Digital Nomad Tax Residency: The Basics

Tax residency and citizenship are different things. Most countries tax based on where you're a tax resident — typically triggered by spending more than 183 days a year there, though the exact test varies by country.

Many popular nomad destinations (Georgia, Thailand's DTV, Colombia's nomad visa) explicitly exclude qualifying visa holders from local tax residency, or tax only locally-sourced income — which is a big part of why they're popular.

Your home country's rules still apply too. US citizens are taxed on worldwide income regardless of residency (though the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion can help); most other countries stop taxing you once you establish tax residency elsewhere and cut ties properly.

This is genuinely a 'talk to a cross-border tax professional' situation once your income is meaningful — the cost of a consultation is trivial compared to getting double-taxed or triggering an audit.