It's quite a good deal if you want to be a digital nomad since it's an EU country and you can get a really small apartment for almost nothing to use as your official address while travelling. (You'll have to be at least fiscally resident there)

Feel free to PM me if you want some tips on how to get things set up there.

Before anyone asks, federal income, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, state income, state sales tax, local property tax, and lesser- luxury and gas tax.

It's very true that the Danes receive good free health care and have good universities, but the longer I live here the more I see that a huge amount of tax revenue is squandered on administration. I'm pro taxation, but it's hard to be exposed to such waste.

Many American expats in Europe that have acquired the right for local nationality give up their nationality for that reason.

That's only if you're lucky, and move to a country with a no-double-taxation treaty. There's only a few of them. No tax treaty, you pay the full amount due to both governments (after excluding your US foreign earned income allowance ~$90K).

Worse, if you live in a foreign country and start a business you now own what the US considers a "foreign controlled corporation" and your new nightmare begins. Not to mention many banks won't do business with you abroad because of FATCA and you have to report your balances annually to FinCEN or risk forfeiture of 50% of the balance in the account. And you can't open a brokerage account in a foreign country because you can't have an account not overseen by the SEC.

Then if your child is born abroad with no other connection to America they'll suffer the same fate for the rest of their lives unless they renounce, which itself comes with substantial costs.

I think the number of renunciations is fairly low because most dont make >90K in foreign countries, and FATCA is new-ish.

which states that, worldwide, just over 5,000 Americans renounced citizenship in 2017. There are also about 9 million Americans living abroad and ~1 million living in Europe. So, no, I don't think that even if all 5,000 were in Europe that 0.5% renounced their citizenship would count as "many".

Quick research: Kaiserslautern Military Community has ~50k people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserslautern_Military_Comm...

Now that's the largest, but by far not only location with US Military presence in Europe.

" Defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for a period of time would be an expat, regardless of his skin colour or country. But that is not the case in reality; expat is a term reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad.

Africans are immigrants. Arabs are immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races’. "

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

Of course, above calculator doesn't include sales, property, luxury or gas taxes.

Now that Donny capped state, local and property tax deductions at $10,000 per year (meaning you get double-taxed on the rest) and reduced the mortgage interest tax deduction cap from $1M to $750K, that number got much closer.

At $300,000 you're paying 48.65% marginal. That doesn't include, in SF, a 9% sales tax, a 1.188% property tax (that of course even renters pay as owners use rental income to offset that cost), and to your point, luxury and gas taxes.

So would many Americans. But those defense contractors need their cut. And non-US projects tend to be more expensive than other countries as well.

[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

[1] https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Health-at-a-Glance-2017-Ke...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_rank...

I'm not sure what warrants that tone, when I was simply stating something obvious (you can't judge a healthcare system by its cost if you don't look at the outcomes).

Thank you for contributing more valuable data/information.

It's interesting to see that the WHO methodology also got criticized. This points to the complexity of actually picking the right metrics/outcomes you want to optimize for.

Sorry if it didn't come across that way, it was meant to be light-hearted ^_^ tone doesn't always carry well over the internet. I wasn't criticizing you at all.

The OECD data is pretty damning. America leads its peers in obesity, smoking, air pollution and bankruptcies, and lags dramatically (1-2 standard deviations) in consultations skipped due to cost, population coverage, life expectancy, doctors per capita and beds per capita. Mission failed, IMO.

All for the low, low price of twice to three times what most other countries spend.

For example, as a French citizen, I would expect that if we're in the top 5 in terms of spending (regardless of whether it's done privately or publicly), we should have a system that's in the top 5 in terms of outcomes.

I wasn't in any way trying to suggest the US healthcare system is the "best" or whatever, just pointing out that pure cost comparisons are meaningless.

They're wrong because Medicare and Medicaid are more efficient and control costs better than the private sector. Costs are already more than doubled once you add in the private sector. Even if taxes were doubled y'all would still end up paying less on the net because your employers are already paying for healthcare, which is a private tax.

