Moving to Jersey

Who may live on Jersey

Jersey controls housing and work through residential status, not through a visa alone. Everyone carries their status on a registration card, and it decides where you may live and work. Full "entitled" status normally comes after ten years of unbroken residence on the island. Until then most newcomers rent, often tied to a job for which the employer holds a licence.

Wealthy newcomers have their own category: people who want to become resident and guarantee the island a minimum level of tax plus wider economic or social benefit. That is High Value Residency, or HVR. If you are accepted, you can receive entitled status straight away, which means you can buy while everyone else is still renting.

One condition always applies. Alongside residential status, Jersey needs immigration clearance. If you hold no British immigration status, your application runs on two tracks at once. How UK immigration works in principle is explained in our overview of visas and residence.

High Value Residency in numbers

Jersey has run the programme since the 1970s, and the government puts the number of families on the island who came this way at around 260. It is expressly not a citizenship programme. You are not buying a passport; you are buying a residential status that comes with a tax bill.

The tax formula is simple. Income from Jersey property is always taxed at 20 per cent. Everything else is taxed at 20 per cent on the first £1.25 million and 1 per cent on the rest. Anyone applying since 14 July 2023 commits to a minimum tax of £250,000 a year on their own income. If your income falls short, Jersey deems enough income to you that the £250,000 is still due.

The government looks for worldwide income well above £1.25 million, secured for at least ten years, plus business experience, plans to invest in or engage with the island, and a social contribution. An HVR may buy residential property: a house above £3.5 million or an apartment above £1.75 million.

Since the 2026 tax year Jersey taxes every married couple independently, HVRs included. The minimum tax therefore applies to each spouse who claims the status in their own right. Earlier consents keep the rules in force when they were granted, with a minimum of £170,000 for older cases that switch to the 2018 rules.

The tax system for everyone else

Without HVR, Jersey is still plain sailing. The top rate of income tax is 20 per cent, and a tapered allowance protects small incomes. There is no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax. Goods and services carry GST of 5 per cent. Employees pay 6 per cent social security and employers 6.5 per cent, plus a long-term care charge of up to 1.5 per cent of taxable income.

Companies normally pay 0 per cent corporate income tax. The exceptions are financial services companies at 10 per cent, utilities at 20 per cent and income from Jersey property at 20 per cent. Shareholders pay tax on their dividends.

Companies and trusts, briefly

Jersey is a finance centre with its own company and trust law, and plenty of families use it without ever living there. This page is for you if you are moving. A Jersey structure without a move is a different subject with different risks: if you stay resident at home, your home country's rules on foreign companies may tax the profits of a company paying 0 per cent as if they were yours.

If you move to the island and run a company there, it usually serves a real business on the island. The bank account is the easier part when the company is managed on Jersey. How the banks see it is in our article on banking in Jersey.

The EU list and your home country

Jersey is on neither Annex I nor Annex II of the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions as revised on 9 October 2026. It exchanges account information under the Common Reporting Standard, so your bank will report to the country where you are tax resident.

What can follow you is your home country's own law. Depending on where you live now, it may tax you on unrealised gains when you leave, keep taxing certain income for years afterwards, or treat a move to a low-tax place more strictly than other moves. A regime that charges 1 per cent above £1.25 million may count as low taxation under those rules, even though Jersey is not on any list. Check this before you sell, give or move, not afterwards.

More on the list itself is on our page about the EU list of tax havens.

Who Jersey suits

Jersey suits entrepreneurs and investors with high, stable worldwide income who want a real home with schools, an airport and a British-style legal system, and for whom at least £250,000 a year in tax is a fair price. If you earn £400,000 a year, you pay more as an HVR than under the normal 20 per cent rule, so look at the alternatives first: the tax caps on Guernsey or the Isle of Man.

A word from twenty years of business in the islands: Jersey is superbly organised, but the local adviser market is expensive and fragmented. Status, house, tax, bank and school can quickly put five firms around the table, each sending its own bill. Knowing what you want before you arrive is where you save the most.

Sources: gov.je: Moving to Jersey as a high net worth individual; gov.je: High value resident tax information; gov.je: Moving to Jersey, money and tax; gov.je: Residential and employment statuses; Council of the EU: conclusions of 9 October 2026 on the EU list