Retiring to Morocco
Pensions, the State Pension uprating question, healthcare, later-life planning, and the one account-type decision that has to be made before anything else.
Moving from the UK to Morocco?
Before you move to Morocco,
know exactly where you stand.
Residency, pensions, UK tax, property and money transfers all interact when you change country — and they interact differently for each person. We help British nationals work out which questions actually apply to them, in what order, and what needs specialist confirmation.
Book your £99 Position Review →
60 minutes · Written summary afterwards · No obligation to instruct us further
Based in Rabat. Working only with British nationals.
The situation
Moving to Morocco is not one decision.
It is a set of decisions that constrain each other, and most of them are easier to get right before you arrive than after.
Where you are tax resident, and from when. Whether you can stay legally past the visa-free period, and on what basis. What happens to a UK pension — which depends on what kind of pension it is. What happens to a UK property you keep, or sell, or let. Which type of Moroccan bank account you open, and in what order relative to buying anything. Whether the land you have been shown can lawfully be sold to you at all. When to tell HMRC. When to tell anyone else.
The difficulty is not finding information. It is knowing which of it applies to you.
Almost everything published about moving to Morocco is written for a general reader — or for a French one. It is not wrong, it is just not about you. Two British people can move to the same street in the same month and face genuinely different answers on tax, on residency and on what they should do first.
Your situation
Start with the question that brought you here.
Four pages, one for each of the situations we see most. Each ends at the same place — the Position Review — but the route there is different.
Living here legally
Which residence routes are actually open to a British national, what the file contains, what usually causes rejection, and a realistic timeline.
Buying property or land
Registered title versus unregistered, land that cannot be sold to you, the real cost above the price, and how purchase money must arrive.
The whole move
A single guide to how residency, tax, pensions, property and banking interact — and the order to deal with them in.
What we see
The expensive mistakes are made before anyone leaves the UK.
These are the six we see most often. None of them is exotic. All of them are difficult or impossible to reverse afterwards.
- 01
Assuming your pension is treated like the last person's
A UK government-service pension and a private workplace pension are not covered by the same article of the UK–Morocco tax treaty, and they do not produce the same result.
- 02
Taking residency advice from a forum
Rules on entry, extension and residence permits are administered locally and change. A confident answer from 2019 is not an answer.
- 03
Paying a deposit on land before the title is verified
Registered title and traditional unregistered ownership are different things, and some land cannot lawfully be transferred to a foreign national without formal reclassification.
- 04
Moving purchase money the convenient way
Money that arrives in Morocco through the wrong channel, or into the wrong type of account, can leave you owning an asset whose proceeds you cannot take back out. There is no retrospective fix.
- 05
Changing tax residence by accident
Tax residence follows facts, not intentions, and it can change before anyone has filed anything. Both countries have their own test, and they can both say yes.
- 06
Letting the ninety days become the problem
The visa-free period is not a status and it does not accumulate. Time spent in Morocco outside a residence permit counts towards nothing.
For UK retirees & future retirees
Retiring to Morocco? Your pension type decides the answer.
Two British retirees can move to the same city in the same month and be in entirely different positions, because their pensions are not the same kind of income.
Under the UK–Morocco Double Taxation Convention of 1981, pensions paid out of UK public funds for service of a governmental nature are taxable only in the United Kingdom — Article 19. Pensions paid in consideration of past employment, and annuities, are taxable only in the country of residence — Article 18. Which article catches your pension is not a matter of degree. It changes the answer completely.
Source: UK/Morocco Double Taxation Convention, signed 8 September 1981, in force 29 November 1990 — Articles 18 and 19. Published text, HM Revenue & Customs. Last verified 30 August 2026.
Morocco, separately, offers real reliefs on foreign-source pension income under its own tax code — a forfaitary abatement on the gross pension, and a substantial reduction of the tax due on pension income transferred permanently into Morocco. Both come with conditions, and one of those conditions has a consequence most people are never told about: the account type that unlocks the tax reduction is not the account type that protects your ability to move capital back out of Morocco later.
If you intend both to draw a pension here and to buy property here, that tension has to be resolved deliberately, in advance, and in the right order.
Source: Direction Générale des Impôts, Guide fiscal des Marocains Résidant à l'Étranger 2025 — abatement under Article 60-I and reduction under Article 76 of the Code Général des Impôts. Last verified 30 August 2026.
We will not tell you what your pension liability is on this page. It depends on the pension, the amounts, your residence position in both countries and what else you own. That is precisely what the Position Review is for.
Book a £99 retirement Position Review →Before you decide
One detail British retirees find out too late.
GOV.UK's guidance on State Pension increases abroad is explicit: the annual increase is paid if you live in the European Economic Area or Switzerland, or in a country that has a social security agreement with the UK providing for cost-of-living increases. It then lists those countries.
