To South Africa from Hong Kong [PCR test in Hong Kong]
Nov 7, 2020, 3:12 pm
#16
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Earth. Residency:HKG formerly:YYZ
Programs: CX, DL, Nexus/GE, APEC
Posts: 10,689
Residency and domicile are different things, at least in the context of UK tax and possibly the tax systems of some commonwealth countries if they retain concepts inherited from the UK.
In UK tax law you can only be domiciled in one country, but you can be tax resident in multiple countries. You can be tax resident in the UK for an entire tax year under some circumstances, even if you spend as few as 16 days in the UK in that tax year.
You can be physically resident in more than one place without being a "digital globetrotter". There was a time when I travelled between the UK and HK very frequently, and I had a home in both places. If you want to belabour this point, what about someone who lives in one place for work during working days and spends non-working days elsewhere (which I also did for a time, but in the same country) - did I really change my residence back and forth 100 times that year or would it be fair to say I was resident at both addresses?
Besides that, it seems to me that you were just chastising the OP for saying "We are both HKG residents and SA residents" instead of being more accurate by saying "we have residency status in both Hong Kong and South Africa".
In HK parlance the term "HK resident" is used as a short-hand. For example once when we were visiting HK my wife left her HKID at home, so she could not use the e-channel and we went to the human officer in the residents' lane. He asked her "are you a HK resident?" We don't live in HK so strictly speaking the answer is no. But the question he was actually asking was obviously "are you a HK Resident?"
In UK tax law you can only be domiciled in one country, but you can be tax resident in multiple countries. You can be tax resident in the UK for an entire tax year under some circumstances, even if you spend as few as 16 days in the UK in that tax year.
You can be physically resident in more than one place without being a "digital globetrotter". There was a time when I travelled between the UK and HK very frequently, and I had a home in both places. If you want to belabour this point, what about someone who lives in one place for work during working days and spends non-working days elsewhere (which I also did for a time, but in the same country) - did I really change my residence back and forth 100 times that year or would it be fair to say I was resident at both addresses?
Besides that, it seems to me that you were just chastising the OP for saying "We are both HKG residents and SA residents" instead of being more accurate by saying "we have residency status in both Hong Kong and South Africa".
In HK parlance the term "HK resident" is used as a short-hand. For example once when we were visiting HK my wife left her HKID at home, so she could not use the e-channel and we went to the human officer in the residents' lane. He asked her "are you a HK resident?" We don't live in HK so strictly speaking the answer is no. But the question he was actually asking was obviously "are you a HK Resident?"
