Pack a bag, kiss your loved ones goodbye, catch a flight outta here! If you're a long term expat in China who isn't living hand to mouth off an English teaching gig, you need to pay attention to the 5 year rule for personal tax. There are various websites offering great explanations as to the rule which can be found at one , two and three . If those three websites do a much better job than I can of explaining this rule, then why bother posting about it? Well, there are a few things that you need to take note of. Firstly, it's really important to understand that this rule isn't something new but it is only fairly recently that it's managed to trickle down onto a host of Finance websites and expat blogs. If you do a quick google search you'll see that most half-decent write up's appear after 2016. Information is something that China handles carefully. Would it be far fetched to assume that this sudden release of information isn't just coincidental? ...