My clients are in several countries — where is my income taxed?
Start with residence, because for a self-employed translator working from one base the income is ordinarily taxable where you live and work, wherever the client happens to be. A client's country can reach the income in narrower situations: where you travel there to interpret in person, or where its domestic law requires the payer to deduct on a payment sent abroad. What decides the question is where the work was performed and what the treaty with that country says, not where the invoice was posted from. Keep a record of which jobs were done at your own desk and which took you to the client.
Do I need to register for sales tax on translation work for foreign clients?
That is a different question from income tax, and it has its own answer. Indirect tax turns on the place of supply, which is decided by the rules of the country whose tax is in issue, by whether the client is a business or a consumer, and often by a turnover threshold. So it is entirely normal for income to be taxable in one country while registration is required in another, or in none at all. The exercise is to sort your client list into business and consumer customers by country, then test each group against the place-of-supply rules that apply to it.
A client is withholding tax and refuses my residency certificate — why?
Usually because the paperwork does not match what their own administration requires. Many payers can only release a treaty rate against a certificate in a specified form, issued by your tax authority, naming the right period, sometimes with a translation or a legalisation, and held on file before payment. A general residency letter is often not enough. Ask the client which document their finance team is obliged to hold, and by when. If the deduction has already been taken, the remaining route is a claim in that country, which means proving both your residence and the nature of the income.
Is interpreting abroad taxed differently from translating at my own desk?
It can be, and the distinction is worth keeping in your records. Work performed at your own base is ordinarily taxed where you are resident. Travelling to another country to interpret at a hearing, a conference or a negotiation puts you physically at work there, which can bring that country's rules on services performed within its borders into play, subject to the treaty. The two kinds of work often sit on the same invoice. Splitting them on the invoice, and keeping the dates and places of the assignments you travelled for, is what makes the position provable.
Should I invoice through a company instead of in my own name?
It changes the question rather than answering it. A company is a separate person with its own residence, its own registration obligations and its own filing in every country that reaches it, and the payment from the company to you is a second step with a treatment of its own. For a translator with substantial turnover and a settled client base, that structure can be worth the administration. For many it adds cost and two more sets of deadlines. Decide it on the whole picture — turnover, where the clients are, what deductions you are actually meeting — and not on one country's rate.
I have never declared my foreign client income — how do I put it right?
Deliberately, and as one exercise rather than one country at a time. Reconstruct the income by year and by client from bank credits and platform statements, identify which years remain open, and settle the correct treatment of each group of clients for both income tax and indirect tax before filing anything. Most countries have a route for coming forward voluntarily that is treated more favourably than the same facts found in an enquiry, and those routes carry conditions about being first to disclose. Take advice before making contact, because the order of the steps matters as much as the figures.
I work remotely from another country for a company back home — who taxes me?
Usually the country you are physically in, because employment income is generally sourced where the work is done, with your residence country taxing it as well if you are resident there and giving credit. Three things follow: your employer may acquire withholding and social security obligations where you sit, a treaty tie-breaker may be needed if both countries call you resident, and a short trip that becomes a long stay can cross a residence threshold nobody was watching. See remote workers and digital nomads.
How does the treaty tie-breaker work when both countries say I am resident?
As a sequence, stopping at the first test that gives an answer: where you have a permanent home available; if in both or neither, where your centre of vital interests is; then habitual abode; then nationality; and if all of those tie, the two tax authorities decide by agreement. It is evidential rather than elective — you do not choose your treaty residence, you demonstrate it, which makes the record of homes, family and time the substance of the claim. See tie-breaking dual residency.
