £125 p/m). If you tend to work on client site then a premises waiver is the one to get.
- Register your self employed business with the office of fair trading (free and instant if annual revenue is under £20k)
- Register 2 accounts on Gov eServices. One for you personally and one for your self employed business.
- Assemble your ID, home rental contract, office rental contract (or waiver), business registration docs and other items (8 in total, hello bureaucracy!)
- Apply to the Employment Office as self employed and wait about 2 weeks
- Once approved you will then be able to register with the tax office
- Once registered at tax office you will start paying social insurance and tax contributions based on earnings
- After a few payments you will use the receipts (and other docs) to register for Civil Registration card, aka the residence permit
- Now you can use the health service, schools and everything else
Notes
The employment office is the gatekeeper in all of this. As long as you get that registration then it’s plain sailing (if convoluted). There’s a fair amount I’ve left out to keep this short. For example, they will check if you’re a director of a UK company, which is public information and they will check that your office is allowed for commercial use.
I can help you through it all, because I’ve been through it all. Feel free to message me here.