01. HOME-COUNTRY TAX EXIT:
The first move most people get wrong.
Until your home-country tax residency is properly and formally exited — with documented evidence that holds up if revenue authorities later ask questions — every other personal structure you build sits on contested ground. The exit is the foundation. Skip it or get it wrong, and the rest of the architecture is exposed.
Why this is harder than it looks:
Exiting tax residency isn't a single transaction — it's a deliberate process whose rules differ for every country you might be leaving. The United Kingdom uses a statutory residence test based on day-counts, family ties, work ties, and accommodation availability, with no single threshold that triggers automatic non-residence in all cases. Australia layers a domicile test over a 183-day rule, with administrative practice that has tightened markedly since 2018 — particularly around the question of where a person's "permanent place of abode" sits. Canada looks at residential ties and intent, weighting factors like home ownership, family location, and economic interests. Germany examines centre of vital interests. Italy and Spain each have their own multi-factor tests, with traps for the unwary in both. Etcetera, etcetera.
What this means in practice: a clean exit from one country may not be a clean exit from another. The documentation, the timing, the supporting evidence, and the sequencing all differ. A move from Sydney to Medellín requires a different exit playbook from a move from London to Lisbon. Generic offshore advice — particularly the kind that circulates on YouTube — typically gets one element of the process right and several others wrong.
HOW WE WORK:
Free to Roam coordinates the exit through specialist mobility advisors, tax accountants and lawyers who work daily inside the system you're leaving. Licensed filing is done by the relevant partner, not by FTR — but we manage the overhead strategy, document collection, preparation, relationship, the timeline, and the integration with the rest of your structure.
The deliverables typically include: confirmation of the date from which non-residence applies; a documented severance of tax-relevant ties (property arrangements, employment ties, family arrangements, banking footprint as relevant); the departure-tax return where one is required (the UK form P85, Australia's residency-cessation lodgement, Canadian departure return, etc.); and the supporting evidence file — flight records, lease terminations, registration changes, tax-residency certificates from the destination — that proves the exit was substantive rather than nominal.
The work runs in parallel with the destination side, so there's no period during which you're tax-resident nowhere — a situation that sounds appealing and is in practice the worst of all worlds, because it tends to result in either country claiming you for the period of ambiguity.
Typical engagement length for the exit-only component is six to twelve weeks. Some jurisdictions (Australia in particular) require longer, especially where significant assets need to be addressed before the exit completes.
WHEN THIS BECOMES RELEVANT:
Tax exit is the first capability we engage on with most new clients. It comes before structuring, before banking, before any of the destination-side work — because the structure you'll eventually build needs to sit on a clean foundation, and the foundation is your tax residence position.
Two practical points. First, the exit can happen before or after you physically leave your home country, but the optimal sequencing depends on the specific country's rules. Some jurisdictions reward an exit that's documented in advance; others care more about the date of physical departure. We work through this with you in the first consultation.
Second, partial exits — moving but staying tax-resident at home — are sometimes the right answer. They're rare, but they exist (particularly for UK citizens with strong remaining ties, or for Australians in specific circumstances). We won't push for a full exit if the right structure for your situation involves keeping one foot in your home country.
