[citation needed]
The US has no wealth taxes like some European countries, and long-term capital gains tax is 15%.
Just to pick a few counterexamples:
Denmark has 42% capital gains tax on gains over ~$7600.
Netherlands has a 1.2% asset tax on assets held worldwide over something like $20k.
>I have friends who have never lived or worked in the US amd yet are asked to pay high US taxes.
Asked to pay or just to file?
So i travel between different countries without living much in any particular one and i pay zero tax. And if i ever want to live somewhere fulltime, i can defer income into trusts and collect it in future years when i happen to not be domiciled anywhere.
Options available to everyone except US citizens.
Or for example my friends in Russia who are US citizens have to pay a crazy US rate instead of the far more reasonable 13% in russia.
All the comments about scandi countries assume people actually declare income without using many more legal strategies available there compared with the US. The effective tax situation for wealthy US citizens is actually much worse, it is just obfuscated by the headline number.
Technically no, so does Eritrea tax non-resident citizens on their worldwide income.
And it's frankly hard to make sense of the rest of your comment.
It's difficult (or impossible?) as you say for an American citizen to basically be a perpetual tourist, not actually residing anywhere?
>to pay a crazy US rate instead of the far more reasonable 13% in russia.
>All the comments about scandi countries assume people actually declare income without using many more legal strategies available there compared with the US.
Well, yes, I am assuming that people generally don't try to live as a perpetual tourist and skirt tax burdens by not actually living anywhere.
>The effective tax situation for wealthy US citizens is actually much worse, it is just obfuscated by the headline number.
Still eager to see this proved.
as a non-US citizen i can live in the US for many years and keep accruing income/assets into a trust + take loans against said income/assets to fund expenses. then one year when i happen to be a perpetual tourist i distribute all of that from the trust to myself. zero taxes.
I'm not sure what exactly it is my income taxes pay for, but about anything I might want from a government is already paid for by direct billing or by some other type of tax. Maybe I'm paying for a seat cover of an F-35. Maybe I'm paying for a bridge repair that has been overdue for 30 years. I lack the attention span to follow the money that far.
That guy still pays sales taxes, and any taxes that may be indirectly passed on to him through business dealings. It isn't zero; it's just less than you, at the price of being a technically domicile-less nomad. The lifestyle is a bit more stressful, as you have to schedule mandatory events around several sets of local laws.
How is the Danish stock market doing these days?
US taxes are absurdly complex and expensive. The upside is that the system can be fairly easy to game / optimize.