It is as difficult to sink a business without debt as it is sink a ship without holes.
- Manlobbi
Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
No. of Recommendations: 4
I just found out there is an interesting alternative to Monaco when it's about living without having to pay income tax: The "Thai Elite Visa", starting at around $20,000 and allowing one to live for 5 years in Thailand income tax free ("The Thai Elite Visa holder does not need to pay income taxes especially when the income was derived abroad."). More $ buy more years, up to a 20 year visa, which for many here should be enough, even without renewal after 20 years.
No. of Recommendations: 9
Depending on how rich you are, the Italian scheme is nice.
200k/year flat tax on all income earned outside Italy. For some people, that would be a bargain. (100k/year for folks who took up the offer by last August).
Sure it costs ten times what the Thai visa costs, but on the other hand, Italian food.
Some of my friends moved to Grand Cayman. Allegedly you need to have a home there, but to be tax free you need only spend one night a year there. I haven't checked that, they may have made it up. Surprisingly great food, extremely nice people, but an expensive and not-very-pretty island. One 7-mile fantastic beach, but too many hotels on it.
Jim
No. of Recommendations: 2
Depending on how rich you are, the Italian scheme is nice.
If we are onto that, let me advertise New Zealand (NZ), a country I love but is poor and could use a handful of wealthy Berkshire immigrants boosting the local economy.
Officially there is no capital gains tax in NZ. In practice that's bullshit as only capital gains from NZ or Australian stocks are tax free, but from all other stocks are taxed.
But: The first 4 years after immigration there is no tax on any foreign income at all.
Italian food
I don't want to comment on the food (I love Thai food, and NZ is, well, British (ok, one can survive on fish&chips)), but therefore "we" have the most amazing landscapes all together in a compact format.
No. of Recommendations: 2
If we are onto that, let me advertise New Zealand (NZ), a country I love but is poor and could use a handful of wealthy Berkshire immigrants boosting the local economy.
I am a little mystified why they expect that raising the investment threshold from NZD $3-5M to $15M, and restricting the allowable investments, is going to *increase* the number of visas issues from, I think, 35 last year?
No. of Recommendations: 1
There's actually a long list of countries that don't tax residents on overseas income: Cyprus, Ireland (both for "non dom" status), Gibraltar, Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Malaysia, UAE and many others, even the UK, Japan and NZ for the first 4/5 years.
Or you can travel the globe without being tax resident anywhere as long as you don't trigger tax residency rules (and not a citizen of the US, Australia and a few other countries). Banks, under pressure from governments, are making it harder to do this however.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Or you can travel the globe without being tax resident anywhere as long as you don't trigger tax residency rules (and not a citizen of the US, Australia and a few other countries).
Just a note that Australia has no problems in this regards, and should not be included with the US.
As with all countries except the US, if you have a local (Australian) passport and change your residency to any other country, you don't pay tax in Australia.
If you rent out a property in your country of citizenship (ie. the country of your passport), you still have to do a tax return and pay tax on that rent (what is called "Australian-sourced income"), but pretty much every other income (your work abroad, dividend, capital gains) isn't taxed.
The US is the odd one out, in that when you leave the US you are in a sense trapped (you could say that you are "owned" which goes against the land of the free rhetoric) and have to keep paying tax to the US.
If you live in the US and want to not pay tax, you can do this by obtaining a passport (citizenship) from another country (such as through marriage) and then renounce your US citizenship.
- Manlobbi
No. of Recommendations: 2
“The US is the odd one out, in that when you leave the US you are in a sense trapped (you could say that you are "owned" which goes against the land of the free rhetoric) and have to keep paying tax to the US.”
I think it is reasonable to perhaps continue paying U.S. taxes for three years if you move abroad but it indefinitely sounds excessive and unfair to me.
No. of Recommendations: 1
I was referring to this legislation (though I see now it was only proposed and it's unclear if it was fully enacted):
https://csttax.com/en-gb/wp-content/uploads/sites/...See the last section on ceasing residency. Someone would still be a tax resident if they spent 45 days or more in any one of the last 3 years so it would take at least that long to escape the tax net. Norway also has a 3 year rule.
No. of Recommendations: 3
The Italian flat rate scheme doesn't apply to capital gains on shares for the first five years i.e. you pay the full domestic rate (as well as the 200K).
No. of Recommendations: 7
If you live in the US and want to not pay tax, you can do this by obtaining a passport (citizenship) from another country (such as through marriage) and then renounce your US citizenship.
- Manlobbi
Actually what happens when you do this, is that all of your tax-deferred retirement accounts immediately distribute their balances and they are immediately taxed by the US government as income.
Puerto Rico used to offer (maybe still does) a deal for high net-worth US citizens that move there (and get a bill passed in the PR legislature) the ability to avoid paying US taxes for ten years on local income. A number of years ago we went through the process and then did a test-run of living there for a month. At the end I understood why many Puerto Ricans move to NYC, but few from NYC move to Puerto Rico - and we walked away from the deal. (Subsequently, the island was hit by a hurricane and we considered ourselves lucky to have dodged that bullet regardless of the potential tax savings).
Jeff
