Tax law

The eighteenth entry is a residência fiscal, and it is where a reader of English has to slow down, because one Portuguese noun faces two English ones that the law refuses to merge. « Residence » is the arithmetical status. It is counted in days spent, won in one year and lost in the next, and it is what a residência fiscal ordinarily means. « Domicile » is something else entirely, and it is not counted at all. A person receives a « domicile of origin » at birth, taken from a parent rather than chosen, and keeps it until a new one is deliberately acquired and the old home given up, which is why it can survive decades abroad. The two therefore come apart, so that somebody may be resident in one country and domiciled in another, and the press coined « non-dom » for precisely that gap. Nothing in residência carries the second idea, and Portuguese reaches for o domicílio when it wants an address rather than a lifelong status. So « tax residence » renders this entry and « domicile » renders nothing on the page, which is worth knowing before opening an English tax form.