What goes into an evidence pack for a residency position?
The documents that answer the questions the position depends on, and nothing that merely looks official. For residence, that typically means a dated record of presence by country, the accommodation you held in each place and on what terms, where your family lived, where employment was performed and by whom you were paid, which banks and professional bodies you dealt with, and any determination issued by either authority. Each item should be dated, legible and attributable to a source. The point is not volume. A pack of the right documents is worth more than a box of statements nobody has read.
Why build the file before anyone asks for it?
Because the strength of a document depends partly on when it was created. A tenancy agreement, a boarding pass or a valuation report made at the time records what happened. The same facts written down three years later record what someone remembers, and they are treated accordingly. There is also a retention problem: banks, airlines and platforms discard data on their own schedules, which are usually shorter than the period in which your filing can be examined. Building the file as the year runs costs very little time. Building it under enquiry costs whatever the missing documents turn out to be worth.
Do I need to organise my documents or is keeping them enough?
Keeping them is the minimum; organisation is what makes them usable. An enquiry arrives as specific questions, and a pile of correctly filed statements does not answer a question until somebody maps the documents onto it. A pack that is indexed by position, with each assertion followed by the documents that support it and a note of where the support is thin, can be handed over and read. One organised only by document type has to be re-sorted before it can be used, usually at the point when time is short. Index by the claim, not by the filing cabinet.
What if some of my documents are in another language?
Keep the original and add a translation; do not replace one with the other. The original is the evidence, and a reviewer may want to see the stamp, the signature block or the letterhead regardless of the language. The translation makes it usable and should say who prepared it and when. Where a foreign document uses a term that has no exact equivalent, a short note explaining what the document is and which body issued it saves an exchange of letters later. Certified translation is sometimes required and sometimes not, so check the requirement before paying for it.
How long should I keep an evidence pack after filing?
At least as long as the filing can be examined, which is set by each country's own reassessment period and can be extended in some circumstances, so a pack touching two systems should be kept to the longer of the two. Positions with a continuing effect need longer than that. A cost base established on arrival or departure, or a treaty position that repeats each year, stays relevant until the asset is sold or the pattern ends, which can be decades. Retention costs almost nothing. Work out the disposal date when you build the pack and write it on the index.
Should my accountant assemble the pack or should I?
The documents are yours and mostly only you can obtain them, so collection sits with you. What the position requires, and therefore what is worth collecting, is the adviser's part, and it should be settled before you start gathering. The order matters: a list of the assertions the filing makes, then the documents each one needs, then the collection. Working the other way round produces a large pack that misses the item the enquiry turns on. In practice the adviser writes the index and you fill it, with the thin entries flagged as you go.
How do I actually stop being taxed twice?
In this order. Fix your residence under each country's own rules, and if both claim you, apply the treaty tie-breaker. Identify where each type of income is sourced. Read the article that covers that income type, because it decides who taxes and at what maximum rate. Then claim the relief on the residence-country return, with proof of the foreign tax. Most of the tax people lose to double taxation is lost at the last step, not the first. See how double taxation is relieved.
Do American citizens living abroad have to pay taxes?
American expats and green card holders need to file US returns for life, and many of them pay little or no US tax once the relief is applied — but the filing is what unlocks the relief, so the two questions have different answers. The exclusion for foreign earned income, the credit for foreign tax already paid and the treaty between the two countries between them usually leave the total at roughly the higher of the two countries' tax rather than the sum. Skip the return and none of it applies. See Americans abroad.
