Working in US on UK Salary

I travelled to the US a few times on work but receive my salary in the UK.  Should I be paying US income tax on this and deducting that US tax from my UK tax?

I may have a choice so please note I currently do not deduct contributions to my UK pension plan from my US tax calc to save myself paying US taxes when I retire and get the tax-free lump sum in the UK (which means I don't invoke the UK/US treaty?).

If you were in the UK for the bulk of the year preceding and following the current tax year, then the treaty says all workdays are UK workdays.

If you don't invoke the treaty, then the US workdays are taxed in the US.  The UK won't give you relief for those workdays, however, since you *could* have taken the treaty position but opted not to.

Many of those "workdays" might not really be workdays.  A conference or educational trip to the states could be considered outside the scope of workdays.  This is a position to discuss with your tax advisor.

Just to add that there are some instances where electing to use any provision of a treaty requires to elect in the entire treaty (this is designed to stop one from cherrypicking just the parts one wants).

Even if the treaty exempts your earnings attributable to US workdays from being US sourced for Federal purposes, you may still owe State taxes on days worked in States that have an income tax because the treaty was not with a State government.

It is arguable whether HMRC will - any more - give credit for these State taxes.

Thanks to both of you for the info.

It actually makes my life much simpler not to pay the US and offset vs the UK but I was afraid of what you raised Guya, that it would mean I can't include pension contributions in my current US income which is why I mentioned them in my post.

Thanks again