A long list of taxes is not a reason to stop
Every home is taxed, wherever it is. If you bought at home instead, your own country would still tax the rent and the gain, and you would still pay stamp duty and yearly property tax. Buying abroad mostly changes where you pay, not whether you pay: because countries give credit for each other’s tax, you usually pay about what the higher-taxing country charges, not both in full. This page lists every rule so nothing surprises you later.
What a home abroad can add, beyond what a home at home gives:
- Spreading what you own across more than one country and currency.
- Rent and growth in another market, which can do better or worse than at home.
- In some countries, a route to live there, study, work or run a business, for you and your children.
- A place your family can use, and pass on.
Prices, rents and currencies can also fall. We show the rules so you can weigh both sides with your eyes open.
What the full guide works out for you
Choose where you pay tax (India, the United Kingdom, China, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, the UAE, Saudi Arabia or Qatar), who is buying and where the home is. Every figure carries its official source.
- Sending the money: limits, bank tax and fees
- While you own it: tax on rent, both countries
- Money left abroad: what must be reported
- When you sell: tax on the gain, both countries
- Bringing it home, and legal ways to cut the tax
- If the owner dies: inheritance tax and wills
- Rules, penalties and red flags
- What the rent really leaves you, country by country
- When the currency moves: the effect on your gain
- Your deadlines, month by month
Two examples from inside. A Mumbai couple sending ₹1.6 crore for a Dubai flat: the bank keeps back ₹28 lakh as tax on the day, claimed back in their tax returns. A London couple with £18,000 a year of rent from a Dubai flat: £7,200 of UK tax for a higher-rate taxpayer; and on a £60,000 profit when they sell, £13,680, or £12,960 if owned half each.
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