🇪🇬 Tax residency in Egypt

Egypt has two residency triggers: spending 183 days or more in the country within a 12-month period, or having a permanent home in Egypt. The permanent-home limb means an apartment you own or hold long-term as your base can make you resident well under the day count. Family settled in Egypt and a business run from there reinforce the same conclusion, because they are exactly what a permanent home looks like from the tax authority's side of the desk.

Residency is not a light consequence here, whatever you may have read. Egypt taxes a resident on income earned in Egypt and on income earned outside Egypt where the individual's centre of commercial, industrial or professional activity is in Egypt. That second limb is the one aimed squarely at someone in your position: if you sit in Cairo doing the work your foreign clients pay for, Egypt is where your professional activity is centred, and the income is in scope. Rates are progressive, topping out at 27.5%.

So "my clients are abroad" is not the answer to the question Egyptian law actually asks. The test looks at where the activity is run from, not where the invoices are sent. A genuinely foreign operation you happen to own while living in Egypt is a different fact pattern from a one-person consultancy performed entirely from an Egyptian apartment, and the second is the ordinary nomad case. If you plan to be resident and want to argue your centre of activity sits elsewhere, that argument needs substance and documentation behind it before the return is filed, not after.

There is no special expat or nomad tax regime and no programme that reduces the 27.5%, so if you cross into residency, price that rate into what your remote work actually nets.

On treaties: the US and Egypt have an income tax treaty in force. US citizens file US returns on worldwide income regardless of where they live, and where Egypt taxes the same income the treaty's credit relief is what stops it being taxed in full twice. For the UK, Germany, or any other home country, relief depends on whether a treaty is in force between that country and Egypt; check the official treaty list of your home tax authority rather than assuming.

An accountant is worth engaging if you expect to cross either residency limb while working remotely, if you have Egyptian-source income or are close to creating it (local clients, a local company, property you rent out), or if the permanent-home limb might apply to you below the day count. Where your centre of activity sits is a facts-and-evidence question, and that is exactly where local advice earns its fee.

The practical summary: crossing into Egyptian residency while doing your work from Egypt puts that work's income in scope, foreign clients or not. Track both residency limbs, and do not plan on a territorial escape that the law does not give you.

This information is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or tax advice.