How do you calculate the score for best second citizenship in detail? You should probably add a page for that.
I.e. I get told that the best second nationality I could get is Serbian... Why though?
I.e. I get told that the best second nationality I could get is Serbian... Why though?
That’s due to agreements between non-aligned counties signed by Jugoslavia that Serbia inherited.
You cannot still enter those countries without a visa with an EU passport, thus making a Serbian passport quite advantageous if you are a EU citizen.
I should have said that Jugoslavia had different friends that most other European countries, and Serbia inherited some of those agreements.
Looks like it takes "territory" (+40%) as a major input. Russia, China and Mongolia are big countries by land area which have a good understanding with Serbia, but nothing special with EU states. Guessing most Europeans will also hit Serbia. What's the actual most useful second passport to an Irish person? Probably American.
I guess it's similar to Germany being the "Federal Republic of Germany", or China being either the "People's Republic of China" (mainland) or the "Republic of China" (Taiwan).
It's listed as the Republic of Ireland, afaict.
As you already have the EU covered, US, China or Japan would be good ones. I think Japan does not allow for dual citizenship though.
> I think Japan does not allow for dual citizenship though.
Like Japan, China and the US also do not allow a second citizenship through naturalization. The US oath of allegiance requires you to "renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty". The loophole is that most countries don't allow you to renounce your citizenship just by informing some foreign flunky, so just saying it doesn't make it so. For naturalization, none of China, Japan or the US require documentary evidence that you are no longer a citizen of another state.
That's because international law doesn't allow for states to make citizens stateless. E.g. in The Netherlands, a condition of getting citizenship is that you promise to renounce other citizenships within x time, and your Dutch one will be taken away if you don't. Not saying that any of the countries you listed have similar requirements, I don't know about that, I'm just adding some nationality law pedantry.
(FWIW I'm an American)
As far as I understand tax deductions work like: Initial Income - Deduction = Adjusted Income. Then, you owe full taxes on the Adjusted Income.
Let's say European Tax Rate is 40%, American Tax Rate is 20% (hypothetically!)
Foreign income is 100k USD equivalent.
You pay 40k taxes in Europe and are left with 60K.
You deduct 40K from Initial Income, leaving you with adjusted income of 60K. You then pay 20% of that (12K) to the IRS, leaving you with 48K.
So you’re in this hypothetical tax range taxed at less than US+European tax, but still have an effective tax rate much greater than not having US citizenship.
Simple formula I think:
Effective Tax = Income x EuropeanTaxRate + (Income-Income x EuropeanTaxRate) x AmericanTaxRate
Factor out income etc. I’m on my phone :-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_earned_income_exclusio...
Also, you do get an additional separate exemption/deduction (i.e. NOT a credit) up to around the first 100k of foreign earned income, if you meet some rather stringent qualifications.
There are ways to structure things using a foreign corporation to reduce your tax liability. This is changing though with the new 2017 Trump Tax "Cuts" and Jobs Act, which now requires expat business owners to report even their leftover business income as their own personal income (GILTI).
Many expat small business owners stand to be financially devastated because the law even taxes previous business income from the last 30 years in a so-called "transition tax." Ouch.
It's normal for troublesome countries to give more more security to journalists and other American citizens, and the US government rescues idiots stuck North Korea all the time. Most other countries wouldn't lift a finger for their citizens if that would have a significant monetary cost.