These countries are of great interest to me. I am UK based, once you are deemed non resident in the UK my understanding is that you can visit and work in the UK for up to 120 days as long as you are careful to keep your number of 'UK ties' down. Keeping a property in the UK is 1 tie, working more than 40 days a year in UK is another. Being present for more than 90 days in last 2 years is another. If you keep it to 3 UK ties you can spend up to 120 in the UK living and working, at least that was the situation last time i checked. It's not a bad deal spending 2/3rds of your time at one of the above countries and 1/3rd of the year in UK for a truly zero tax experience.
Agree with you, plus millionaires seem to be leaving europan countries in record numbers (they probably exist in record numbers as well ), saw a report a few days ago, where France came first, as usual on top of the wrong surveys. Turkey and Brazil were notable for their wealthy emigrant numbers among non EU countries. Plenty of people surfing the net are looking to relocate while having tax considerations, and the tax systems discussed here are even easier to use for non traders (I write that because DW claims his forex trading activities make the territorial taxation largely useless, but it satisfies a lot of tax exiles)
One of the big challenges for most countries will be: how can we avoid that the rich (who pay all the bills for the poor) will leave the country? With the globalisation of everything, cheap travelling and internet, it has become very easy for the rich to run to low tax areas. They don't have the problem that they have to stay somewhere because of their business, like dentists, doctors, shop owners... More and more countries start programs to attract rich people. More countries means more competition, means lower taxations.
Rich leaving is not an issue. Multinational corporations paying 0% tax is an issue. Rich people never payed much taxes but now companies doesn't pay either. The latter is the problem. There is a reason behind this but that would be totally off topic here.
Yes, I read that article too. Here in the European continent, Switzerland got most of the wealthy immigrants from other EU nations. Indeed France is totally anti-rich, anti-money, anti-wealthy, anti-everyone-who-can-make-money so thousands of French people left their home and relocated to Belgium, Switzerland, etc. By the way taxes are not the only reason people are relocating from the EU. I'm planning to leave the EU as well and not because of the taxes. The biggest threat to people with money is the publicly accessible registry of the ultimate beneficial owners. That's my friend is a pain in the ***. PWC issued a nice study about the whole issue and the point is, thousands of if not tens of thousands of people are going to leave the EU because they don't want to appear in those registries, they don't want to appear on rich lists, they don't want to become a target and so on. Switzerland is a safe harbor at the moment but god knows how long it will last.
This is what I wrote in another thread: Socialist President Hollande introduced a millionaires tax in 2012 which was silently abolished about 2 years later. What do we see as final result: in 2015 and 2016 22,000 millionaires left France, and numbers are still rising although the tax was abolished in 2014. if each millionaire was paying a lousy 500,000 taxes a year, before the millionaires tax was introduced, it would generated 11 billions every year for France. thanks to the socialist action France misses now every year 11 billion and amount is still rising as more and more people run away. The socialist voters will not be so happy as they depend on these millionaires to receive their monthly wellfare check. (so real socialists like in fact millionaires???) Mission accomplished for the socialists: millionaires left France so the differences in income between the different working classes diminished. France loses 11 billion a year also for the years to come. Rich people leaving the country is definitely an issue. Multinationals are an issue too.
You're right, it's an issue. What I was trying to point out is the $11 billion is a pocket change for a country like France. The big loss comes from the multinational companies which are paying 0% on hundreds of billions of profit. Politicians allows it and doesn't like to talk about this issue because they get a seat in the board of directors in these companies and do speeches for seven figures till the rest of their lives so they represent these companies and not their countries. Nowadays both the average people and the investors alike got used to debt financed economy so much that no one cares anymore. Yes, they may talk about the issues but there is no action because those who know it are in it and those who are not in it, doesn't know it. The $11 billion is a nice loss but the 36% tax rate on $100 billion profit is a much bigger loss. Countries like France loses way more than that in avoided corporate taxes alone. The real loss is more like in the $100+ billion range from corporate taxes alone. The issue is so complex, I mean not the economical but the social issue, that no one will solve it, no one will talk about it and the average people will never be smart enough to connect the dots and to see the big picture. They're going to hate who they are told to hate. In this age it's the rich. Sometimes they talk about companies but mostly foreign competitors' tax schemes only. If these companies were to pay taxes then most governments wouldn't run into deficits with a small minor changes in their budgets.
spot on. Luxembourg and Juncker have a lot to answer for imo. They offer a tax haven for multi billion dollar corporates whilst simultaneously driving down wages (via open borders policies) to feed the corporates. Meanwhile the ordinary man on the street works for nothing or if he earns a bit more pays 40%. Looks like the game is up albeit for other reasons.
The ordinary man is also responsable for what happens. He should not buy products from these multinationals. Don't go to Starbucks, don't buy products from Apple, don't buy at Amazon, Abbott Laboratories, AIG, MacDonalds, Avery Dennison Corporation, Black&Decker, Blackstone Group, Cargill, Fedex, GE group, GlaxoSmithKline, Groupe Rotschild, Heinz, Koch Industries, Merrill Lynch, Mylan, Office Depot, Pepsi Bottling Group... https://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks/explore-documents-luxembourg-leaks-database Consumers are responsible for what happens. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/24/france-google-tax-avoidance-back-taxes http://fortune.com/2016/06/01/france-taxes-booking-com-priceline/ http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/france-tax-avoidance-google-apple-amazon-473937
You're right but you miss a few important facts, namely: average Joe isn't smart about business, finance and economy he believes to his chosen political party no politicians explained this to him so this doesn't even exists in his world he wants the politicians to solve this, that's why he voted and pays his taxes he can't connect the dots Why I'm sure he can't connect the dots? Once you can connect them, you start realizing that you'd be fighting alone so you just make money on your own and either accept the rules (i.e. taxes) or you vote with your feet and don't waste your precious time on convincing people who hate you at first sight because you're successful and according to his favorite politicians you're the evil because you should be contributing more so he could have a better life. People are weird creatures my friend. It's next to impossible to solve these problems unless people stop hating each other and start to find the real cause of the issue. This won't happen. Never. Ever. 101% sure. This is capitalism. Okay, now something really controversial. Just look at the whole Arab region. Billions of muslims can't realize that they're being mislead by a few "leaders" in the name of religion and they hand over everything they have to royal families. Instead who they hate? The free people in Europe and the US. Well, in order to explain my point, I'd have to write like 100 pages which I won't do because I'm sick and tired of people. They would have to change themselves first then we could see some real change. What we can say for sure is people hate the facts. All over the world. They love excuses and blaming other people. This is the cause of all this problem. Period.