How did you establish tax residency after moving abroad?

I cannot answer your question in any depth, but I can enlighten you about a couple of things.

First, U.S. citizens are liable for U.S. income taxes regardless where you live or what the source of your income is. We're Costa Rican/U.S. dual citizens, and we have lived in Costa Rica for over 20 years, but our income, from any and all sources, is subject to U.S. federal income tax (but not any State's income tax). There is an exemption for income paid and taxed outside the U.S. It varies from year to year.

Costa Rica imposes a national income tax on earnings in Costa Rica, but they do not tax U.S-source income such as U.S. Social Security and the like, and they do not tax earnings from employment that are earned and paid outside Costa Rica.

I’d be interested to hear from people who have moved abroad and had to figure out their tax residency.When you left your home country, did you immediately establish tax residency in your new country, or was there a period where your situation was unclear?For those who moved between several countries, how did you eventually decide where to establish your main tax base?Especially interested in experiences from freelancers, remote workers, and people who don't permanently settle in one country. - @Nomishka Dilshan

Hello, and welcome to expat.com.

Are you asking these questions to aid you in the writing of an article?

Your expat.com profile shows you as a Sri Lankan in Spain. As a foreigner in Spain, what have you learned regarding your own taxation status? Specific details would be very much appreciated.

I would like to add more regarding the EU countries region, here we have what we call city tax collected by your city of residence, and the income tax collected by either your country of residence or your country of work.

Normally, all worldwide income should be taxed under the residence tax rule which is the country of residence, but if you're a cross-boarder commuter, then there's a special situation.

So, here "Country of work" term is a bit tricky, because you may fall under a special cross-boarder rule to - maybe -  avoid double taxation, and this term means that you pay taxes in the country you worked in, so for example if you're living in Belgium but you're working in the Netherlands, you pay your income tax in the Netherlands, but if you're working on hybrid scheme, meaning that you work for example 3 days from office and 2 days from home, then you pay for the 3 days in the Netherlands and the 2 days in Belgium!

There's also the "remote workers" issue, meaning that if you're living in an EU country and your employer in another EU country but you work remotely, so your country of residence is your country of work, but actually the employer in another country, then you might accidently create either tax or social security obligation for your employer in your country of residence!

And at the end, all this fall under cross-boarders' special agreements between EU countries, so if you're living and working in EU, you need to carefully understand the cross-boarder taxation between both countries.

@Nomishka Dilshan

I worked in the USA under the sending agreement working essentially tax free (Germany and USA).  From what I understand - I may be wrong - this was at the time used especially by Germans working temporarily on the Arab peninsula.

At all other times I chose my new country of residence as my country of tax residence.  I see that as a moral question and one of ease.  It is not necessarily the cheapest, especially since you get 0 deductions in the countries of other countries you get income from.  There is DOUBLE TAXATION no matter what all the tax treaties imply, unless you have the benefit of the arrangement I had above.  Incidentally I was working under a 5-year treaty trader visa in teh USA.  Things may have changed since then ...