Treaty residency tie-breaker (Article IV) — where does doing it myself start to cost money?
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: permanent home comes first, then centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then nationality, with competent-authority agreement as the final step.
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.
Both countries say I am tax resident — which one wins?
One of them does. A treaty does not split you between the two or let you be half resident in each. Article IV applies an ordered sequence of tests and stops at the first one that produces an answer. Permanent home is asked first, then centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then nationality, with agreement between the two tax administrations as the final step if nothing before it has resolved the case. Most files never get past the first or second test, which is why the evidence you need is usually much narrower than people expect.
What counts as a permanent home for the tie-breaker?
It is about availability rather than ownership. A home is one that is continuously available to you for your use, which is why a property let out on a long lease usually is not one, and a place you rent or occupy rent free usually is. The question is not where you spend most nights, and it is not where your post arrives. Because this is the first test, it decides a large share of cases on its own. Establishing what was available to you in the year in question, and documenting it, is often the whole of the work.
I kept a house in both countries — what happens then?
The first test cannot separate you, so the analysis moves to the second: which country your personal and economic relations are closer to. That draws on family, where your working life is centred, where your business and property interests sit, where your social and civic life happens, and where your affairs are administered from. It is a weighing exercise rather than a checklist, and it is decided on the whole picture. This is the test where evidence gathered at the time is worth far more than an account assembled from memory after an enquiry has started.
Does my passport decide where I am resident for tax?
Not unless the three tests above it have all failed to produce an answer. Nationality sits fourth in the order, after permanent home, centre of vital interests and habitual abode. Cases do reach it, particularly where someone maintains homes in both countries and genuinely divides their time, but it is uncommon. Treat citizenship as the tie-breaker of last resort rather than the starting point. Where a file does get that far, everything before it has already been argued and documented, and the passport is settling what the evidence could not.
Can I just choose the country where I would pay less tax?
No. The tests run in a fixed order and stop at the first that gives an answer, so the outcome follows from your facts rather than your preference. What you can influence is the facts themselves, and only before the year in question, not afterwards. Where a home is kept available, where a family lives, where working life is centred: those are decisions with a treaty consequence attached, and they are open until they are made. Once the year has closed, the position is whatever the evidence supports, and the useful work is establishing that honestly.
What if the two countries still do not agree after the tie-breaker?
The article's final step is agreement between the two tax administrations, reached through the procedure the treaty provides for exactly this. It is slower and more formal than anything before it, and it is used when the ordered tests have not settled matters or when the two authorities read the same facts differently. Preparing for it is a documentary exercise: the position, the evidence for it, and how each test was applied, set out so that both administrations are looking at one account. Most cases are resolved well before this stage.
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.
What is the US exit tax?
A charge that applies when a US citizen renounces or a long-term permanent resident gives up their status and meets one of the covered-expatriate tests — an income test, a net-worth test, or a failure to certify five years of compliance. A covered expatriate is treated as having sold worldwide assets on the day before expatriation, and Form 8854 is what reports the position. The tests turn on figures that are indexed, so they are read for the year of expatriation. See Form 8854.