Or maybe people would realize a County like Germany is able to cover the entire County (2x as many people as Medicare) while spending half the Medicare budget. Then, questions of waste and fraud might pop up, which no one involved wants to happen.

Issues are often just ignored until they go away. It usually works fine though, so it's not necessarily bad.

In someways thats part of the reason our Medicare program is so expensive.

In the US we essentially go an entire lifetime without regular/preventative care, then when patients become eligible for Medicare, they have a lifetime worth of chronic illness that is treated on the tax payers dime.

7 out of 10 Medicare have at least 1 chronic condition, and chronic conditions are notoriously expensive to treat. Whereas nearly 100% of chronic conditions could be avoided if the patient had regular/preventative care (for example identifying prediabetics or patients with high blood pressure, or heart disease) while they were young enough to make the lifestyle changes to avoid these conditions altogether. Our system is essentially designed to ensure patients are both chronically ill and expensive before they are eligible for coverage.

https://s.kathimerini.gr/resources/2017-12/s3a_3112foroi-eis...

To balance a proper comparison if you're going to include the EU taxes re healthcare, you would have to inflate US wages even higher to account for the benefit that employees receive (money that otherwise would be available for labor competition in the form of salary), which is often a large sum of money given the cost of US healthcare.

US healthcare per capita is typically 100% (double) more expensive than in Western Europe. It's about 130% more expensive versus Britain. It's 200%+ more expensive versus Italy.

A software developer earning $125,000 - $150,000 per year is receiving a minimum of an additional 10% equivalent of their salary in the form of healthcare coverage. More likely 15-20% these days. The cost to put a small family on a good health plan will easily run you $20,000+ per year.

ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, the only problem is with people gone infrastructure around those apartment is quickly going down the drain

In my case I officially rent a very cheap place in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital (< $100) which I don't use much, and travel a lot to other places (even within Bulgaria, as it's so affordable, so I actually do end up spending a good chunk of time there anyway though).

As a nomad, all you really need to do is make sure no other country has any claims on your tax revenue. Conditions varies - and it may be a good idea to not even own property in some countries. But mostly as long as you don't spend >50% of your time in any other given location they won't consider you liable to pay taxes there.

Note that Bulgaria of course does not have any complaints about me paying taxes in Bulgaria, regardless of whether I'm there or not. I'm basically just giving the tax money - this would probably be different if I wanted, say, citizenship, but that's a different issue.

Hope that's helpful.

Therefore such tax optimisations won't work if you can't actually move to the other place and I guess for 99% of us it's not worth the hustle even if it allows you to save much more.

Considered by whom and for what purpose? Bulgaria certainly aren't going to complain if you start declaring your income as arising there, for example via a Bulgarian company.

Much more important is where any other country who might have a claim on your tax think you are resident, and if you manage to not be resident elsewhere, you're doing fine.

FWIW, some of the other low tax jurisdictions in Europe actually do audit expats living there, to ensure they are actually spending time there. I know Monaco does.

What is it you think would be illegal? You appear to be pretty confused between "liable to pay tax", "resident enough to convince your home tax jurisdiction that you're no longer resident there" and "resident enough to qualify for citizenship programme", all of which are quite different.

first rule and most important one... never F the tax-man.

You can be registered in your own company as a manager on the minimum wage, pay a fixed sum of social insurance every month (~100 EUR), and then basically set aside 15% of your invoices income for tax, and the rest is yours.

This is exactly what I do for years, it's not fiction and it's working.

Would you mind naming the country? Thx

It has some advantages. I like Tbilisi (the capital) but in the end it is too far off the beaten track to be my base. I need an airport. A good airport!

Ukraine is an interesting place too (not for taxes).

Western media depicts Russia in a much more negative light than how things are actually on the ground. So far I've experienced zero crime and very little antisocial behavior. Russian people are well behaved (the vodka swigging stereotype is greatly exaggerated; we also have great local craft beer and wine) but some are still holding on to some quirky Soviet behaviors that might seem rude to a Westerner. Also, the streets are cleaner than most large US cities and public spaces are nice.

