§ Tax

Source of income

also called income sourcing · sourced income

The country a piece of income is legally considered to come from, which can differ from where you live.

Right, in plain English

Source of income is the country a piece of income is legally treated as coming from, which is not always where you happen to be living. Where income is sourced helps decide which country is allowed to tax it. For a nomad, that distinction is at the heart of whether your remote work gets taxed in the place you are sitting, back home, or somewhere else entirely.

You are working from a beach town for a client on the other side of the world and assume only the country you are physically in could tax that pay. Whether it can depends on where the income is legally sourced, and you find the answer is not as simple as which country your laptop was open in.

Why it matters

Where income is sourced decides which country may tax it, central to whether remote work is taxed abroad or at home.

Commonly confused with

Tax residency

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