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The number one expense of your entire life is not your home. It’s not your car or college education. It’s not your spouse or even your kids, as expensive as those are.

Nope, the number of one expense of your entire life is taxes. If you’re the typical citizen of most civilized countries, partially Western ones, over the course of your working lifetime you’re going to pay more in taxes than all of those things (home, children, car, education, etc) combined.

I’ve already written articles about how the typical American spends 51% to 70% of his/her entire income on taxes you see (like that 7% sales tax or the stuff that gets withheld from your paycheck) and taxes you don’t see (like the $300+ per month you pay in property taxes as part of your apartment rent). Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe, and Scandinavia are just as bad or worse.

I hope you like sending most of your income, and yes my friend, it’s MOST of your income even if the taxes are hidden, to your huge, collapsing, quasi-socialist, quasi-authoritarian, bankrupt government so it can do wonderful things like blow up innocent women and children in foreign countries who have never attacked you, bail out corrupt billionaires from their self-induced bank failures, give trillions to lazy people who don’t want to work.

For those few of you who don’t live in a Western country, odds are you’re not doing much better. The overall tax burden in most parts of Eastern Europe and Asia as well as some parts of South America aren’t quite as bad as the collapsing West but are still pretty horrible. Paying 40% of your total income to your government isn’t as bad as 60%, but it’s still pretty ridiculous.

As a minarchist libertarian, I’m against the practice of having any income tax, property tax, payroll tax, or corporate tax. However, I’m not against the concept of paying small sales tax or VAT to pay for government basics like roads, cops, courts, and two or three other things. I even did a ten-part article series at my blogs on exactly how this would work in a hypothetical libertarian country.

If you want to tax me 4% or 5% or so to pay for things like the roads I directly use and the cops and/or military that protect me, I have no problem with that and I think that’s fair. But anything more than that? Go fuck yourself. Yes, I realize about 99% of the planet disagrees with that (that would be 100% of left-wingers and 95% of today’s right-wingers, both of whom love big government) but I’m accustomed to being in the rational minority on most issues.

Today I live in Dubai, a country with near-zero taxes. Because (unfortunately) I still hold an American passport (for now at least) I am forced at gunpoint by the US government to pay some taxes even though I don’t live there, I still pay around 5% of my total income in some sort of tax. Much better than most people in the world, but still a little more than I’d like. (My goal has always been 4% or less of my total income in taxes, ideally 0%, which is doable for people who do five flags.)

Now that Dubai has instituted a 9% corporate tax on some (though not all) of its corporations, this brings up the topic of how much taxes most people will pay in the future, both those normal people who decide to stay in their collapsing Western countries and those who choose to live those countries and live a more free five flags lifestyle.

Most of the entire world is facing a few problems, all of which are going to put upward pressure on governments to raise their taxes. These include…

• Declining birth rates, meaning fewer young people working to pay for the old people who won’t or can’t work to support themselves
• A population getting more politically left every year, meaning more people feeling entitled to “free” (i.e. government-provided) stuff and more people resentful of and angry toward “rich” people (i.e. anyone who has more money than me)
• Bigger, high-tax countries bullying smaller, low-tax countries to be more like them (this is why Dubai has a 9% corporate tax now; they were forced into it by bigger nations who threatened to blacklist them)
• Increasing wealth inequality (made worse by governments via things like the war in Ukraine and the overreaction to Covid)
• Record-high government debt all over the civilized world
• Record-high personal debt all over the civilized world
• Increased capital flight of smart people and wealthier people from the collapsing West as more of these people see the writing on the wall and get the hell out (or at least get their money out) while the getting is good (which is what I did)

All of this crap means that the elites who run governments all over the planet are now and will be racking their brains on new and creative ways to raise taxes on everyone, including you, your elderly parents, and your future children. Isn’t that nice?

Some of you are already thinking that they’ll print more money instead, and sure, they’re doing that too, but only the big boys can do this (USA, Japan, Eurozone, etc) and even those countries can’t do it forever. When the smaller countries try the money-printing route they end up like Argentina or Venezuela. Embarrassing clusterfucks like those countries are what the elites are trying to avoid, so that means raising your taxes in small countries and printing money and raising taxes in the larger ones.

On top of all of this, you’ve got things like AI and automation. Millions of people are now convinced that because of all the people who may be thrown out of work because of these things, the only solution (big shock) is for big government to implement Universal Basic Income (UBI) or something similar. I’ve explained many times in blog articles that communistic economic practices don’t work, and don’t suddenly start to work just because robots. But once again, I’m in the rational minority on this as well.

Far down the road, as in 50-100 years from now, when our AI overlords completely take over (assuming they don’t kill us), there may be indeed a new economic model that we haven’t seen before. This could be very good, very bad, or so-so. Regardless, until that happens, you need to be aware that taxes are going up all over the planet.

Here’s the good news. “All over the planet” does not mean “everywhere.” There are still 16 countries that have zero income tax. Most of them are decently nice places and many are not super difficult to move to, live in, or set up tax residency.  These are:

• Bahamas
• Bahrain
• Bermuda
• Brunei
• Cayman Islands
• Kuwait
• Maldives
• Monaco
• Nauru
• Oman
• Qatar
• Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Saudi Arabia
• Somalia
• United Arab Emirates
• Vanuatu

In addition, there are a few other countries that have extremely low overall tax rates. Here they are listed in order of lowest taxes to highest (per the Index of Economic Freedom):

• Paraguay
• Kyrgyzstan
• North Macedonia
• Romania
• Turkmenistan
• Bulgaria
• Moldova
• Bosnia/Herzegovina
• Kosovo
• Kazakhstan
• Uzbekistan

Note that none of the above countries in either list are in the Western world (other than three or four that could be considered in far Eastern Europe, which is a grey area). That should tell you something.