Barbados · Bermuda · Bosnia-Herzegovina · Gibraltar · Guernsey · Isle of Man · Israel · Jamaica · Jersey · Kosovo · Mauritius · Montenegro · North Macedonia · Philippines · Serbia · Turkey · USA
Morocco is not on that list.
The practical effect is that a State Pension claimed or paid while you are resident in Morocco is not uprated each April. Over a twenty-year retirement, that compounds into a number worth knowing before you decide, rather than after.
That does not make Morocco the wrong choice. Cost of living, healthcare cost, property cost and the treatment of your other income all sit on the other side of the same ledger, and for many people the arithmetic still works comfortably. It means the trade-off should be a decision you have made, not one you discover.
We would rather tell you this before you take our fee than after.
Source: GOV.UK, Countries where we pay an annual increase in the State Pension, Department for Work and Pensions. Last verified 30 August 2026.
The first paid step
Start with your position — not a relocation package.
Most people arrive here having read a great deal and decided nothing. The obstacle is rarely a missing fact. It is that the facts they have found are general, and their situation is not.
A structured assessment of your circumstances by someone who works on these files daily and lives in Morocco. Not a sales call, and not a general briefing on Morocco.
What it covers
- Your residence position on both sides, and which routes are genuinely open to you
- How your income is likely to be treated, by type, and which parts need a regulated opinion
- The risks specific to your situation, ranked, with the irreversible ones marked as such
- What has to happen in what order, and what has a long lead time you should start now
- What to verify before committing money to anything
- Where a lawyer, notary, chartered accountant or regulated financial adviser is required, and why
How it runs
Before You complete a short intake form when you book. It takes about fifteen minutes and it is what makes the hour useful rather than introductory.
During Sixty minutes on your situation specifically. Bring your passport if you have been travelling in and out — day counts decide more than people expect.
After A written summary within three working days: what we covered, the specific answers to your position, a prioritised action list, and an indication of cost and timing for each track.
The fee is credited in full against any package you instruct us on within ninety days of the call. Package prices are published — see Pricing.
If the answer is that you don't need us, we will say so, and the summary is yours either way.
The fair question
“Why pay for this when the information is online for free?”
It is online, most of it is accurate, and we would rather you read it. GOV.UK, HMRC and the Direction Générale des Impôts publish the primary material and we cite it constantly.
The problem is that official guidance is necessarily general. It tells you the rule. It does not tell you which rules apply to you, which of them interact, which one you have to deal with first, or which of the things you have read is about a French retiree rather than a British one.
You are not paying for information you could find. You are paying for someone to look at your circumstances and tell you which four questions out of forty are the ones that matter, in what order, and which of them need confirming by a regulated professional before you act.
Set against the cost of a deposit on land that cannot be sold to you, or purchase money that arrives through a channel that forecloses your ability to take it back out, the fee is not the expensive part of this decision.
Who you would be dealing with
Not another Morocco blog.
There is no shortage of information about Morocco. There is a shortage of guidance that starts from a British person's actual circumstances — their pension, their UK property, their tax history, their family — and works forwards from there.
British-focused
We work only with British nationals moving to Morocco. The UK side of your position is not an afterthought here; it is half the work.
On the ground in Rabat
Not an intermediary in London coordinating by email. Prefectures, notaries, courts and the tax administration are dealt with in person, in the language they work in.
Independent of the transaction
We take no commission from estate agents, sellers, developers, notaries, banks or accountants. When we tell you a property is a bad idea, there is nothing on the other side of the scale.
No incentive to tell you to move
We are paid to assess your position, not to produce a particular conclusion. A meaningful proportion of the right answers are “not yet”, “not that way” or “not at all”.
Sourced, not remembered
Every rule we rely on is checked against the Direction Générale des Impôts, GOV.UK, HMRC or the relevant Moroccan code before we act on it. Where something cannot be verified, we say so.
We know where our limits are
We are an advisory practice, not a law firm, a tax practice or a regulated financial adviser. Where a matter needs a regulated opinion, we identify it and bring in the right professional.
BritInMorocco was founded in 2026 by Amine Hammana, resident in Rabat. We take a deliberately small number of clients, and every engagement is handled personally.
Afterwards
If you decide to move, we can help you execute.
Once your position is clear, these are the tracks we run. Each is scoped and priced in writing before anything starts.
Retirement & pension planning
Which treaty article catches each of your pensions, what Morocco's domestic reliefs actually require, and how the account structure interacts with everything else you plan to do here.
Residency & relocation
Which residence category you realistically qualify under, what the file contains, what usually causes rejection, and the sequence that avoids waiting on a document you could have started three months earlier. Realistic timeline is three to six months, not weeks.
Property & title due diligence
Whether the property or plot is registered, who can lawfully sell it, whether the classification permits sale to a foreign national, and whether anything is attached to the title the seller has not mentioned. Before a deposit, not after.
