“Simpler than I ever thought… You can tell it’s written by a seafarer, for a seafarer”

 

I’m the first to admit I break into a cold sweat at the sight of a form, numbers, worse.

So the idea of scanning every flight ticket, boarding pass, and discharge-book page, then convincing HMRC, or some accountant, that I deserved a tax refund, felt like walking the plank.

And the rules!

Was I out of the country at midnight?

Does a night on the crew boat count?

Do travel-day hotels count?

I spent more time searching for answers than I ever spent on watch.

All I really wanted was my money back, not a crash course in tax law.

 

The Day the Fog Lifted

Enter Gary at Cfarertax. In one phone call he cleared away years of confusion and you feel like you’re on a popular talent show!

“Open the website,” he said, “and answer four yes-or-no questions. If you get four yes’s – you are through to the next round…” (I am sure there is a man with a very high waistband involved here!)

It wasn’t “Seafarers Got Talent”, but it did beat scrolling endless HMRC pages trying to figure out which paragraph applied to me. Every question was written in plain seafarer English:

“Were you signed on a vessel outside UK waters?”

“Did you spend at least one travel night away from home?”

Click, click, click, done.

 

A Form Written in Our Language

The application that followed looked nothing like the labyrinth I’d dreaded. It asked for things I actually understand:

• Sign-on date

• Sign-off date

• Sea area

• Port of relief

No legal jargon, no trick boxes, just the facts of my job.

Gary’s team took that info straight to HMRC. “They already want to give you the money,” he joked, “we just have to show them why.”

While we were at it, he switched my tax code to zero banding. Now, PAYE doesn’t come off my payslip in the first place, so there’s nothing to claw back and no more counting days.

 

Waiting Is the Hard Part, But Not Anymore

For an annual claim, you still wait on HMRC’s timetable, but once the zero-band code kicked in, waiting disappeared along with the deductions. My payslip arrived clean, and the dread I’d felt for years went overboard.

Making tax simple for seafarers isn’t a slogan, it’s what happens when a fellow mariner rewrites the rules in our own language. If you can answer “Yes” or “No”, you’re already halfway there.

And if someone as hopeless with forms and numbers as me can do it, trust me, you can too.