Domicile against residence: two words that decide different taxes

Two words that are used interchangeably in conversation and mean entirely different things in law. Getting them the wrong way round is behind a large share of the unpleasant surprises in cross-border estates.

Residence

Where you live now, tested largely on facts you can count: days present, a home available to you, where your family is, where your economic life is. It changes when the facts change, and it is usually decided year by year.

Domicile

A connection to a legal system rather than a place you are currently standing in. In the common law tradition it is acquired at birth, is hard to shed, and requires both leaving a country and intending never to return in order to replace it. It can persist for many years after the last time you lived somewhere.

Not every jurisdiction uses the concept, and those that do use it differently. Some have moved away from it — the United Kingdom replaced domicile with a long-residence test for tax purposes from April 2025. But it survives in enough places, and in enough treaties, to matter.

Where the difference bites

• Inheritance and estate taxes. These frequently follow domicile rather than residence, which is how someone who left a country decades ago can leave an estate exposed to its inheritance tax.
• Succession law. Which country's rules decide who inherits — including forced heirship rules that override a will — can turn on domicile or on nationality rather than on where you were living.
• Matrimonial property. The regime governing assets between spouses can be fixed by the law of the domicile at marriage, and it does not follow you helpfully when you move.

What this means practically

• Moving does not automatically change everything. You may become non-resident quickly and remain domiciled elsewhere for a long time.
• A residence certificate does not address domicile. They answer different questions and are issued for different purposes.
• Wills need to be jurisdiction-aware. A single will drafted in one country may not do what you expect to an asset in another, and in some places a local will for the local asset is the cleaner answer.
• Property in the Emirates is a specific case. The rules on succession to property here, and the ability to register a will that displaces default rules, are worth settling at the time of purchase rather than by an heir later.

The question to ask

Not "am I still tax resident there", which most people do consider, but "which country's law would decide my estate, and does that match what my will assumes". Those are separate questions with separate answers, and only the first one usually gets asked.