How to Call HMRC From Abroad: The International Numbers That Work
To call HMRC from abroad you need a different number — not the 0300 with +44 in front. Verified international line for every HMRC helpline, plus DWP pensions.
To call HMRC from abroad, dial the helpline's own international number: +44 135 535 9022 for Income Tax, +44 161 931 9070 for Self Assessment and +44 191 203 7010 for National Insurance. Don't dial the 0300 number with +44 in front; the international lines are different numbers. The full verified list is below.
This trips almost everyone up, because the usual rule for dialling the UK — drop the leading 0, add +44 — produces a number that does not work. HMRC's 0300 lines are non-geographic UK service numbers, and 7 of the 9 helplines below route international callers to an entirely separate line in a different city. We checked every one against the department's own GOV.UK contact page in August 2026.
Every HMRC International Number, Verified
Tap a number to dial it. Note the city column — that is the giveaway that these are real, separate lines rather than reformatted 0300s: Income Tax answers in East Kilbride, National Insurance in Newcastle, VAT in Cardiff.
| Enquiry | From outside the UK | UK number | Hours (UK time) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Income Tax (PAYE, tax codes, refunds — same line handles non-UK resident Income Tax and CGT)East Kilbride line | +44 135 535 9022 | 0300 200 3300 | Mon–Fri 8am–6pm |
| Self AssessmentManchester line | +44 161 931 9070 | 0300 200 3310 | Mon–Fri 8am–6pm |
| National Insurance (Class 1, 2 and 3)Newcastle line | +44 191 203 7010 | 0300 200 3500 | Mon–Fri 8am–6pm |
| VATCardiff line | +44 2920 501 261 | 0300 200 3700 | Mon–Fri 8am–6pm |
| Child BenefitManchester line | +44 161 210 3086 | 0300 200 3100 | Mon–Fri 8am–6pm |
| Employers / PAYE for employersLiverpool line | +44 151 268 0558 | 0300 200 3200 | Mon–Fri 8am–6pm |
| Online services helpdesk (technical)Manchester line | +44 161 930 8445 | 0300 200 3600 | Mon–Fri 8am–6pm |
| Tax Credits (scheme ended April 2025 — overpayments and existing claims)Non-geographic line | +44 300 322 9129 | 0300 322 9129 | Mon–Fri 8am–5pm |
| Non-resident landlords (NRL scheme)Non-geographic line | +44 300 322 9433 | 0300 322 9433 | Mon–Fri 8:30am–5pm |
Verified August 2026 against each helpline's official GOV.UK contact page. Government numbers do change — if one fails, check GOV.UK for that specific helpline before assuming the line is down.
Why +44 300 200 3300 Is the Wrong Number
0300 is a UK non-geographic range. It exists so that calls cost the same as a landline from anywhere in the UK, which means the billing arrangement only makes sense inside the UK network. Some foreign carriers refuse to route +44 300 at all; others route it but bill it as a premium service, which is how people end up with a surprise on their phone bill after a long hold.
HMRC's answer is to run a parallel set of ordinary geographic numbers for international callers — 01355 (East Kilbride), 0161 (Manchester), 0191 (Newcastle), 029 (Cardiff), 0151 (Liverpool). Those dial normally from anywhere and are billed as a standard call to a UK landline.
The two exceptions: Tax Credits (+44 300 322 9129 — a line that now only handles overpayments and existing claims, since the tax credits scheme ended in April 2025) and the Non-resident Landlord line (+44 300 322 9433) genuinely do use the same digits as their UK numbers. They are the only helplines in the table where the “just add +44” instinct is correct, which is exactly why it is worth checking the table rather than applying a rule.
Two lines matter especially if you live abroad permanently. GOV.UK's dedicated “non-UK residents Income Tax and Capital Gains” contact routes to the same East Kilbride number as the main Income Tax line — +44 135 535 9022 — so that one number covers tax refunds, tax codes and CGT questions for expats. And if you rent out a UK property while living overseas, the Non-resident Landlord Scheme has its own helpline (last row of the table) with slightly different hours: 8:30am to 5pm rather than 8am to 6pm.
When to Call From Your Time Zone
Every HMRC helpline runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm UK time, and closes on UK bank holidays — which are not your local holidays. That ten-hour window lands awkwardly from much of the world. Here is when it opens where you are:
| If you are in | HMRC is open (your local time) |
|---|---|
| Spain, France, Germany | 9am – 7pm |
| South Africa | 9am – 7pm |
| UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi) | 11am – 9pm |
| India | 12:30pm – 10:30pm |
| Singapore, Hong Kong | 3pm – 1am |
| Sydney, Melbourne | 5pm – 3am |
| Auckland | 7pm – 5am |
| New York, Toronto | 3am – 1pm |
| Los Angeles, Vancouver | 12am – 10am |
These windows assume British Summer Time (late March to late October). Outside it the UK runs an hour behind, so if your country does not change its clocks on the same dates, shift the window by an hour. HMRC also says its lines are quietest between 8:30am and 11am UK time — worth aiming for if your time zone allows, since the alternative is holding.
