Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zealand to work remotely

Re:Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zeal... by fragmede on Thursday July 08, 2021 @06:51PM (#27778595)

Easy: There's no capital gains tax. If a large portion of your wealth consists of stock options (which I'd assume Urs' is, given that he was employee #8 at Google), it means more money for you, while living in a beautiful place. Expensive doesn't matter, nor does construction materials used in (poor people's non-custom-built) housing, and definitely not the local job market.

NZ also has universal healthcare. For anybody tired of the US healthcare "system" (what we have doesn't deserve to be called a system), that's very attractive even if you're not wealthy. Especially not if you're wealthy.

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Re:Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zeal... by erentz on Thursday July 08, 2021 @07:03PM (#27778685)

But Urs is a US tax resident for life now, US doesn’t let you become non-resident. So he will continue to owe capital gains in the US and if he becomes NZ resident that doesn’t change. But he will then owe NZs higher tax rates on his regular income and other things too (like foreign financial arrangements which can get messy).

Edit: IANAtaxL but NZ does have a pretty sweet deal where new residents get to not pay tax on overseas income for four years. So Urs could come in for four years. Then if he maintains a permanent home in the US that is always available to him (not rented) a tax expert might argue he is dual resident and under the dual tax agreement would tie break to the US so doesn’t owe tax in NZ on his US income, which would be all of his income. So this is probably what he would do. It’s a pretty sweet deal, I don’t think it’s fair you basically don’t pay tax to NZ under that arrangement if your income is overseas and you can afford to leave a house unrented.

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Re:Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zeal... by tonfa on Thursday July 08, 2021 @07:06PM (#27778703)

> There's no capital gains tax

Wouldn't you still pay US tax as a green card holder or citizen? After decades in the US would be surprising if he wasnt.

(And even if not, does the US have an exit tax when giving back green card or passport?)

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Re:Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zeal... by rsstack on Thursday July 08, 2021 @07:15PM (#27778767)

What you describe only affects citizens (but surely he's a citizen by now). Edit to add: and green card holders who had their green card for 8+ years without naturalizing. The green card would generally be voided by moving to NZ for a year; it might help get away with _future_ appreciation of assets but of course not any _past_ appreciation.

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Re:Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zeal... by pbourke on Thursday July 08, 2021 @07:32PM (#27778886)

There’s an exit tax that applies to long-term green card holders and people who give up their citizenship.

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Re:Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zeal... by rsstack on Thursday July 08, 2021 @07:35PM (#27778900)

You're right, I'll amend to mention this edge case.

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Re:Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zeal... by LAC-Tech on Thursday July 08, 2021 @07:36PM (#27778911)

Gains are taxed as income though - does that happen in the US? I always thought that even with capital gains tax you kept more of your investment money there than here.

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Re:Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zeal... by mcguire on Thursday July 08, 2021 @07:55PM (#27779016)

Yes: in the US, long-term capital gains (i.e. an asset you have owned for more than a year) are taxed at a significantly lower rate than income. Short-term cap gains are treated as income.

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