Yes, there are political and curruption problems, but they haven't directly affected me. I'm working for a US company so I can't speak for what it's like working for a Russian company. Prices are generally 40% lower and you can buy nearly anything except good Mexican food (but we have amazing Georgian food). Also, where we are, the climate is similar to the Bay Area (it's a wine region) and the Black Sea coast is beautiful. Overall, my quality of life here is very high VS the US.

Those flats are the same. The $15,000 is probably an absolutely fantastic deal for the seller. There is a reason why the apartment is so cheap. You get what you pay for and it's most likely crap.

In Bansko, most are within walking distance to the main ski lift, the old downtown area, coworking and other public spaces.

It's really a unique opportunity for those who work remotely and want to live in an outdoors-oriented place in Europe with low cost of living and amazing food.

Most people don't move to a country like Bulgaria just for a job. It's fine when you're 2X years old, can work remotely and have time to get into the culture, language, &c. As soon as you have a serious gf/bf or a family you can forget it. One of my colleague is Bulgarian, he moved to Germany because of corruption, lack of quality school, lack of good paying jobs, and that was in Sofia, not some random small town.

There is a reason why it's cheap and everyone is leaving. Also, people underestimate the personal cost of moving to completely culturally different country, you'll never feel at home there unless you live in some kind of gated community or expat district.

True. Would you concede that dependent on one's background/circumstances some cultures might be easier to adjust to?

I guess we are talking about farming families moving to Germany and cities looking for jobs because big industry doesn't exist in the villages anymore and they aren't the business type which can adapt to modern farming and way of doing business. Then there's highly educated people who wish to move away from the city and start doing remote work from some nice countryside or business people from the city who want to start a modern farming or tourism industry somewhere. I wouldn't say this is a cycle because this is one cultural transformation which has been going on in transitioning countries for the past 2-3 decades and not something which is happening every 10 years causing people to move back.

What sense would it make for a plumber business or restaurant to move there? None.

What sense would it make for a high tech business to move there? None. No VC, no subsidiaries, and most important, no other business that you need. A hardware start up need tons of expertise from highly skilled suppliers.

Yes, for digital nomads it might work. But so does Panama or wherever.

I'm not sure I would call Florida geographically advantaged although a lot of people actually like it. (My understanding is taxes also make it attractive to retirees and second home owners.) Lot of growth in the desert Southwest (Arizona, Nevada) and Texas. It's mostly the Midwest that is conspicuously lacking.

[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018/estimate...

It's also very nice if you like beaches and the ocean, and don't mind playing dodgeball with hurricanes every few years.

This is based upon many fine Polish nationals I've had the pleasure to know over my years and keeping up with current events.

This is not the case.

"An individual is defined as resident of Poland, if at least one below-mentioned condition is fulfilled:

the individual has closer personal or economic relations with Poland (center of vital interests) or The individual stays on the territory of Poland longer than 183 days in a given fiscal year."

So if you have somebody working abroad, paying tax abroad and sends home money to family, then they are open to being double taxed.

I'm sure there is some better article about all this, but this is what I've been told from Polish nationals a few times and one who was giving up a job in another EU country to move back to Poland, due to this and that opportunities for work had improved greatly from a decade ago when they initially left.

Sending home money is definetly secondary compared to pay for bills, rent, groceries, etc in the country you are actually living in.

Sorry for my confusions, though all did have families back home, so may of been a factor or some tax aspect perhaps as I didn't delve. Though did recall reading an article upon the bbc (though had no luck finding it), but that may of been over 10 years ago knowing me at times.

I think, can't remember exactly, the legislation was introduced in 2007, I never had to pay any taxes in Poland while working in other EU countries, I filed a zero tax return in Poland only once, as the taxes have been paid in the other EU country.

There are edge cases where one still falls under double taxation but they are regulated by respective country's tax treaties. Details in Polish: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/taxes/double-taxa..., list of treaties per country: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/individuals/personal-t....