Family relocation
Where a Moroccan spouse or partner is involved: what the procedure requires, which parts have long lead times, and what marriage does and does not do for residence status.
UK assets & tax coordination
Your UK residence position, what happens to property you keep, what to tell HMRC and when, and whether anything already deducted was due — coordinated with a UK adviser where a regulated opinion is required.
Professional coordination
Where specialist legal, tax or regulated financial advice is required, we identify it, introduce the right professional and manage them alongside the rest of your file rather than leaving you holding five relationships together.
The first step is not buying a relocation package. It is understanding your position.
Start with the £99 Position Review →The sequence
How it works.
Book and pay. Choose a time. Payment is taken at booking, so there is nothing to arrange afterwards.
Complete the intake form. Sent immediately on booking. Fifteen minutes. It is what turns an introduction into an assessment.
The review. Sixty minutes, by video or telephone, on your situation.
Your written summary. Within three working days: findings, prioritised actions, costs and timings.
You decide. Instruct us on something specific, take the summary to another adviser, or do nothing. All three are normal outcomes.
You are not committing to a relocation package. If you do instruct us within ninety days, the fee comes off.
Qualification
Who this is for.
This is for you if
- You are seriously considering Morocco, not browsing
- You are planning to move within the next twelve months
- You have a UK pension, UK property or both, and don't know what changes when you leave
- You already spend significant time in Morocco and want to regularise it
- You are moving with, or to, a Moroccan spouse or partner
- You already own property here, or are close to buying
- You have been researching for months and still cannot tell which of it applies to you
This is probably not for you if
- You are planning a holiday
- You want general travel or lifestyle advice about Morocco
- You are looking for free legal, tax or financial advice
- You want to be told that the move is straightforward
- You are not seriously considering Morocco
In practice
The questions British people actually arrive with.
These come up in almost every review. The answers depend on your circumstances, which is the point.
- Can I stay in Morocco beyond the visa-free period, and on what basis?
- Does my UK State Pension still increase once I live here?
- Which country taxes my private pension — and does it matter that it's a workplace scheme?
- I have a government-service pension. Is that treated differently?
- Should I sell my UK house, keep it, or let it?
- Am I still UK tax resident, and from when did that change?
- How do I move purchase money without losing the right to bring the proceeds home?
- Who should check the title on a property before I pay anything?
- Should I rent for a year before buying?
- My partner is Moroccan. Does marrying change my residence position?
- What happens to my NHS access, and what do I need instead?
- I've been here eighteen months without a permit. How much of a problem is that?
Before you book
Questions about the review itself.
What exactly do I get for £99?
Sixty minutes with an adviser who works on these files daily and lives in Rabat, and a written summary within three working days setting out your position, the risks specific to you, what to do in what order, and where a regulated professional is needed. The fee is credited in full against any package you instruct us on within ninety days.
Is this legal, tax or financial advice?
No. We are a relocation and establishment advisory practice, not a law firm, a tax practice or a regulated financial adviser. We tell you what applies to your circumstances, what needs confirming and by whom, and we coordinate that professional if you want us to.
Can you tell me exactly how much tax I will pay?
Not on an hour without documents. We can tell you which country has taxing rights over each type of income you have, which Moroccan reliefs might apply and what conditions attach to them, and what a proper computation needs. Where you want a figure you can rely on, a Moroccan chartered accountant produces it and we coordinate that.
I have not decided whether to move. Is it too early?
It is the best time. Almost everything expensive in these files is expensive because it was done in the wrong order, and order is much easier to fix before anyone has committed money.
Can I speak to you before booking?
No — the review is the first conversation. It keeps the fee low and it means the hour is spent on your situation rather than on establishing what your situation is. If you are not sure it applies to you, the “this is probably not for you” list above is written to be taken literally.
Is the £99 review a sales consultation?
No. The purpose is to understand your situation and identify the next steps. If further support is appropriate we will explain why, and if it isn't we will tell you that too. You are not required to purchase anything else.
What if you tell me not to move?
Then that is the answer, and it is worth more than £99. We are paid to assess your position, not to produce a conclusion.
Can I cancel?
Yes. You have fourteen days from booking to cancel. If you ask us to hold the review inside that period — which most people do — and then cancel afterwards, you are charged for the review that has taken place. Full detail on our Cancellation Rights page.
Do you work with people already living in Morocco?
Frequently. Time spent in Morocco without a residence permit counts towards nothing, and the position usually gets more expensive the longer it runs, not less. It is a normal thing to bring to a review and not a reason to avoid one.
Where are you based?
Rabat. Every engagement is handled personally by the founder.
The next step
You've researched Morocco.
Now research your position.
Before you move, buy, sell or restructure your life around a decision this size, spend an hour finding out which questions are actually yours.
Book my £99 Position Review →£99 · 60 minutes · Written summary · Credited against any package within 90 days