I freelance for clients in three countries and live in a fourth. Tax feels like a minefield and I'm terrified of being taxed twice. How did other freelancers get a handle on where you actually owe what?
Got a one-off consultation with an accountant familiar with cross-border freelance situations. Worth the cost purely for the peace of mind, regardless of what I actually owed.
Following, this is the thing I keep avoiding dealing with properly.
Tax is the area I'd most strongly say: don't take numbers or "you'll owe X" from a forum, mine included. Thresholds, treaties and residency rules are country-specific and change. The Taxes section of your guide is a primer, but for a multi-country freelance setup a cross-border accountant is genuinely worth it — this is where DIY bites hardest.
Building on that — checked the guide’s tax section for my specific residency situation and it clarified more than I expected going in.
Really important thread, and one where I'd urge caution with any specific advice online (mine included). Cross-border tax residency, double-taxation treaties and how they treat self-employment income are complex, country-pair-specific, and get updated. Please treat forum answers as pointers only and get advice from a qualified cross-border accountant for your exact situation — the cost of good advice is tiny next to the cost of getting your tax residency wrong.
Adding an accountant consultation to my to-do list after reading this whole thread.
Isabella, same situation here with clients in three countries and residence in Spain. My accountant explained that there are agreements between many countries that stop you paying twice on the same income, but you have to claim it correctly, and that part is not automatic. The most useful thing he did was make a simple table: which client, which country, which income, where it's declared. It sounds basic, but it turned a nightmare into a list.
Great idea, the table. I've been keeping it in my head, which is not a system.
Not a freelancer, but same headache: German employer, living in Thailand. Tax residency is the question everything else hangs on. I pay an adviser in both countries. Expensive. Much cheaper than getting it wrong.
Update from me: I found a cross-border accountant through a freelancers' group and the first meeting clarified more than a year of reading. Lucía's table is almost exactly what she asked me to prepare. So, for anyone finding this thread: a good accountant plus a clear table of where each income comes from. That's the answer.