With a Serbian passport you can travel visa-free for instance to Russia, Cuba, China.

That’s due to agreements between non-aligned counties signed by Jugoslavia that Serbia inherited.

You cannot still enter those countries without a visa with an EU passport, thus making a Serbian passport quite advantageous if you are a EU citizen.

A nitpick: none of the countries you listed were in the non-aligned movement.

Thanks for pointing this out!

I should have said that Jugoslavia had different friends that most other European countries, and Serbia inherited some of those agreements.

So did I! Although my country, Ireland, isn't explicitly listed.

Looks like it takes "territory" (+40%) as a major input. Russia, China and Mongolia are big countries by land area which have a good understanding with Serbia, but nothing special with EU states. Guessing most Europeans will also hit Serbia. What's the actual most useful second passport to an Irish person? Probably American.

I have to think American citizenship would be a pretty bad choice for a second passport, since America taxes its citizens on income earned abroad. You'd be approximately doubling your taxes if you are already taxed on income while abroad.

(FWIW I'm an American)

Right, does this site take into account the obligations, along with the additional freedoms a second citizenship grants? The US' overreaching expat tax laws are a great example, what about the countries that have a mandatory year or two of civil/military service?

America will let you deduct your foreign taxes, so if you live and pay taxes in a high tax country then you in theory won't actually owe anything to the US, but instead you'll owe your accountant for helping you file.

Don't forget about FATCA, the penalties are incredibly stiff (failure to report yields penalties that are a significant fraction of the amount of money on deposit). Being a US citizen has great benefits, but it comes with large obligations.

Oh yeah, and good luck getting a foreign bank account if you don't already have one. Heck, if you have an American bank account, I've heard European banks don't want to deal with you even if you're a solely European citizen living in Europe.

Interesting. I was not aware. Wouldn't you still owe the IRS money if the foreign taxes are deducted?

As far as I understand tax deductions work like: Initial Income - Deduction = Adjusted Income. Then, you owe full taxes on the Adjusted Income.

Let's say European Tax Rate is 40%, American Tax Rate is 20% (hypothetically!)

Foreign income is 100k USD equivalent.

You pay 40k taxes in Europe and are left with 60K.

You deduct 40K from Initial Income, leaving you with adjusted income of 60K. You then pay 20% of that (12K) to the IRS, leaving you with 48K.

So you’re in this hypothetical tax range taxed at less than US+European tax, but still have an effective tax rate much greater than not having US citizenship.

Simple formula I think:

Effective Tax = Income x EuropeanTaxRate + (Income-Income x EuropeanTaxRate) x AmericanTaxRate

Factor out income etc. I’m on my phone :-)

You don't pay taxes on on your first like 118k in income [1]. Because this lowers your AGI even if you make more than that you still start at the bottom of the tax bracket. Rough example you make 125k thus 125k-118k - 7k in taxable income thus in 10% bracket. There are obviously other rules for non W-2 income and property taxes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_earned_income_exclusio...

It's not a deduction, it's a credit so it effectively reduces the amount you pay in taxes to the US by the amount you paid to the foreign country.

Also, you do get an additional separate exemption/deduction (i.e. NOT a credit) up to around the first 100k of foreign earned income, if you meet some rather stringent qualifications.

There are ways to structure things using a foreign corporation to reduce your tax liability. This is changing though with the new 2017 Trump Tax "Cuts" and Jobs Act, which now requires expat business owners to report even their leftover business income as their own personal income (GILTI).

Many expat small business owners stand to be financially devastated because the law even taxes previous business income from the last 30 years in a so-called "transition tax." Ouch.

American citizenship is probably the next choice, if just for extra State Department freebies.

It's normal for troublesome countries to give more more security to journalists and other American citizens, and the US government rescues idiots stuck North Korea all the time. Most other countries wouldn't lift a finger for their citizens if that would have a significant monetary cost.

The best passports are ones that lets you work, live and travel in a major economy without restrictions.

As you already have the EU covered, US, China or Japan would be good ones. I think Japan does not allow for dual citizenship though.

Agreed, those are good second passports to have.

> I think Japan does not allow for dual citizenship though.

Like Japan, China and the US also do not allow a second citizenship through naturalization. The US oath of allegiance requires you to "renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty". The loophole is that most countries don't allow you to renounce your citizenship just by informing some foreign flunky, so just saying it doesn't make it so. For naturalization, none of China, Japan or the US require documentary evidence that you are no longer a citizen of another state.

"For naturalization, none of China, Japan or the US require documentary evidence that you are no longer a citizen of another state."

That's because international law doesn't allow for states to make citizens stateless. E.g. in The Netherlands, a condition of getting citizenship is that you promise to renounce other citizenships within x time, and your Dutch one will be taken away if you don't. Not saying that any of the countries you listed have similar requirements, I don't know about that, I'm just adding some nationality law pedantry.

Australia is probably the best second passport for EU citizens, since that makes you eligible for E-3 visa to the US as well as the APEC card to China and Russia.

> Although my country, Ireland, isn't explicitly listed.

It's listed as the Republic of Ireland, afaict.

It’s under “Republic of Ireland”

Thanks. I found it there - otherwise, I couldn't have given the details above - but that's the name of the country's soccer team. The country's name is Ireland and that's what appears on my passport and in any official documents produced in any country in the world.

Apparently "Republic of Ireland" is officially the description but not the name of the state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Irish_state

I guess it's similar to Germany being the "Federal Republic of Germany", or China being either the "People's Republic of China" (mainland) or the "Republic of China" (Taiwan).

It's a total of differently weighted values for all the extra visa free countries, land, population and hdi/freedom of press of the target country. So we're aiming at a country that'd give you access to the most new countries/land/population while being relatively developed and not too totalitarian.

Hmm… Interesting… Just throwing this out there, would any lady from Serbia be interested in marrying me?