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But I'm not going to move to a country if I know that every quarterly dividend would leave me with 25-50% less money on my bank account.
1. you have a solid pension
2. you should care about capital gains taxes
3. you're REALLY rich and don't care.
No, you don't. You still have to file but you get "Federal Tax Credits" for income tax paid abroad and seeing how a EU country's income tax will almost certainly be higher than the US', you'll end up paying nothing. There's also tax treaties to avoid double taxation in other ways.
"Expats" living in Europe? I ask because "expat" usually refers to someone who moved to a lower cost of living country that may also have significantly lower income tax compared to the EU.
> It looks like the Federal Tax Credit only covers up to $130,000 per year of income.
$130k/yr is absolute bank in Europe. From a quick Google search, that would put you well in the top 5% of earners in Berlin, just as an example. So, this shouldn't be much of an issue.
The country must have a tax treaty with US, so they exchange the info about your taxes in background. But many countries in EU has higher tax rates than US, then you owe $0.