Is my scholarship taxable in the country where I study?
It depends on three things, and they have to be checked together. The purpose of your visit matters: the relief is written for people present mainly to study or train. The source of the payments matters, because articles of this kind often protect money coming from outside the host country and treat host-country earnings differently. And the article carries a time limit. A payment can be within the relief in one year and outside it in the next, on identical facts, simply because the period has run out. Check all three before assuming a scholarship is free of tax.
Does the treaty exemption cover teaching or assistant work too?
Often not, or not to the same extent. Payments for services performed in the host country are a different category from grants and maintenance received from abroad, even when both arrive through the same institution. In practice a student with a stipend and a teaching contract has two income streams that need separating and testing individually. The paperwork the institution issues rarely makes that split, so it has to be done from the underlying appointment letters and payment records before the return is prepared.
I am back for a second postdoc — do I still qualify?
Frequently not. The relief periods for visiting academics and researchers run from arrival, so the clock started with your first appointment and does not reset because a new contract has been signed. A second appointment in the same country often falls wholly or partly outside the period. That is worth establishing before the first payment rather than at filing time, because if the relief is not available the payer's withholding and your instalment position both change, and fixing either retrospectively is more work than setting it up correctly.
Do I have to file anything to claim treaty relief as a student?
Yes. The relief is not automatic, and nothing happens because you are plainly a student. Claiming it requires a filing, and where the payer has already withheld, the filing is also the route by which the withheld amount is recovered. The claim has to identify the article relied on and be consistent with the facts the institution's records show — purpose of visit, source of the payments, date of arrival. A claim that does not match those records is the one that gets questioned.
Are my study days excluded from the residency day count?
Sometimes, but that is a separate claim on a separate form, and it is not made by claiming the income relief. People who assume one covers the other end up treated as resident on a day count they believed had been dealt with. If both apply to you, both have to be filed, and the two claims must tell the same story about when you arrived and why you were present. Decide early which you need, because the deadlines and the evidence for each are not the same.
My funding comes from home — does that change my treaty position?
It can be decisive. Articles covering students and trainees commonly distinguish money that comes from outside the host country for maintenance, education or training from money earned inside it, and they treat the two differently. So the practical work is tracing each payment to its source: a home-institution grant, a host-university stipend, and a research contract paid locally can all land in different places even though they reach the same bank account in the same month. Keep the award letters, because the trace is built from them.
What is the MLI, and could it have changed my treaty?
The Multilateral Instrument is a single convention that amends many bilateral treaties at once, so countries did not have to renegotiate each one. Where both countries adopted a provision, it overrides the older text — most consequentially a principal-purpose test that can deny a benefit where obtaining it was a main reason for the arrangement. Reading the original treaty alone is therefore not safe. See our treaty work.
Which country taxes my government pension or social security?
The treaty decides, and the answer differs by the type of retirement income. Many treaties give social security to the country of residence, sometimes exclusively, while a pension for government service can stay taxable only in the paying country. Some treaties also cap the taxable proportion or preserve an exemption the source country gives its own residents. Because the categories are distinct, one household can have two pensions taxed by two different countries. See the pensions and annuities article.