If you need to work out the overlap for somewhere not listed, our best time to call calculator does it for any pair of locations.
Calling About a UK Pension or Benefits Instead
If your question is about the State Pension rather than tax, HMRC is the wrong department entirely — you want DWP's International Pension Centre in Newcastle, which exists specifically for people claiming a UK pension while living abroad.
| Enquiry | From outside the UK | UK number | Hours (UK time) |
|---|---|---|---|
| State Pension (International Pension Centre)Newcastle line | +44 191 218 7777 | 0191 218 7777 | Mon–Fri 8am–6pm |
| Benefits paid abroad (International Pension Centre)Newcastle line | +44 191 206 9390 | 0191 206 9390 | Mon–Fri 8am–6pm |
| State Pension — dedicated Yemen lineNewcastle line | +44 191 401 8696 | 0191 401 8696 | Mon–Fri 9am–1pm |
The International Pension Centre also offers a call-back if the cost of holding is the problem, and provides interpreters. There is a separate line for claimants in Yemen, which runs shorter hours. For the full picture — claiming from abroad, life certificate deadlines, frozen pensions and NI top-ups — see our dedicated guide to calling the International Pension Centre from abroad.
Have These Ready Before You Dial
HMRC will not discuss an account until it has verified you, and failing security means starting the queue again — which is the expensive mistake when you have already held for half an hour.
- National Insurance number — needed on essentially every call.
- Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR) — the 10-digit number, for anything Self Assessment.
- Your UK address as HMRC holds it — a common security question, and a common failure point for people who have moved abroad without updating it.
- Any reference on the letter you are calling about.
- A quiet room, if you have enrolled in Voice ID. HMRC offers voice identification — you repeat a phrase, and on later calls your voice replaces some of the security questions. It speeds up every future call, but it needs to hear you clearly, so skip the airport lounge.
- A headset and something else to do. Waits on the busier lines are measured in tens of minutes, not minutes.
One scam warning, because expats are the favourite target: HMRC will never phone you to threaten arrest, deportation or a lawsuit, and it never demands immediate payment by gift card, voucher or transfer. Scammers spoof +44 caller IDs precisely because people living abroad expect official UK calls to look international. If you get a threatening “HMRC” call, hang up — then, if you think there may be a real issue, dial the number from the table above yourself. A call you placed to a number you verified on GOV.UK cannot be a scam.
What the Call Costs From Abroad
The hold is where this gets expensive, and HMRC holds are documented: the UK's National Audit Office measured an average wait of almost 23 minutes across HMRC's helplines in 2023–24 — up from five minutes in 2018–19 — and January waits on the Self Assessment line have averaged 27 minutes. Budget for 30 to 45 minutes on the phone, because the meter runs while you listen to hold music.
At a typical mobile-roaming rate of $1–3 per minute to a UK number, a 45-minute call costs $45–135. Calling the same number through a browser dialer costs about $0.021 per minute to a UK landline — roughly $1 for the whole 45-minute call, hold included. Even HMRC's 0300 numbers, which many foreign carriers refuse outright, connect over the internet at around $0.06 per minute (about $2.50 for 45 minutes) — though the geographic “outside UK” numbers in the table are the cheaper dial either way. Current prices are on the rates page. Your realistic options:
1. Ask for a call-back
DWP's International Pension Centre offers this outright. It is the cheapest option available because the cost moves to them.
2. Call over the internet
These are ordinary UK landline numbers, so any service that dials real phone numbers reaches them. Calling a UK landline through the browser costs cents per minute rather than pounds, and a long hold stops being the thing you are worried about. No app needed on desktop.
3. Skip the call entirely where you can
Honestly: many calls to HMRC are unnecessary. Tax codes, Self Assessment filing, payments, refund tracking and address changes can all be done in a Personal Tax Account or the HMRC app without calling at all, and the Income Tax and Self Assessment pages both offer a digital assistant that can hand you to a live webchat adviser — no phone bill, no time-zone problem. Phone is worth it when something is genuinely wrong or the online route has dead-ended, not for routine admin.
Related Guides
- Calling US 1-800 numbers from outside the US — the mirror-image problem: America's domestic-only number range, for anyone dealing with both tax authorities.
- Calling DHL from abroad — the same toll-free-doesn't-route problem, applied to courier support lines.
- Cheap international calls — how per-minute internet calling compares with roaming and calling cards.
- UK country code and dialling format — how +44 numbers are structured.
- Phone number validator — check a UK number is formatted correctly before you dial it.