These Passports Let You Pay Just 1% Tax

If you want a powerful passport, one of the best, the kind that tops the Nomad Passport Index every year, the kind that opens up visa-free access to Europe and the UK, even the US, that offers real banking and the kind of real credibility that a lot of people want, well, if you want all that, you're supposed to accept high taxes as the price of admission. That's just a deal. Strong country? You better pay up. But here's the truth. There are a handful of countries, not a lot, but a few, where you can legally combine a T or A passport, a top tier passport for travel that lets you go anywhere in the world along with extremely low taxes, maybe even as low as 1%. Here are four passports that do just that. And I want to tell you this because... Yes, I'm a big believer in Global South passports. I think everyone should have an African passport. I think what we need now is not a second passport, but you want multiple passports, plan B, C, and D. And so what a lot of people will do when they hear the device. They won't go to nomadcapitalist.com. They'll call one of those companies on Instagram that makes it easier. They'll just sell you passports off the back of a truck without knowing anything about you. And then suddenly, because you heard from Andrew Henderson that Europe is raising taxes, you'll say, well, hey, make me Antiguan or Egyptian or Nauruan. They've got a good deal going on in Nauru these days. And so what you want to understand is how each passport plays a role in your stack. Yes, the Netherlands and Spain and the UK and other European countries are moving in the wrong direction on taxes. They're raising them. They're adding new ones. But we're going to go through four passports. Most of them, but not all of them, are in Europe. They all let you keep your taxes pretty darn low, at least for a certain period of time. And... Anyone can qualify. You don't need to have citizenship through your ancestry. You don't need to go and make a large investment through like a fast track naturalization program like Austria or the new Malta citizenship by merit. You don't have to be married to someone who's got a top tier passport themselves. And so who I'm going to talk to today are largely non-Europeans. You could be from the U.S., from Canada, from anywhere in the world, really. Those people we found. oftentimes want the optionality being able to give up their current passport. Let's say you're American. Oh my God, the place is going down the tubes. I don't want to be American, but I'd like the option to come back. If it's your first time here, my name's Andrew Henderson. I spent the last 15 plus years building optionality from lots of different bank accounts around the world, lowering my taxes by living overseas. collecting multiple second passports and just generally protecting my assets and my freedom but enough about me let's start with the first country which is ireland actually somebody on linkedin who i thought like should have known better he was in our industries like probably in his 60s he's like you should know better mr henderson ireland is not a tax-friendly country well if you're a foreigner and if you can become what's called a non-dom taxpayer it absolutely is tax-friendly in that your foreign companies and your foreign investments with very few exceptions are generally not taxed unless that money is remitted to ireland and there are actually ways that you can pre-remit money to ireland before you move there so if you've got liquidity now you can move that tax-free into ireland live off of that tax-free money and potentially never need to move money into ireland to live off again and just let your foreign businesses and investments and everything else continue untouched overseas so you're not moving your company to ireland you're basically saying all my assets are outside of ireland i'm going to move there and become a non-dom but that does not preclude you from becoming a citizen of ireland you can still spend the five-year track to naturalization if you get an irish passport what's pretty cool about this is you not only have access to the entire european union because ireland's of course in the european union they've kept their taxes very low in order because they are in the European Union. It attracts companies. But they're also part of what's called the common travel area with the United Kingdom. And so as of right, you have the ability to travel to and live in the UK. It's the only country left in the European Union that has that right because the CTA predated the European Union. And so for whatever reason, you decide to live in London, Irish. passport allows you to do that. Now of course if you're from somewhere else in Europe you just move to Ireland and I do believe that potentially people in European countries where you can't have dual citizenship like the Netherlands where they're jacking taxes up you might want to consider like moving to Ireland and getting a passport that allows you to have multiple passports and protect yourself against rising taxes. But for the rest of us one of the easiest ways to do it now that Ireland closed its IIP program or its golden visa is if you qualify as someone with a critical skill, you can simply hire yourself and you can move and work for your company. And that company's gonna pay a little bit of tax, but that company is probably not going to make much money in the scope of your kind of larger. company structure, your salary will absolutely be taxed at rates up to 52% top rate when you include all different levies and everything. Now, you know, for that, you know, you get some of the stuff that comes with paying that tax rate, but you're going to absolutely pay a lot of tax on your salary. But you could probably live in Ireland and pay 30 or 40 or 50,000 euros per year. And so if your business and investments, let's say they make a million euros a year, that could be a tax rate of 2, 3, 4%. If you're making multi-million euros per year, you can get that tax rate easily down to 1%. And what I've argued for some time now is, now that the UAE has a 9% corporate tax rate, it would be more affordable to live in Dublin. rather than Dubai. When you punch those cities in, when you're trying to book a flight, you type in Dublin, D-U-B, it always somehow defaults to Dubai, even though it's not their code. Anyway, Ireland number one. And so you could really pay, I mean, 1% tax. I mean, literally you could pay... 10 cents on the dollar or the euro compared to living in dubai depending on how you're structured in both the difference is living in dubai you're not qualifying for a passport you spend five years living in ireland you already speak the language they are a little bit flexible you don't have to be there like every day of the year but you do need to be there a majority of the time not a bad passport to have to be able to travel the world and here's what i always say the us and the uk and australia these are countries that are not only limiting freedom but they also have a certain stigma as the global south gains momentum who just likes the Irish really nobody does number two