This information may be out of date, but I am quoting a situation which happened to some friends of mine who returned to the UK after many years abroad, where they owned a house. This was sold in order to buy somewhere in UK. They then had to repatriate the money. They tried to do this after arriving in UK. Unfortunately, they found that if the money had arrived before they did, it could have been held in a deposit account without problems. BUT, as the money was to arrive after they did, it was to incur income tax, as if they had earned it in UK after their arrival. They tried all sorts of arguments with the tax authorities, to no avail. Then, rather than facing losing a third of the sale price, they decided to leave the money abroad, and rent a (costly) house here. The problem got so bad that they eventually decided to return to the other country.