Transcription
A lot of people would love to move to Europe for the perceived livability. And for some people, it is one of the most livable parts of the world. And yet, we're a company that helps Europeans tired of the high taxes and the dwindling livability, move overseas. And we help other people determine whether they should move to Europe or not. So, I thought it'd be good to go through the data, look at which cities in Europe are most livable, and judge them by the standards of our seven and eight figure clients.
Americans are moving more than ever. And right now with Donald Trump back in the White House, we're seeing folks who are more libertarian and skeptical of Trump. And we're seeing more liberal people who don't like Donald Trump. They're looking for a place to move. And they think perhaps Europe's a better place to go. Other folks of all political stripes have said the European lifestyle may be for them. Other folks who feel that they're not tolerated in their country, whether it's an emerging country or even the United States, want to go to Europe for the more tolerant social policies. And yet, if you're rich, there is a certain disadvantage to being in Europe. So, what I wanted to do today was go through some of the pros and cons. I'm not pro-Europe. I'm not anti-Europe. I personally don't spend that much of my time, certainly in continental Europe, but I don't judge anyone who has different priorities than I do. I think there's a lot of up and cominging places around the world with lower taxes, more personal freedom, lower cost of living, better weather. I happen to enjoy for the most part being out in the upand cominging places. But I understand if you want to send your kids to great schools, if you want to get a great second passport, and if you're just wanting a soft landing out of your country and into somewhere new, where can you go?
Here's the problem that I think people don't often understand about moving to Europe. And I was sitting with a very wealthy gentleman a couple uh years ago. He had bought a villa in Italy, beautiful villa. And he said, "Coming from the United States, you know, I never really thought about it. I didn't know that we couldn't just come to Europe and spend as much as we want. I didn't realize that Italy is part of the Schengen area and Americans, like everybody else who has access visa-free, uh, can spend 90 days out of every 180 days. And so we have to come for 90 and then leave for 90 and then come back." And so ultimately they decided to go through Malta's citizenship program. They spent about a million dollars and they got citizenship for the whole family to where now as Maltese citizens they could live in Malta, Italy or anywhere else in the European Union and uh EEA. And I think a lot of people don't realize you can't just pick the most livable places in Europe and move there.
So let's pull up the Economist Intelligence Unit's uh most livable cities in Europe. We go through these lists repeatedly and this is a very Western-centric list. Vienna won this year and it lost a few points because uh, you know, they don't they don't have quite enough sports stadiums. Like that should be your reason for where you want to live. Let's look at some of the most livable places in Europe according to the Economist statistics. This is from 0 to 100. 80 to 100 is pretty much considered excellent. 70 to 80 is considered pretty good. So in the 90s, Vienna 98.4. That's pretty perfect. It's pretty close to perfect. Copenhagen 98, Zurich 97.1, Geneva 96.8, Helsinki 95.6. Now, my big takeaway is I think those are great places, particularly if you are middle income or lower income. Probably very few better places to be in the world if you're lower income. Uh, and I think that's what a lot of people misunderstand about what I talk about here at Nomad Capitalist. If you're the seven or eight figure entrepreneur that we work with as a client, you're not going to get as much out of Copenhagen as someone who's who's struggling. And I understand why someone who's struggling in El Salvador would want to live in the United States. Not really a shining endorsement of the United States being a great beacon of, you know, talent in the world. I understand if you're struggling, you know, somewhere closer to Copenhagen, you might want to go to Copenhagen and you'd have a better life there. And we can debate, you know, whether a big welfare state's a good thing or not. I happen to think that, you know, once it comes time to having a very high income, you're not getting incremental value for paying six or seven figures every year in taxes in a high tax place like Copenhagen.
And so my my theory on this is not only are those places not the best. You know, the places that are allegedly the best aren't the best for a seven or eight figure entrepreneur or investor, but they're also not always accessible. And so I go back to the story of my friend at his villa in Italy. How do you move to Vienna? They have a program. It's not really that well known. It's a little vague that you can move to Austria. Now, it's not tax friendly, but there is a residence program if you have some money and we kind of like you. Okay, come on in. That's number one. Copenhagen, not really aware. We have a full R&D team with uh, what is it? Half a dozen people now. We've got someone on the Europe desk. All they do is track changes in European immigration and tax law. It's all they do. And we have pretty much all the data on all these programs. You can move to Copen. You can move to Denmark if you've got a spouse. Uh, you can move to uh to Denmark if you have a job somehow. I've never really had a job. I don't really know how you'd go about doing that. If some Danish company offers you a job, I guess you can move there. And if you're from another European country, you can certainly use your rights of freedom of movement to go there and and you know, bring your spouse there. So, if your spouse isn't European and you don't have a job and you haven't gone through what my friend went through and become Maltese by making a donation through their program or you haven't gotten your citizenship by descent because you have ancestors who are from some other European country, uh, you can't simply move there.
