Newcomer — meaning in cross-border tax

On becoming resident, property you already hold is generally treated as acquired at its value on the day you arrived, so that day's value becomes the starting point for any later gain. The practical work is evidence. For listed holdings, a broker statement or an exchange record for the arrival date is usually enough. For private shares, land or units in an unquoted fund you need something contemporaneous: a valuation, accounts drawn up near that date, a transaction in the same class of shares. Put it in the file at the time. Reconstructing an arrival-day value years afterwards is possible but far weaker, and it is the taxpayer who carries the burden of showing the figure was reasonable.

Income that arose before you became resident generally sits outside the resident period's worldwide reporting, though it can still matter. It may be taxable where it arose, and it can affect how credits and thresholds are apportioned for your first year. The common mistake runs the other way: a full twelve months of foreign salary, interest and dividends is entered on the first return because that is what the payroll and bank summaries show. Split the year's figures at your arrival date before you start drafting, and keep the workings. That single schedule answers most first-year queries about why your return differs from the summaries you were sent.

With a document created at or near that time and then kept. What counts depends on the asset. Quoted securities and funds are straightforward, since a statement or the published price for the date will do. Foreign land usually needs a written valuation from someone who values property in that market, describing the basis and the comparables used. Private company shares need the underlying figures the valuation rested on, not just its conclusion. The aim is not a favourable number. It is to be able to show, years later and to a reviewer who was not there, how the number was arrived at and why it was reasonable at the time.

You reconstruct, carefully, and you say that is what you did. Historic exchange prices, old statements, the bank record of the original purchase, contemporaneous correspondence, and for land a retrospective valuation from someone willing to set out the basis they used. The resulting figure is weaker than a contemporaneous one and should be presented as what it is, with the working papers attached rather than buried. It is still far better than the two things people reach for instead, which are using original cost, usually overstating the gain, or estimating with no record of how. Do this before a disposal, not in answer to a query about one.

It can, and the answer turns on more than the arrival date. The resident period brings worldwide income into charge here. Before that, the question is where the employment was actually carried out, and what the other country's own rules and any treaty say about it. Where both systems reach for the same month of salary, relief comes through a credit or a treaty article rather than by choosing one return over the other. Work out the two periods first, then the source of each item within them. That order avoids the usual outcome, which is the same salary appearing in full on two returns with relief claimed on neither.

Not necessarily. Immigration status and tax residence are decided under different rules and can begin on different days. Tax residence turns on facts: where you established a home, where your family and belongings went, when the ties in the former country loosened. Someone may hold a visa for a year before arriving to live, or arrive first and regularise status afterwards. Gather the evidence of when life actually moved, such as the lease or purchase, the shipment, the school enrolment and the date the first local account opened. That record settles the date, and the date settles the whole of the first return.

You claim relief once, in the right country, in the right order. Usually the source country taxes first, the residence country then gives a credit for that tax against its own charge on the same income, and a treaty caps the source-country rate. Getting the order wrong is what produces a double charge you then have to unwind. The mechanism differs by income type, which is why we map the whole position before filing either return. See how to avoid double taxation.

It is an agreement between two countries that divides up the right to tax. Article by article it decides which country taxes employment income, dividends, interest, royalties, pensions, property and business profits — and where both may tax, it caps what the source country can withhold and tells the other to give credit. It also breaks residence ties and opens a government-to-government channel for disputes. What it never does is apply itself: a treaty position is claimed. See our treaty work.