in the list also in the European Union is Cyprus the weather's better there for most people they are also a non-dom system of course all these countries with non-dom systems have kind of a history of British influence the difference in Cyprus is if you're in Bitcoin or crypto their non-dom system is more Bitcoin friendly so Ireland not quite as friendly for Bitcoiners Cyprus is this is a European Union passport, so you can go anywhere in the European Union. What that means is once you have the passport, you can decide, hey, you know, I live in Spain. I don't know why you would want to do it. Okay, if it wasn't, fine. Somebody likes to live in Spain. If you're Irish, if you're Cypriot, you can go and live in Spain. A lot of people, Irish living in Spain, it's hardly a new thing. The only issue with the Cyprus passport, which is potentially being fixed, you've got perfect visa-free travel i mean pretty much everywhere in the world except for the united states the u.s does not honor reciprocity with the european union all european union citizens can go to the u.s the u.s does not honor that back it's caused some friction but cyprus is one of the last few eu countries still negotiating with the u.s and they do believe they should get it in the near future so by the time you get cyprus nationality you probably want to go to the u.s under the esta program. Now for a lot of folks you spend seven years out of the last ten so theoretically that could be seven years you could wait to naturalize and then you just wait for them to process your application. You can also fast track that to as little as three years if you speak some basic Greek and if you have other criteria like educational background that kind of stuff they have a special program for like productive people basically. Now if you don't have you know certain background You may be a highly productive person and a high earner, but you may not be able to get that. But for some people, like even university, all that, three years, fast track to citizenship, which means it's really like the fastest way to get citizenship in the European Union, because generally the floor in the EU is five. Like years ago, Belgium, you could kind of sort of maybe do it in three if you're really lucky and you really live there. But in Cyprus, pretty much the fastest way to do it other than Malta, which has just brought back their citizenship by merit. That's going to cost you a seven-figure sum. In Cyprus, you simply get a residence permit, you move there, you put in your time, you apply for tax as a non-DOM. They have the ability for you to not even have to live there for a huge chunk of the year to have that tax residence, which means you have a certain amount of mobility with the backing of a good tax residence. Overall, pretty good system. And that's kind of the extra thing about these European countries is if you have European tax residents, that's going to shut you out of certain things. So like banks in Singapore, for example. they don't really like European tax residents. They certainly don't like you, like, making investments while you're physically located in Europe. And they've got some rules around that because European residents bring more regulation for them, and they're selling you stuff that is not in a bad way, but it's less regulated. It's not designed to comply with European regulations, which, of course, we all know are ridiculous. And there's a lot of them. And so you're going to shut yourself out of some of those things. However, you'll be taken more seriously in other areas. And so... not that everyone needs to be taken more seriously there's plenty of people who you get tax residents on some caribbean island and you pay very little and nobody really bothers you there's other people for whom they either want or need a higher standard where no one's going to look at you and say oh you pay taxes on an island you must be like cheating the system no one's saying that not to say that you're cheating the system doing it in the Caribbean island. But, you know, if you're dealing with more compliance-heavy environments, if you want more European banks, the bank in Indora, the bank in Liechtenstein, the banks in those kinds of places are going to be much more interested in talking to an Irish tax resident, maybe a Cypriot tax resident, than they are in talking to someone who's tax resident in, you know, Vanuatu, for example. And so that could be a benefit here. Now, number three is not... If you're thinking, I know all the non-dumb countries in Europe, number three is not Malta. Malta does have the tax benefits, more in the Cyprus-leaning, where it's just a really friendly non-dumb program, a little bit less complicated than Ireland's. The difference is Ireland allows pretty much anybody who can employ themselves in a high-paying role to get citizenship in five years. Cyprus allows certain people to get it in three years, but others have to wait seven. Malta really requires you to wait longer than that. Now, Malta has brought back an exceptional citizenship by merit. That's something that we help clients with, but that's a seven-figure commitment. That's not just move and work towards optionality. If you want to invest seven figures, Malta is absolutely worth considering, but it's not a place that you can simply go. pay, you know, 1% tax or somewhere in that neighborhood and then work your way towards the passport. Number three in the list is not European, it's Chile. In the southern cone of South America, they've got a special tax program. So they've got three years of a Chilean tax holiday where only your Chilean source income is taxable. Foreign source capital gains, crypto gains, stocks on non-Chilean platforms, businesses are not subject to Chilean tax. And they've got a five-year timeline to naturalization. There's some flexibility, but they have asked people to spend more time there now if they want to get citizenship than is needed. Keep in mind, we're not talking about getting residence permits you can keep in your back pocket. Europe has golden visa programs. Cyprus, you can get a residence permit. You don't need to live there, but you're not working towards citizenship by not living there. Same thing in Chile. You can get a rentista residence. You don't have to live there. You can keep the residence permit, but you're not going to be really accumulating towards citizenship. So in Chile, potentially you may owe tax under some cases for years four and five if you're living there for five years with the tax holiday for the first three. If you can't prolong that, you're living there years four and five paying some tax. But the payoff is, for some people, a better passport than any European. This is up for you to decide. Chile has visa-free access to all the countries in the Anglosphere, the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, what I call the Kuna countries. Very difficult countries to have visa-free access to. Certainly all of them together, the U.S. being one that barely lets 40 different countries in, and most of those are European. Many of those passports are hard to get. So Chile is this kind of rare