Do I have to file at home while living in Latvia?
Residence decides it, and residence is a question of facts rather than of where your post arrives. The one exception is US citizenship, which carries the filing obligation with the person wherever they go. So the first thing we establish is which system still claims you.
Is there a treaty between my country and Latvia?
Possibly, and the version in force for your year is the one that matters — protocols and multilateral-instrument positions change what a treaty does without changing its name. We check it against the authority rather than a summary. Where no treaty applies, domestic relief takes over.
I own property in Latvia. Where is the rent taxed?
Where the property is. That is close to universal, and it usually arrives as withholding on the gross rent rather than as a return on the profit — which is why the election onto a net basis, where Latvia offers one, is normally the first thing to check. Your home country taxes the same rent and credits what was paid.
Do Latvian social contributions count as tax for credit purposes?
Often not, and that catches people out. A foreign tax credit is generally available for income taxes, not for social insurance contributions, which most home-country rules treat as a separate category. So a payslip showing a substantial total deduction can yield a much smaller credit than expected, because only part of what was withheld qualifies. Where a social security agreement exists between the two countries, it may decide which system you contribute to and relieve the double charge on the contributions side instead. The two reliefs work differently and are claimed in different places, so read the payslip line by line rather than by its total.
How is my Latvian company taxed differently from elsewhere in Europe?
The structural point, without quoting rates, is that the Baltic entity-level regimes do not all follow the pattern of charging profit as it is earned. The timing of the charge can be tied to distribution instead. That matters to an owner resident in Canada or the United States, because home-country rules on foreign corporations are written around when profits arise and when they are distributed, and a mismatch between the two systems can bring forward a charge at home on profits left inside the company. The corporate position and the shareholder position therefore have to be worked out together, not in sequence.
I work in Riga for a Canadian employer — where do I pay?
Physical presence usually decides where employment income is taxable first, so work performed in Latvia generally attracts a Latvian charge whoever signs the pay cheque. Your employer may also have created an obligation of its own by having you there, depending on what you do and how long you stay. That is a company question rather than a personal one, and employers frequently do not realise it exists. Meanwhile your residence decides whether Canada also taxes the same income, relieved by credit. Separate analyses hang on one arrangement: yours, your employer's, and the interaction between them.
Does holding a Latvian passport affect where I am taxed?
For Canada, no. Canadian tax follows residence, and citizenship of another country is only relevant as one fact among many when residence is being weighed. For the United States it is different, because American citizenship carries a filing obligation wherever you live — but a Latvian passport does not create a United States obligation. What a second nationality often does create is practical: accounts, property or a pension left behind in the other country. Those bring reporting obligations at home that have nothing to do with which passport you travel on, and they are the part people forget.
Do I report a Latvian pension while living in Canada?
Yes, if you are resident in Canada. Foreign pension income is reportable whether or not it is remitted, and the treaty between the two countries, where one applies, decides which side has the primary right to tax it and within what limit. Some pension types are treated differently from others, so the source and the nature of the entitlement matter rather than the word pension itself. Keep the annual statement from the paying institution in the language it is issued in, with a translation where the amounts are not self-evident, because that document supports both the income figure and any credit claimed.
What does a technology contractor in Latvia need to consider?
Whether you are an employee or a business, first of all, because the answer drives everything else. If you contract through your own company, that company can acquire obligations where the work is performed as well as where it was incorporated, and the charge between your company and its client has to be defensible rather than convenient. Contributions are a separate strand from income tax and follow their own rules. And if you hold shares in that company while resident in Canada or the United States, home-country rules on foreign corporations apply to you personally. Several strands, one arrangement.
What is the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion?
It lets a US person working abroad exclude a capped amount of foreign *earned* income — wages and self-employment profit, not investment income — from US income tax, claimed on Form 2555. You qualify through either the physical presence test or the bona fide residence test, and you must have a tax home abroad. The cap is indexed annually, so it is read off the form for the year you are filing. See Form 2555.
Does the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion apply to self-employment tax?
No — it does not reduce self-employment tax at all. The exclusion removes income from income tax only, so a US self-employed person abroad can exclude the profit for income-tax purposes and still owe self-employment tax on it. What can relieve that is a totalization agreement with the country where you actually work, which assigns you to one social-security system instead of both. See totalization agreements.