Regardless, even if you hate most of the countries in the above lists, do you think you can find ONE that you might like? I bet you can. We offer tax residency to two of the best ones, my two homes, the United Arab Emirates (Dubai) and Paraguay.

That’s really step one. Find a zero-tax or low-tax country to use as either your primary home, tax residency, or at least an economic flag or international backup plan. Even if tax rates go up in the rest of the world, in these countries taxes will either stay low or will increase just a little tiny bit, still far lower than what other people in the world are paying.

The next step is to truly go five flags, spreading out your business, debts, investments, lifestyle, and so on across several different countries instead of piling all of those things into just the one country you happen to have been born into or currently reside in.

Or you can do nothing, scream about politics on the internet, and hope that in the next election, the person who gets into power will wave a magic wand and fix the entire world so that your taxes will be… heh heh… lowered.

Heh.

Heheheh.

Heh.

Good luck with that.

Question of the Week: Which Country Is Less Horrible, UK or Australia?

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S.A. Writes:

I am a 33-year-old male originally from Pakistan and have moved to the UK about a year ago. I have followed for half a decade and I agree with most of your ideas and concepts. I am a doctor by trade, and considering the shitty prospects in my country economically and the fact that my passport is useless, I moved to the UK, as I have a passion for travel and a UK passport is likely to help me travel a lot more. I don’t want to be a doctor long term, but my job has always been so that the unsocial hours and the amount of massive studying have meant that I have never been able to pursue a business that can give me an alpha 2.0 lifestyle, which is my ultimate goal. But for now, I am stuck with being a doctor and have to put up with it and earn my living this way. This is not a career I have ever wanted and was forced into it.

But with enough background, Tate was right, the UK is a failed society and that is apparent and now on top of it they have become increasingly anti-immigrant, so I am not so sure if the time I have to spend to get it is going to be worth it. And considering my Pakistani passport, and lack of finances, I don’t have many other options. So that brings me to my question, I have the option of moving to Australia, after working here for 1 year, and I am currently considering the pros and cons of staying in the UK and getting a passport vs going to Australia and pursuing a passport there.

I believe Australia has better long term economic prospects but not by much, it is going to have the same authoritarian rules and taxation with time, but maybe in a few decades vs what is currently prevalent here in the UK. I am looking for your opinion of both countries and to see what you think is the better prospect to pursue for a passport, as my end goal is to settle in Dubai anyway and pursue 5 flags.

Well, I can tell you for a fact that there are a lot of Pakistanis here in Dubai and I work with many of them. They all love it here. My assumption, in reading your question, is the reason you don’t want to move to Dubai right now and instead are focusing on the UK or Australia is that you want that second passport, which you would not get living in Dubai.

Having me help you pick between the UK and Australia is like having me vote for a giant douche or a turd sandwich. But I think you already know that.

• Both are extremely expensive beyond belief. Both London and Sydney are more expensive to live in than even Dubai; look it up if you don’t believe me. And they’re both much crappier cities than Dubai.
• Both countries have some of the highest tax rates in the world, literally.
• The UK is collapsing fast, as you’re aware. Australia has gotten much worse in the last few years, especially since the pandemic, and has the highest level of personal debt in the entire Western world; even if it doesn’t completely collapse, it has a very shitty future.

If you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick one in your situation, and those are the only two countries I could choose, then I’d probably pick Australia, but in all honesty, that’s like choosing to get whipped 15 times instead of 16 times. The only difference I see for you is that the anti-immigrant vibe is less of a thing in Australia… though even that is changing down there (look at what New Zealand has done lately with their immigration policies).

Instead, I would strongly suggest that you open your mind a little bit and look at some countries in the Latin World. You can use your current income as a doctor as proof and get legal residency in several of those countries even if you don’t have a job there. Better yet, you’ll get a PASSPORT in those countries living there much faster than you would in Australia or the UK. Mexico, for example, has one of the strongest passports in the world, and you’ll have that in your hands within 3-4 years of living there or less. There are a whole bunch of LATAM countries that will give you a passport just by living there for a few years, and you don’t even need to be there all year.

No, your Pakistani mommy and daddy won’t be as impressed with you if you go to Mexico, Paraguay, or Argentina nearly as much as if you went to Australia, but as I keep saying to you Asian/Indian/Pakistani guys, you need to fucking man up and take charge of your own life (you’re 33 years old dude) and if your family back in Pakistan doesn’t like it, that’s their problem.

Let me repeat: You don’t need to show that you have a job in the new country to move to a Latin country. I’ve noticed that people from the India/Pakistan region of the world are locked into this incorrect thought that they can’t move to any country unless they can get a job there first in order to get a work visa. And yeah, that’s how most collapsing Western countries operate, but lots of countries outside of the West, that have as good or almost as good passports, don’t work that way at all and don’t care if you have a job there. (Some check income but not, in most cases, if you have a job in the new country, but you have income so that’s not a problem.)

Please try to open your mind to these superior options instead of your tunnel vision of “I have to go to horrible Australia or stay in horrible UK and those are my only two choices.” They aren’t.

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