new world passport in the heart of a region that does not have visa-free access to those countries. But it's such a developed country that it not only has visa-free access there, but it has visa-free access to Russia and China, like all the places in the global south. And it's connected. to Mercosur, this region in South America, where they enjoy certain privileges to basically move around, not full EU style, but move around South America. And so if you think, hey, the world could get dangerous living in a part of the world that's far away from where the fur is flying. that has plenty of food and water isn't the worst idea. Chilean passport, you're far away from it all, but you could also be able to move around different parts of South America. So those are the big three countries that you can live in. And depending on how you structure it, I mean, and depending on what your income is, you could easily pay 1% or in the single digits in tax while living in places that are developed offer consumer conveniences. These are not places where, you know, you're going to hate your life. And so you kind of have everything that you need. It's the trifecta, as it were, of quality of life, low taxes, and movement towards passports. Number four, as a bonus, is Monaco. If you can get this passport, it's harder, and it's going to take you longer. We're talking like 12 years plus. You can get visa-free access to pretty much every country on earth. Now, when you look at, including the U.S., when you look at the U.S. ESTA program, which, by the way, If you've done certain things the U.S. doesn't like, I don't care what your nationality is, you're not getting an ESTA. If you've been to Iran or Cuba or any of the other countries they don't like, they're just not giving you an ESTA. You've got to go and apply for a visa, which for a former U.S. citizen, if that's who you are, that may be more difficult. For most people, it's fine. But when you can understand when the U.S. has like 42 countries, I believe, that are part of ESTA, one of them is Monaco, which is like less than one square mile in size. you can see why having a passport with that U.S. visa-free access is such a benefit. Ireland, Monaco, Chile, these are not big countries and they have that visa-free access. So, Monaco, you get a residence permit, you've got to rent or buy a property, you've got to put money in the bank. Monaco basically outsources a lot of the due diligence to the banks. And so this is where that weird tax residence may be difficult. You come into Monaco, hey, I'm paying taxes in Vanuatu. Good luck. Getting a bank to take you. We were talking to one recently, they want 3 million euros as a deposit, and they're more open to quasi-exetic tax residences. But, you know, if you think Monaco long-term is the place for you, being a taxpayer in somewhere like Ireland, when you're coming in, is going to get the banks to be a lot more interested in working with you, because the banks are kind of the first line of defense in Monaco. Then you get your property, then you spend time there. And because it's such a small place, they don't want people taking advantage of the tax. savings there. So they patrol and you're actually living there. And so you can naturalize. They do have an exceptional citizenship program. Like Steve Wynn was given citizenship for advising on casino practices. Unless you're Steve Wynn, you're generally going to have to make a choice on which passport to keep, though. And the UAE has kind of fallen into this category as well. People look at Monaco. They look at Dubai. Oh, there's no taxes there. No, no, no. There's no taxes on certain things. Generally speaking, personal income. dividends, et cetera. Now, the downside of that is you have fewer tax treaties. And so let's say your income all comes from U.S. dividend-paying stocks. That means you're paying 30% tax on those U.S. dividends. You'd be better off living somewhere else in Europe that had higher taxes because you'd get a lower rate on the dividends. Again, headline tax rates mean nothing. If all your money comes from U.S. dividends, Monaco and Dubai aren't the places to go. It's also not Monaco the place to go. if you run a complicated international business. I don't think I could just move to Monaco and just pay zero tax because I have businesses and Monaco has rules on how much income is generated in Monaco and where you're running it, this and that. If you're just having someone else run your business and you're just kind of sitting around as a passive owner, that's going to be easier. But if you're actively involved in working in your business, that's going to be harder in Monaco. People see that 0% headline rate. I've said historically, it's really more for a place for people who are retired. Once you're retired and you just want to live in Monaco and just, you know. by virtue of having a Monaco residence permit, you can kind of slide over to France and Italy and you can go around Europe. You know, if you have that kind of access to Europe, do you care about the passport at that point? Once you're into Monaco, you're probably in. And so that passport, less interesting. Also less interesting is there are island exemptions. So British overseas territories, for example, like the Cayman Islands and others in the Caribbean, you can ostensibly use that to get British citizenship. top tier travel document and so you can do that living not in the uk itself but in one of the overseas territories where they do have zero tax you can also get dutch citizenship not so much with low tax although there's maybe some cases where it's more open in those abc islands down there in the southern caribbean not so far from venezuela if you want to hear more about getting european citizenship by living in the caribbean that's a topic i thought about talking about leave a comment below we'd be happy to do it but there you have it there are places you can live and dramatically reduce your taxes and still work towards a great passport with a great quality of life. And so if you're planning your own passport portfolio, for some people, that T or A passport may be the first thing that you want. We have clients who ask for that. They say, I need a T or A passport that in case I ever want to give up or need to give up my base, my home country passport, I don't want to sacrifice any quality. That's not my view because I don't need to go to the U.S. I don't need to go to Canada, but many of you do. This may be a good place to start. Moving to Ireland or Cyprus or even Chile could be a soft landing from a lifestyle perspective where you're not going into the more frontier places with low taxes. You're not making as big of a cultural adjustment. You could claim that passport and then continue to kind of evolve in your passport journey. At the same time, you could be getting that African passport or that other citizenship by investment in the Caribbean on top of the ones you're going to earn through naturalization. The ones you invest in aren't generally as good for travel as these. So it's a trade-off. That's what we help our clients discuss. We'd be happy to help you too.