Zurich and Geneva, you can move there. It's certainly not guaranteed for non-EU citizens whom they do prioritize. They do have a lump sum tax program that allows you to get a residence permit there. And by the way, you know, that same friend of mine who got the Malta citizenship would pay half the taxes that he would as an American uh in Switzerland that he would as Maltese. So, okay, Geneva can be tax friendly under the lump sum program and perhaps you can get a residence program, a permit there. That's the one that could work. Helsinki, Finland, same as the rest. Same as, you know, Copenhagen. Not really a place that you can just move. Uh, and so to be clear, if you have an EU member state passport, you can move within any of them and you can bring a spouse. So again, if you're Maltese and you get that program through the $1 million give or take donation in fees, a Maltese citizen can move to Finland. A Maltese citizen can move to Denmark and there's freedom of movement within the European Union kind of sort of similar to how, you know, if you're an American, you can move from California to Texas or if you're a Canadian, you can move from Toronto to Calgary. Kind of the same uh to simplify it. And so you can pay the million dollars or you can get that citizenship through having ancestors. And so if you have that or obviously if you're already European, you can move to these best places. But the first thing is you can't simply move anywhere that you want. That's one reason why uh when we have a client come in, do you have ancestry? Do you have a parent? Do you have a grandparent? Do you have a great-grandparent who might have come from somewhere else? Doesn't have to be in Europe, but obviously European passports are among the most coveted. And if you do, then these places open up. But even if you have that European passport, let's go to the next step.
If you're going to move, you might as well move. I've said it for years. This is why where I'm from in the United States, I don't understand people who think that what we talk about is silly, where you move from uh anywhere in the United States to uh, you know, even Dublin, Ireland, which is a pretty soft landing. Uh, you could cut your taxes probably by 2/3 to 3/4 moving from anywhere in the US to moving to Dublin under their special tax regime. You could certainly cut your taxes even more by moving to Dubai or Qatar or Panama City. And yet people are focused on I'm not going to fight the 37% federal income tax rate. I'm gonna, you know, move from a state with 5% tax to a state with 0% tax. Yeah, five is a lot smaller than 37. And by the way, we're seeing a lot of people who, you know, move from California to Idaho, realizing the culture is too different in moving back. I think you'd probably fit in better moving from California to Dublin, Ireland, and cutting your taxes not by 20% but by 70%. And in the same way, I say if you're going to move somewhere, you might as well move. Now, again, if you have a low income, the best place to move might be Vienna or Copenhagen. But if you're the kind of person who's a Nomad Capitalist client or if you're a guest at Nomad Capitalist Live, uh, your needs are going to be different.
And so if you look at the Economist uh standards, they're looking at things like how many stadiums do you have? What's the quality of uh your healthcare? How good are the roads? Uh, you know, how good is the subway system? And so sure, none of us want to drive on pockmarked roads. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. There were plenty of pockmarked roads, and there still are. The roads in those aforementioned Gulf and Southeast Asian countries better than the roads I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and much lower taxes, but okay, maybe Copenhagen has great roads. Uh, is that what dictates where you want to live? Quite frankly, I haven't been to that many places that have terrible roads, and I've been to over a 100 countries, including a lot of exotic ones. I think a lot of places have figured out roads, healthcare, uh, you know, I was just at, uh, Prince Medical Center in Qatar. I had seven people come up to me and say, "Hey, I saw your video. I'm here because I'm here for the checkup you recommended." And everyone who comes to our our event, you know, Med Capitalist Live, I say, "Come for the checkup." I have health insurance in a few countries around the world. It's like $500 a year in Malaysia. In Colombia, I think it was like $1,000 a year. I mean, you can easily pay for that insurance and you can easily pay out of pocket for most healthcare. So if you are a successful person with a high income or a high net worth, free healthcare in Copenhagen that costs you over 50% tax isn't worth it. Uh, and so you know what are you really getting in the most livable places? They're not the most livable for you. You can live in the places that are kind of I said 80 to 100 is excellent and 70 to 80 is pretty good. I think the pretty good might be the place to live.
So let's start at the top. If you want other places where you're at least not paying through the nose to get those top numbers, Dublin, I've mentioned Dublin, Ireland, 91.1. So you're in the 90s still. You're not at Vienna levels, but you know, 96 or 97 or 98 down to 91, not a huge difference. What's the difference? Uh, there's no train to the airport in Dublin, for example. What do they do? What do they have? They have a non-dom tax system. It's a remittance-based tax system where potentially you could lower your taxes if you're a successful person down into uh the single digits even maybe even for some time legally to zero if you plan it properly. And you can get citizenship speaking the same language you're listening to right now rather than learning Danish or German or French or uh Finnish. Let's keep going. Barcelona 91.4. Madrid somehow ranked a little bit lower. They're pretty similar. Uh, Spain has the Beckham Law. It's not quite as good in my opinion as as Ireland's uh tax regime. Uh, but you can go and live in Spain and for some number of years uh you can have a relatively, you know, tax-friendly lifestyle. But you can go to Spain and spend some number of years and have a relatively tax-friendly lifestyle. Uh, harder to get get in now as they want to kill their golden visa program. Uh, but uh Spain ranks well. Those are the other countries that are in the '90s. But let's go back to that, you know, pretty good category.
