Deregistering from your home country — did you, and did it matter?

Egypt has nothing like the German deregistration for us, but we did have to inform the tax side, and the consulate here registered us as living abroad.

On the UK side there was a specific form to tell the tax authority I'd left, and it mattered, because it decided how my income in the year of the move was taxed. I wouldn't have known about it without an accountant. It's one of those things that has no deadline you notice and a consequence you definitely notice.

We're doing this now for Sweden. You tell the tax agency that you're moving abroad, and it changes your registration, which then affects your healthcare rights and some benefits at home. The part nobody mentioned to us is that it also affects our digital ID and bank access if we're not careful, so we're doing it in the right order, with the bank informed first. Oliver, your colleagues might be surprised it's the same for Swedes leaving.

Useful thread. Whether you need to deregister, notify the tax office or register with your consulate as living abroad depends entirely on your home country, and the consequences show up in unexpected places: health insurance, pensions, voting, tax residency and sometimes your bank. The Leaving section of each guide covers the departure side for that country, for example the Leaving section for Germany, which covers the deregistration Oliver describes.

Italians register with the consulate as living abroad, and without it some things at home become oddly complicated.

Poland didn't require anything formal from me, as far as I could find, but I told the tax office anyway to be safe.

Romania was a single form at the town hall, which I only did because my father insisted.

Argentina was the painful one for me, as I mentioned in the planning section. Nobody made me deregister, but not telling the tax side properly meant I spent three months later proving when I left. If your country has any kind of formal leaving process, do it before you go, when you can still visit the offices in person.

Diego, three months of proving when you left is exactly the story my colleagues told me, and why I'm glad I did it, even if it felt like pointless admin at the time.

Brazil has an exit declaration for the tax authority, and my accountant made me do it in my first year abroad.