Investor & start-up visa tax — can I handle this myself?
Some of it, yes — and we will say so on the call if that is the honest answer. The parts that are worth paying for are the ones where a missed election, a missed deadline or an unverified threshold costs more than the fee: where the investment sits, whether it is held personally or through an entity, and when residency begins all determine the tax outcome.
What if I have already filed and got it wrong?
That is a common starting point. We re-derive the position, identify whether an amendment or a disclosure route is the right vehicle, and tell you which one preserves the relief that is still available. The order matters more than the speed.
How long will it take?
It depends on the documents rather than on us. Once the pack is complete most filings turn around inside a fortnight; anything that needs a certificate from a tax authority runs on that authority's timetable, which we tell you at the start rather than at the end.
When does my tax residency start if I arrive on an investor visa?
Not on the day the visa is granted, in most cases. Residency starts from facts about presence and ties, and those facts are usually established by arrival and settlement rather than by the immigration decision itself. The gap between the two dates matters, because anything realised before residency begins is generally outside the new country's reach and anything realised after it may not be. Fix the likely start date early, in writing, and then schedule the transactions around it. Clients who assume the visa date is the tax date frequently discover afterwards that a sale they timed carefully fell on the wrong side of the line.
Should I hold my visa investment personally or through a company?
That choice is usually made by immigration counsel, for immigration reasons, and then inherited by the tax position without anyone testing it. Holding personally and holding through an entity produce different outcomes on the income the investment generates, on any later disposal, and on what has to be reported once you are resident. Neither is automatically better. What causes damage is deciding it against the visa programme's criteria alone and discovering the tax consequence after the capital has been committed, when changing the holder is itself a taxable event. Raise the question while the application is being drafted, not after approval.
My family arrives six months after me — does that change my tax?
It can change both of your positions, and they may not start at the same time. Residency is determined person by person, so a spouse and children who arrive later may begin their own residency on a different date. Family ties in either country also feed into how the residence question is answered for the person who arrived first, particularly where the home in the previous country is retained for them. Map each person's expected start date separately, then look at what is being realised in the window between them. A single family date applied to everyone is one of the more common planning errors here.
Do I have to report assets I already own before the visa is granted?
Reporting obligations generally attach to residence rather than to when the asset was acquired, so assets you have held for years can come into scope the moment residency begins. That includes holdings that produce no income and are not being sold. The practical work is building the inventory before arrival: what is owned, where, in whose name, and what documentation exists for cost and acquisition date. Assembling that later, from institutions in another country, takes far longer and sometimes cannot be completed at all. The inventory is also what the pre-arrival planning is done against, so it is the first task rather than a later one.
Should I sell my appreciated shares before or after I move?
It depends on what each country does with the gain and on where your residency start date falls, and that is exactly why the date should be established first. A disposal before residency begins is generally measured against the old country's rules; one after it may be within the new country's reach as well, with relief for the overlap depending on the treaty position. There is no general answer that holds for every asset and every pair of countries. What can be said generally is that the decision is cheap to make in the months before arrival and expensive to revisit afterwards.
Does the structure my immigration lawyer set up work for tax too?
Sometimes, but it was not designed to. Investor and start-up programmes are built around capital and business plans, and the holding structure is generally chosen to satisfy the programme's criteria on qualifying investment and control. Those criteria have nothing to do with how the return is taxed, how a later exit is treated, or what has to be reported once you are resident. The two designs can be reconciled, and usually are, but only if someone looks at them together before the capital is placed. Ask for the immigration structure to be reviewed against the tax position while both are still drafts.
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.
Is double taxation illegal?
It is legal. Two countries can each have a valid claim on the same income — one because the income arose there, the other because you live there — and nothing prohibits both from exercising it. What exists instead is relief: tax treaties allocate the claim, and domestic law gives a credit for foreign tax paid. The relief is not automatic, though. It is claimed on a return, and unclaimed relief is simply lost. See how double taxation is relieved.
