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Tax Frameworks · FAQ

Tax frameworks are the personal-tax regimes that determine how income, capital gains, dividends, inheritance, and wealth are taxed across the jurisdictions a person lives, works, invests, and spends in. Modern tax frameworks have substantially more cross-border interaction complexity than the historical model of single-residency single-jurisdiction taxation — the OECD's Common Reporting Standard (CRS) automatic-exchange-of-information framework operating since 2017, the FATCA US-jurisdictional reach extending to all US persons regardless of residence, the OECD Pillar 1 reallocation-of-taxing-rights and Pillar 2 minimum-15%-corporate-tax frameworks coming into force through 2024-2025, plus the increasing aggressiveness of jurisdictions in claiming taxing rights over digital-services revenue, all combine to make tax-framework navigation more central to globally-mobile-professional life than it was 20 years ago.\n\nThe major tax-framework categories: residence-based taxation (the dominant model — your country of residence taxes you on worldwide income, with foreign tax credits or treaty exemptions for income already taxed in source jurisdictions); citizenship-based taxation (only the US and Eritrea operate full citizenship-based taxation — US persons remain US-tax-subject regardless of residence, with the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion partially mitigating this for working expatriates); territorial taxation (Hong Kong, Singapore for non-residents and many residents, Malaysia post-2022, Panama, Costa Rica — only locally-sourced income is taxed); non-domiciled regimes (the now-abolished UK non-dom from April 2025, the still-active Cyprus and Malta non-dom regimes, the modified Italian impatriate/HNW flat-tax, the modified Portuguese NHR scope from 2024, the modified Spanish Beckham Law); zero-personal-income-tax jurisdictions (UAE, Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Bahrain, Brunei, Vanuatu, Monaco — though many of these have other tax instruments like consumption taxes or wealth taxes); flat-tax regimes (some Eastern European jurisdictions like Estonia 22%, Bulgaria 10%, Hungary 15%, Russia 13% under different political frameworks).\n\nIndia's personal-tax framework runs a hybrid residence-based system with distinctive features. The "ordinary residence" plus "non-ordinarily-resident" plus "non-resident" status definitions under Section 6 of the Income Tax Act create a three-tier residency framework with substantial implications for foreign-income taxation. The 2020-2021 reforms tightened residency rules for Indian-citizens-with-substantial-stay (the 120-day rule for high-income Indian citizens who would otherwise be non-resident). The "global income" reporting requirements for Indian residents include disclosure of foreign assets, foreign accounts, and foreign income with penalty regimes for non-disclosure. The Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) governs Indian-resident outbound remittances at USD 250,000 per individual per year. The 2024 budget changes restructured capital-gains tax rates and the holding-period definitions for "long-term" classification across asset classes. The new vs old tax regime choice (introduced 2020, with 2023 default-shift to new regime) affects deduction availability.\n\nFor a globally-mobile professional, tax-framework navigation typically involves 3-5 active jurisdictional considerations. Residence determination — the OECD Model Tax Convention's tie-breaker rules for dual-residence situations apply through bilateral tax treaties; the day-count tests, centre-of-vital-interests tests, habitual-abode tests, and citizenship tests sequentially resolve dual-residency claims. Source-country taxation — most jurisdictions apply withholding tax on payments to non-residents, with rates reduced under tax-treaty articles. Treaty-shopping rules now include Limitation-of-Benefits provisions (US Model treaty pattern) and Principal-Purpose-Test provisions (post-BEPS multilateral instrument pattern) restricting treaty access to genuine commercial users. The Common Reporting Standard automatic-exchange-of-information framework means that for residents of CRS-participating jurisdictions, financial-account information from other CRS jurisdictions is reported automatically to the residence jurisdiction's tax authority. The Significant Economic Presence rules in India (since 2021), Digital Services Tax in UK and France, and the OECD Pillar 1 reallocation framework all extend source-country taxing rights over digital revenue beyond traditional permanent-establishment thresholds.\n\nCross-references: tax frameworks intersect tightly with the verticals (tax-residency for the broader residency strategy, banking-finance for the financial-services overlay, legal-services for the structuring advisory) plus the work-root portfolio (income-streams determine what gets taxed, business-structures determine entity-level taxation that flows through to personal-level, career-paths determine cross-border employment patterns).