Here are some of the places that are improving, the fastest improving places in Europe statistically. Sofia, Bulgaria, 10% tax rate in Bulgaria. Uh, part of the European Union, so Europeans can move there. Uh, they're now part of the Schengen area. Uh, but you can get a special residence permit in Bulgaria if you want to live there. 10% tax. Sofia, fast and g uh fast improving city. Budapest, decent personal tax, low corporate tax in Hungary. Uh, they're improving. Belgrade, Serbia, where I have a home, where we have a few people working for us. We've featured that before. Flexible taxes there. You could potentially pay a very low rate of tax in Belgrade. Athens, Greece, uh, is one of the faster improving cities. Quite frankly, this is one of the few places where I'm a city guy. I would go and live on an island. Athens is nice, but quite frankly, I don't know I would live there. Greece has a lump sum tax option. Interesting. Kind of mirrors everything I've been saying. The places that think, "Hey, you'll pay 50%. Where else are you going to go?" Um, Sofia, Budapest, Belgrade, Athens, they're all Yeah, they're all getting better. I get life's about more than just taxes. And if you're moving to Europe, you're probably making some admission of that because even to get these lower tax rates that we talk about, there's more planning required. It's not just move to Dubai and you're done. No, there's some planning to get the lump sum, set up a non-dom, how does that work with your other stuff? You know, it's more involved.
So, if you're moving to Europe, you're moving there for the lifestyle. You're moving there because you appreciate their values. You're moving there because perhaps they're more tolerant to your situation and or you're moving there because you want a great second passport. You're not getting a second passport living in Dubai. And you're probably not getting one, by the way, in Athens, in Hungary, unless you really speak the language. In Bulgaria, maybe in Serbia, yeah, Serbia, maybe. Uh, Spain, you can get a passport. Ireland, you can absolutely get a passport. So, no, not all these countries are passport friendly, but you know, you might choose to live in Spain for the weather, for the lifestyle, for all that. Uh, it's not all about taxes, but I the idea that we're going to rank Vienna number one with their ridiculous taxes, with their subway system, which quite frankly I, you know, the subway system of Qatar is nicer than Vienna's. Why? What have they done that's so special? I think it's because these lists revolve around, hey, you make $72,000 a year, $72,000 a year, here's where you should be. Well, what happens if you make €72,000 a month or €72,000 a day? Those are some of the folks that we work with. And the juice isn't worth the squeeze in some of these places. I mean, at a certain point, what's great about Ireland, whatever money you bring into Ireland, they're going to charge you their high personal income tax rates on. But all the money you don't bring in, they're not going to charge you the rates on. So, if you live on 10% of your income, you're going to pay like 5% income tax. And that's a simplistic version of it, but like that seems fair to me. You're paying something into the system. You're you're going with the European values that people need to contribute to society. Great. At what point that you're paying a million a year in taxes or multi-millions in taxes, are you still contributing to society? At what point is it just we're soaking this guy?
Now, uh, my suggestion personally, I do think Ireland's an interesting option particularly for Americans and other native English speakers uh who don't want to have to deal with a kind of a new culture. Every country of course has a new culture, but Ireland is pretty close to uh North American culture, you'll understand them. You can have, you know, fun conversations in a way that you couldn't even in other countries where they speak English pretty well. Um, I think if your goal is culture, which is what this Economist list promotes, among other things, um, I can go to Paris anytime I want and I can go to the Louvre and I can go to the opera. By the way, uh, as you saw in Liva King Oman where we showed you uh this the city of Muscat, I think that opera house is more beautiful than most of the opera houses in Europe and you can get that culture there with much kinder people with better weather. Um, and it's located in a part of the world that I think is growing. So I don't even know. I mean if you really explore your options, you can find alternatives to what you have in Europe in most places. What I would personally do is visit Europe. Uh, but I already have my passport sorted out and so I understand that someone who's just starting this journey might want that European passport and they they might just start there for a soft landing. Uh, Singapore and Hong Kong are two high gainers uh on this list. Not the European list of course, but in the global list they're both in the 90s. So, they're going to compare very tax-friendly places, better weather, uh, if you don't mind some humidity. Those are two alternatives. I think you know Belgrade for example you're not going to have all the consumer conveniences but for just a place to live and do business not a bad place to be much more affordable much more tax-friendly as a base and from Belgrade you could easily fly on Air Serbia or whatever other airline go to Paris for a week a month go to you know Spain for a week a month you might be better off but you know to each their own that's what we help our clients figure out if you go to nomadc.com/apply yeah we we have people they come my wife will only move to Spain okay you're going to pay more in Spain than you would in Belgrade, but you're going to pay less in Spain than you would in the US. And that's fine. Everyone has their own needs. I think the world is full of up and cominging opportunities, and yet Europe still plays an important role. Am I hedging? Yeah, I see pros and cons to each. But if you're going to do it, don't follow the lists. You're going where you are treated best, not where the Economist is treated best. I think people often make that mistake. What's best for you, the successful business person, it's not what's best for everyone else. This is the ultra luxury side of Bangkok and showing you the hidden gems of Bangkok. [Music] So that you can live like a king.