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You have been told the deal is simple: powerful passport, high taxes. Strong country, you pay up. That assumption is wrong for 4 countries.  None of them require ancestry, a large investment, or a spouse with the right passport. Here is how each one works, what the path to citizenship actually looks like.

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0:00 Intro
1:19 Ireland: Non-Dom System and 1% Effective Tax Rate
3:29 The Irish Passport: EU Access and the Common Travel Area With the UK
4:25 How to Qualify and Move to Ireland
6:05 Cyprus: Non-Dom, Bitcoin Friendly, EU Passport
7:36 Fastest Path to EU Citizenship: 3 Years in Cyprus
10:12 Chile: 3-Year Tax Holiday and Visa-Free to the US, Canada, Australia and NZ
11:43 Chile Passport: The Rare New World Document With Anglosphere Access
13:25 The Big 3: Ireland, Cyprus and Chile at 1% Tax
13:55 Monaco: The Bonus Passport at 12 Years
15:26 Why Monaco Is Really for Passive Retirees Not Active Business Owners
17:56 How These 4 Fit Into a Passport Portfolio

Nomad Capitalist helps clients "go where you're treated best". We are the world's most sought-after firm for offshore tax planning, dual citizenship, and international diversification and asset protection. We use legal and ethical strategies and work exclusively with seven- and eight-figure entrepreneurs and investors.

We create and execute holistic, multi-jurisdictional Plans that help clients keep more of their wealth, increase their personal freedom, and protect their families and wealth against threats in their home country.

No other firm offers clients access to more potential options to relocate to, bank in, or become a citizen of. Because we do not focus only on one or a handful of countries, we can offer unbiased advice where others can't.

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