Can a country tax me after I have moved away?
For amounts that relate to work performed while you were there, generally yes. Departure changes your residence; it does not retrospectively change where past work was done. So deferred pay, a bonus for a period you worked there, severance and equity can all produce a liability in a country you no longer live in, arriving in a year when you have no other connection to it. What changes is the mechanism: a non-resident filing, sometimes withholding at source by the former employer, and a credit claim in your new country of residence.
How long after leaving can this come up?
For as long as the arrangement takes to pay out. Awards vesting over several years, deferred bonus plans, earn-outs and pensions all reach forward, and each payment can bring its own filing obligation in the year it arises. The practical answer is to list, before you go, everything still owed to you and when it is expected to be paid, then treat that list as a schedule of future filings rather than a closed matter. The files that go wrong are almost always the ones where nobody made the list.
My old employer is still withholding tax, is that right?
It is often correct, because the payment relates to work performed there, but the amount withheld is a payroll calculation and not your liability. It is usually computed as though the whole payment belongs to that country, with no adjustment for the portion earned elsewhere and no account taken of where you now live. Treat it as a payment on account. The way to recover any excess is to file in that country for the year of payment, claim the sourced position, and adjust the credit claimed where you are resident so it follows the tax finally paid rather than the tax withheld.
Do I have to tell my new country about income from the old one?
If you are resident there, its return generally reaches your worldwide income, which includes a payment from a former employer abroad. Leaving it off because tax was already withheld elsewhere is the common mistake, and it is the one that produces correspondence, because these payments are often reported to both. Report it, claim credit for the foreign tax properly payable, and keep the two returns consistent with each other. If the years in which each country taxes the amount do not align, that mismatch has to be addressed directly rather than netted off.
Can I settle this before I leave instead?
Sometimes, and it is worth asking early, because the choices exist only while the arrangement has not yet paid out. Some of what would otherwise trail behind you can be accelerated or settled before departure, and some cannot. What is always available is clarity: a list of what will pay when, a view on which country will tax each item, and an understanding of what will be withheld at source. That turns an open-ended exposure into a known set of filings, which is a different kind of problem.
Why did I get a slip from a country I left years ago?
Because a payment was made to you in that year that the payer treats as arising there. Payroll systems keep reporting against the employee record that generated the payment, and a former employee is still an employee record. The slip is not necessarily wrong, and it is not necessarily right either: it will commonly report the whole amount to that country with no split at all. The response is to work out the sourced portion, file on that basis, and explain the difference from the slip rather than ignoring either of them.
I work remotely from another country for a company back home — who taxes me?
Usually the country you are physically in, because employment income is generally sourced where the work is done, with your residence country taxing it as well if you are resident there and giving credit. Three things follow: your employer may acquire withholding and social security obligations where you sit, a treaty tie-breaker may be needed if both countries call you resident, and a short trip that becomes a long stay can cross a residence threshold nobody was watching. See remote workers and digital nomads.
Branch or subsidiary — which should we use to expand?
A branch keeps one taxpayer: results consolidate at home, losses are usable sooner, and the exposure is that the branch is a permanent establishment whose profit the host country taxes, sometimes with a branch tax on repatriation. A subsidiary is a separate taxpayer with limited liability and local rates, at the cost of withholding on dividends home and transfer pricing on everything between them. The deciding facts are usually expected losses, liability and exit plans. See branch against subsidiary.
