Tax residency and working remotely, away from Singapore

[PNGMK]

Besides tax home, substantial presence is another important concept to avoid.

Substantial presence is based on day count; if an individual is present in the United States at least 31 days in the current year and the sum of 1) the days that individual is present in the United States during the current tax year, 2) one-third of the days that individual is present in the United States during the first preceding tax year, and 3) one-sixth of the days that individual is present in the United States during the second preceding tax year equals or exceeds 183, then that individual is substantially present in the United States.

Bottom line, if you want to spend as much time as possible in the US each without triggering, keeping it under 4 months each year should work.

Does living in Puetro Rico, US Virgin Island or other territories count as days present in the US for this test? IS this test similar to the test that the SSA will use to count 5 years presence?

Would even living in PR count as the 5 years for SS? I'm having trouble understand how I could use being Australian (but needing to be resident) to trigger SS access at ~62 would work with then wanting not be be in Australia.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood ... fe6bc71362

[malcontent]

As far as I know, US presence for SS purposes includes any US state or territory, assuming you needed 5 years (I’m still convinced that citizens of Australia do not - not as good as Austria, but it is an “additional requirements country” with a US tax treaty). If you switched to a red passport, then for sure you would.

Interesting about taxes in PR, but it seems complicated, and the crime rate in PR is on the high side. I’ve also looked at Guam, they mirror the federal tax so that you pay the same tax but pay it to Guam.