I know I was. When does it start, when does it finish, what days count, where should I be at midnight? I had all of these questions just to work out if I qualified for a rebate. Seafarer tax felt daunting, and every time I asked around somebody added another angle to the dilemma.
There are so many tales about what is right and how it works that all I ended up with was confusion. In the end my questions were simple. Can I get a rebate on my seafarers’ earnings or not, and how do I get it?

Seafarer tax made simple, yes or no

I finally landed on the Cfarertax website. The questions are there with clear yes or no buttons. I clicked five or six yes’s and arrived at a simple form to complete and submit. If I was unsure about how many days I had, or needed, there was a straightforward, no nonsense seafarer tax calculator. I entered the dates from my discharge book and the calculator did the rest, green for go, red for no.
If all else failed I could send a message by WhatsApp or email. It did not fail.

After I submitted the form they called me to confirm receipt and that was it. Five weeks later a tidy sum was in my bank account courtesy of HMRC, thank you very much.

I will be doing the same thing next year. I might even ask them to change my tax band to zero, that way I will have to do even less and my seafarer tax is sorted without counting days.