Do I have to file at home while living in Algeria?
For most people the answer turns on whether the ties that made them resident have actually ended. For a US citizen or green-card holder it does not: the return is due in Algeria exactly as it would be at home. Everything else on the file follows from which of those you are.
Is there a treaty between my country and Algeria?
That is verified rather than assumed: we confirm which treaty text governs Algeria and your home country for the year in question, because a protocol can move a rate or an article between years. If there is no treaty, unilateral credit rules are what prevent double taxation.
I own property in Algeria. Where is the rent taxed?
In Algeria, because that is where the property sits. The complication is the base: gross-rent withholding takes no account of mortgage interest, tax or repairs, so a leveraged property can face tax on turnover. An election onto net profit, where it exists, is what fixes that — and it has its own timing.
Do I still file at home if I work rotations in Algeria?
Usually yes, and the reason is that rotational work tends to keep home residence alive rather than end it. A rotation brings you back on a cycle, and the home, the family and the accounts generally stay where they were, which is what a residence test actually looks at. Time spent out of the country is one factor among several, not the whole answer. So the question is settled on the ties as a body of evidence, and we write that position down before a return is prepared, including where the conclusion is that residence never changed.
My salary is paid from a third country, so where is it taxed?
Where the money is paid from is rarely the point. Energy and construction contracting in Algeria frequently routes payroll through a third country, and that arrangement does not by itself move the taxing right away from where the work was done, or away from where you remain resident. Three questions stay separate: where you are resident, where the duties were performed, and which entity is genuinely the employer. We establish all three from the contract and the payment records, because a position built on the payslip alone tends to be the one that fails later.
Do my days off between rotations count as days abroad?
That depends on where you spend them, which is one reason rotational files are decided on records rather than on the shift pattern. A rotation that looks like an even split on paper often is not one in practice, because leave is taken at home. The count is built from travel evidence, not from the roster. And the count is only part of it: presence is a single factor in a residence question that also looks at where your home is, where your family lives, and what you have kept running at home while you are away.
I am an Algerian national living in Canada, so what do I report?
If you are resident in Canada, your income is reported there wherever it arises, and that includes income and assets that remain in Algeria. Rent from a property at home, a share in a family business and accounts held long before you arrived all come into it, and the asset reporting is triggered by holdings rather than by income. Relief for tax paid in Algeria on the same income is claimed on the Canadian return, and that claim needs the foreign documentation behind it. We start with an inventory of what you hold, because that is usually what is missing.
Does my employer's tax equalisation cover my filing at home?
It covers a liability. It does not file a return, and it does not settle your residence position. Equalisation arrangements are agreements between you and your employer about who bears what, and the revenue authority is not a party to them. Two things then go wrong. The first is that the equalisation payment is itself income that has to be reported. The second is that the employer's provider prepares the host-country filing and nobody owns the home one. We read the policy and the assignment letter to establish what is actually covered before agreeing a scope of work.
How do I prove I stopped being resident when I left?
With documents, not with a declaration. Breaking residence is established from what you closed down and what you did not: the home, the tenancy or sale, where the family went, the bank and investment accounts, the registrations and the memberships. Rotational work and third-country payroll both make this harder, because each tends to leave the home ties in place. Where the evidence does not support a clean break, the honest answer is that residence continued, and it is better to know that before filing than after a review. We assemble the trail and set the conclusion out in writing.
Do US citizens living abroad have to pay US taxes?
They have to file, every year, on worldwide income — the United States taxes citizens wherever they live. Whether they end up owing is a different question: the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, the foreign housing exclusion and the foreign tax credit frequently reduce the bill to nil while leaving the filing obligation fully intact. Foreign account and asset reports run separately and carry their own penalties. See US citizens living in Canada.
What is a "dual-status alien spouse", and why is my software asking?
The question comes from the filing-status screens, and it is asking whether your spouse was a non-resident or part-year resident for the year — because if they were, a joint return is not available by default. An election exists to treat a non-resident spouse as a resident for the whole year, which unlocks joint filing at the price of bringing their worldwide income into the US return and their accounts into its reporting. See a US person with a non-resident spouse.
