Does the number of days I spend in a country decide my residency?
It is one of the things that decides it, and rarely the only one. Day counts, ties and treaty tie-breakers all feed into the answer, and different countries weight them differently: some apply a count as a hard test, others treat it as evidence of where your life is. Ties, such as a home available to you, family, memberships and where you bank, often carry more weight than the calendar. Counting days carefully is still worth doing, because it is the part of the picture you can prove most easily. Just do not treat a count as the whole answer.
I live abroad but still own a house in Canada. Am I resident?
Possibly, because a home available to you is one of the stronger ties. What matters is not ownership in the abstract but whether the property is at your disposal: let on a genuine lease to an unconnected tenant reads very differently from a house kept empty with your belongings in it. This is also the kind of question a treaty tie-breaker is designed to resolve when two countries both say yes. Before assuming either answer, set out the full list of ties on both sides and see which way the picture actually leans.
Can I be tax resident in two countries at the same time?
Yes, and it happens more often than people expect, because each country applies its own rules without reference to the other. Where a treaty exists between them, it provides a tie-breaker that assigns residence to one of the two for treaty purposes, working through a sequence of tests about where your home is, where your personal and economic relations lie, and where you habitually live. The tie-breaker does not repeal either country's domestic law; it decides how the treaty applies. Dual residence is manageable, but it has to be identified and documented rather than discovered when two sets of filings collide.
What evidence should I keep to show that I left the country?
Keep the ordinary traces of a life moving. Lease or sale documents for the home you left and the one you took, employment records, school registrations, where your goods went, closures of accounts and memberships, and a travel record you can reconstruct. Residency is decided on facts you can arrange in advance and evidence you can keep, and the second half is the part people neglect. Evidence carries weight because it was created at the time for an ordinary purpose. Collect it into one file as you go, because assembling it years later from memory is how good positions become weak ones.
What happens to my tax in the year I actually move?
The transition year is usually the complicated one. It can carry a cost-base reset on what you hold, credits that are prorated rather than given in full, and two countries each taxing part of the same year on their own rules. It is also the year in which the choices made earlier show up. Expect to prepare it as a single exercise across both systems rather than as two separate returns handled independently, because the interactions, meaning timing, credits and which country taxes what, are where the errors are.
Should I plan my residency before I move or afterwards?
Before, because residency is arranged from facts and the facts are set by what you do. Choosing dates, cutting ties deliberately, deciding what stays behind and on what terms: these are all available in advance and mostly unavailable afterwards. Planning means choosing those things rather than discovering the result later from a notice. It also means deciding what evidence each choice will leave, which is easier to arrange at the time than to reconstruct. If a move is likely but not yet fixed, the useful first step is a list of your current ties and what each would take to change.
Does keeping a bank account or a house make me resident?
A house available to you is one of the strongest indicators, especially with family living in it. A bank account on its own is a secondary tie that matters only in aggregate. Authorities weigh the whole picture: dwelling, spouse and dependants first, then accounts, licences, memberships and registrations. Leaving with a suitcase while the family home stays occupied rarely ends residency. See keeping a home while abroad.
Am I a US tax resident if I live overseas?
If you are a US citizen or a green card holder, yes — the United States taxes on status, not location, and living abroad changes the reliefs available rather than the obligation to file. If you are neither, residence turns on the substantial presence test, a weighted day count over three years, with exceptions for certain visa categories and a closer-connection claim available in some circumstances. The two paths lead to completely different returns. See filing US taxes from abroad.
