The US is the only country that taxes worldwide income.

So i travel between different countries without living much in any particular one and i pay zero tax. And if i ever want to live somewhere fulltime, i can defer income into trusts and collect it in future years when i happen to not be domiciled anywhere.

Options available to everyone except US citizens.

Or for example my friends in Russia who are US citizens have to pay a crazy US rate instead of the far more reasonable 13% in russia.

All the comments about scandi countries assume people actually declare income without using many more legal strategies available there compared with the US. The effective tax situation for wealthy US citizens is actually much worse, it is just obfuscated by the headline number.

I worked with a guy once who moved from country to country paying zero tax and he was bragging to me about this. He also had a wife and child with him. So I just thought: Nice for him: He gets to live in a country with clean water and sanitation, the rule of law, disease control, free education for young children etc ---- I pay for it.

I don't know about you, but my water and sanitation are billed to me directly by the non-government companies that provide them, and my employer pays a fraction of my health care burden to an insurance company instead of me, for tax-avoidance purposes. Every education system I have ever seen is funded by property taxes, which are paid by owners or renters via monthly checks to the owners, without regard to citizenship or domicile. The rule of law is increasingly paid for by selective enforcement of offenses with revenue-positive fine structures.

I'm not sure what exactly it is my income taxes pay for, but about anything I might want from a government is already paid for by direct billing or by some other type of tax. Maybe I'm paying for a seat cover of an F-35. Maybe I'm paying for a bridge repair that has been overdue for 30 years. I lack the attention span to follow the money that far.

That guy still pays sales taxes, and any taxes that may be indirectly passed on to him through business dealings. It isn't zero; it's just less than you, at the price of being a technically domicile-less nomad. The lifestyle is a bit more stressful, as you have to schedule mandatory events around several sets of local laws.

>The US is the only country that taxes worldwide income.

Technically no, so does Eritrea tax non-resident citizens on their worldwide income.

And it's frankly hard to make sense of the rest of your comment.

It's difficult (or impossible?) as you say for an American citizen to basically be a perpetual tourist, not actually residing anywhere?

>to pay a crazy US rate instead of the far more reasonable 13% in russia.

>All the comments about scandi countries assume people actually declare income without using many more legal strategies available there compared with the US.

Well, yes, I am assuming that people generally don't try to live as a perpetual tourist and skirt tax burdens by not actually living anywhere.

>The effective tax situation for wealthy US citizens is actually much worse, it is just obfuscated by the headline number.

Still eager to see this proved.

the point is a US citizen who is a perpetual tourist still must pay US taxes.

as a non-US citizen i can live in the US for many years and keep accruing income/assets into a trust + take loans against said income/assets to fund expenses. then one year when i happen to be a perpetual tourist i distribute all of that from the trust to myself. zero taxes.

> Denmark has 42% capital gains tax on gains over ~$7600.

How is the Danish stock market doing these days?

FDR set the top corporate income tax rate at 94% above $25000 (1941). America has atypically low tax rates for the rich right now.

Relevance?

Long-term capital gains hasn't been 15% for a long time. We can thank Obama for that. Furthermore, in any state that's remotely desirable to live in, you can throw in another 10-13% on top of those 20% capital gains.

US taxes are absurdly complex and expensive. The upside is that the system can be fairly easy to game / optimize.

Long term capital gains is 15% until you hit a super high income tax bracket. Many states lack capital gains taxes at all (e.g. Washington, which I find very livable). Thanks Obama.

Long term capital gains are 20% if you're in the top tax bracket (making a little under $500k/yr) so I doubt you'll find many people being sympathetic there. It's 15% on long term gains for the majority of people.