Subject: Re: Reading tea leaves
"Not so fast, if you are a US citizen. The United States uses citizenship-based taxation (CBT), rather than residence-based taxation (RBT), meaning US citizens are taxed on their worldwide income regardless of where they live and where the income was earned.

Also, you can't take it with you. If not Uncle Sam, someone else will blow it! Since you already have more than you will ever need, don't sweat paying taxes too much <-:)"

Correct on point 1! I've been paying it for 23 years. You do do get a tax break that varies depending on where you live. You can write down things like rental costs and utilities and you exempt somewhere up to $93,000. You also get tax credits for taxes paid in the country you live although it's not one to one. You have to total up your income earned from the country you live along with the income you get in the states (dividends, rental collection etc.).

I also want to say- correct on point 2, at least in my opinion. Berkshire owners are tax curmudgeons by nature but my god is it dizzying trying to avoid them! At the end of the day I'm ok paying so long as it's not absurd. I'd be ok with a dividend so long as it is really small. I've heard Warren talk about creating a dividend policy before. I would like that policy to stipulate that a dividend has to be capped at a certain percentage. In other words it can never go over the original percentage that is set. So if it's set at .5% (just an example) then it can never go over that amount. This allows for dividend growth (albeit small) as market cap increases but takes away the need to grow the dividend on a yearly basis like a pure dividend stock. It's win/win- those that want a dividend get it and those that don't want to be burdened with too many taxes limit their exposure.