Before you dive into Gary’s “Robin Hood” tale, here’s why it matters.

Every year thousands of British seafarers hand over chunks of their pay, sometimes twice, simply because the tax rules feel too murky to challenge. Gary was one of them until a single phone call to HMRC flipped his payslip from taxed-at-source to tax-exempt. Word spread from mess-room chatter to a full-blown practice, and now the same curiosity that saved his own wages is rescuing crews across the fleet.

Read on to see how a chief engineer with a stopwatch, a stubborn streak, and a passion for fair play turned frustration into seafarers’ tax advice that actually works at sea.

“I was swapping sea-stories with a mate on a night watch when he said it.

At first I laughed, but the name stuck—because, like most seafarers, I’d been on the sharp end of a system that never seems to sail in our favour.

You know the routine: leave home for weeks, bunk with strangers, squeeze into cabins that would make a hostel blush, all for a wage that still looks suspiciously like 2013 money. We tell ourselves it balances out when the Seafarers Earnings Deduction lands, until a single UK rotation shreds the magic 183 days and the whole refund sinks without trace.

That happened to me. One dry-dock here, one Scottish-Isles charter there, and an entire year’s claim evaporated. I’d always filed my own returns, so in a fit of frustration I rang HMRC, sat on hold for what felt like another Atlantic crossing, and asked a question nobody had asked me before:

“Why do I pay the tax at all if I’m only going to reclaim it twelve months later?”

Turns out I didn’t have to. Because my previous years qualified, HMRC let me change my tax code to zero—no PAYE, no annual scramble, nothing to claw back. The first payslip that landed without income tax felt like finding buried treasure on deck.

Word spread as fast as gossip in a mess room. I filled in the forms for a few crewmates, then a few more. Soon the galley table was a pop-up tax clinic, and that Robin Hood quip started sounding less like a joke and more like a mission.

So, I set up a practice, partnered with a larger firm, and now spend my shore leave helping seafarers do one of two things:

• Claim back the tax they’ve already lost, or
• Stop the tax from leaving their payslip in the first place.

The best part? Once your zero-band code is locked in, an unexpected stint in UK waters can’t wreck it. It’s a safety net the 183-day rule never gave us.

So yes, maybe I am a little bit Robin Hood. I’m not stealing from anyone; I’m just returning what the law says you shouldn’t have lost. And if that keeps a few more ratings in the black instead of the red, I’ll happily wear the green tights, figuratively, of course.