Working remotely from abroad — the tax implications: do I need an adviser, or can I do it alone?
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: three questions decide it: where you are resident, where the work is performed for treaty purposes, and whether your presence gives your employer a taxable presence of its own.
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.
Can I keep my Canadian job while living abroad?
Usually yes as a matter of employment, but the tax consequences do not travel with the payroll. Working from another country creates exposure where the work is physically performed, not where the employer's office is. Three questions decide the outcome: where you are resident, where the work is treated as performed for treaty purposes, and whether your presence gives the employer a taxable presence of its own in that country. The first two affect you. The third affects your employer, which is why these arrangements need to be agreed rather than quietly assumed.
Do I pay tax where I work or where my employer is?
Where you are, and where the work is performed, carry far more weight than where the employer is incorporated. An employer's location does not make the income foreign to the country you are sitting in, and that country generally has a claim on employment income earned within it, subject to what the relevant treaty allocates. Your own residence is a separate question again and may point somewhere else entirely. These are three tests with three answers, and the arrangement only works once all three have been asked rather than one of them.
Could my working abroad create a tax problem for my employer?
It can, and this is the part most arrangements never examine. Where an employee's activity in a country goes beyond support work, negotiating, concluding contracts, holding the business out locally, that presence can give the employer a taxable presence in that country, with filing obligations and a share of profit attached to it. It turns what everyone treated as a personal arrangement into a corporate one, often discovered long afterwards. The exposure depends on what you actually do there rather than on your job title, so an honest description of the role is where the analysis starts.
Does my employer have to run payroll in the country I move to?
Frequently yes, and the obligation usually belongs to the employer rather than to you. Many countries require withholding on employment income earned within their borders from the first day, whether or not the employer has any other presence there. Where a treaty relieves the income from tax, the relief generally has to be claimed and evidenced rather than assumed by a payroll department. The practical consequence is that someone has to check the host country's rules before the move, because unwinding wrongly operated payroll costs more than setting it up correctly did.
I kept my flat back home, does that matter?
It matters a great deal, because it is a tie and ties are what residence is built on. Keeping a home available to you is one of the strongest indicators that the country you left still has a claim, and it commonly produces the situation where two countries both treat you as resident for the same period. That is not fatal, and it is what treaty tie-breakers exist for, but it does mean the position has to be worked out and evidenced rather than assumed to have resolved itself when the plane took off.
Is there a number of days I can stay before tax applies?
Day counts appear in several tests, but they are not one safe line and they do not all measure the same thing. One country's threshold creates residence there. Another decides whether employment income earned in the country is relieved by treaty, and that relief often carries conditions about who bears the cost of your pay as well as how long you stayed. Travelling with a single number in mind is how people end up caught by a test they were not counting against. Establish which tests apply to the countries involved, then count against those.
What are the tax implications of working remotely abroad for a year?
Three, and they arrive in this order. Your own residence may not change at all, so the home return keeps coming. The country you are working from may tax the employment income from the day the work is performed there, whatever your visa says. And your employer may acquire a filing obligation, a payroll obligation, or a permanent establishment because of where you are sitting — which is the implication that ends arrangements. All three are decided on days and facts, so both sides plan the year before it starts.
What is a permanent establishment?
The threshold at which a country may tax a foreign company's business profits. It is met by a fixed place of business — an office, a branch, a workshop — and also by a dependent agent habitually concluding contracts on your behalf, with separate rules for construction sites and, in some treaties, for services performed over a period. Cross it unnoticed and you owe returns and tax in a country you never registered in. See permanent establishment risk.
