This is a public forum and careful readers will notice I did not address my comments specifically to Drew. There is ‘research’ about a country and then there is living there. My family entered Malta on a residency scheme and we lived there for many years. Then we left. The offshore world is full of people who moved here or there chasing lower tax and eventually found they didn’t want to stay in the place they moved to. This can be for many reasons… inadequate planning and research, or the country not living up to the glossy brochure images, or the country is too small or isolated, etc etc. Then, as I said in my earlier post, it becomes a question of has the expat over committed too early in their new country, and can they get out easily? In Malta I know people (friends) who are still trying for years to sell their property so they can get out, but its an over priced bubble and relies entirely on new incoming foreigners to keep the real estate prices up. That’s just one of the various obvious reasons why its not always easy to get the full and true picture of a country even from expat residents - in this example they don’t want to talk down their country, as achieving or maintaining their own good property selling price depends on new (dare I say) starry eyed expats coming in. Even so, I encourage readers who are thinking to relocate and actually live in a country for lower tax reasons to try and gather advice from real long term residents in the country they are thinking to move to who are not selling services to incoming expats. There is a beter chance of geting an unbiassed picture to inform your decisions.
I stand by every comment I made in my earlier post about Malta, and those comments are just the tip of the iceberg about Malta. Every time a new expat arrives the old hands kinda smile and wonder how long it will be before the newcomer learns what its really like. There is always a honeymoon and then the reality hits. Of course some people are very wealthy and just use Malta or some other country as a jigsaw piece in their tax structuring, and how the country actually is and operates at a deeper level is not all that important… and their tax advisors have already got an exit strategy in place for them if the tax scenario in that country shifts. However, not everyone has the money for that wealth or level of tax planning, and my comments are more targeted for new people like we were about 25 years ago when we first left our home country not as very wealthy persons in search of tax minimisation but as people in search of more perceived freedom with lower tax that could support a better lifestyle dream. The dream is great, and yes lower taxes can be achieved to help enable a better quality of life… but not all lower tax countries can or will deliver the kind of quality of life you might really personally want for the longer term.
I noticed someone else on this forum saying how they moved to Portugal (for lower taxes) and later left again, in their case due to their unhappy experiences with the quality of schooling for their children. This is another example to support the view that the wisest approach for new offshorers who are actually thinking to settle permanently in their new lower tax country is to go in lightly, put your toe in the water but do not over commit, and see how you like your new country. There are plenty of people out there who will ‘help’ you move to a new country, but if its going to be your permanent home then it is you (and maybe your spouse or children) who have to live your life there!
Personally, after living in several other lower tax countries for many years, we would not go back to our “high tax, high standard of living” home country.
Also, we would never buy property just to obtain residency in a country we had never lived in before until at least after 2 or 3 years, unless I was an experienced international property dealer / investor who knew the market personally in the country I was buying in.
Finally, we would take special care about countries that offer tax holidays that have an end date. Tax offices everywhere play the long game, and low tax deals for 5 or 10 years will pass soon enough, and then what happens to your lower taxes? Sure, tax scenarios in countries change regularly enough, but in these cases the tax offices are giving you fair notice of how long your deal can be expected to last. After that you are likely in the same boat as the locals, so you better know what their tax levels are and how they feel about them… unless your strategy is always to be transient at some point. This is partly one of the reasons I prefer to anchor my business in a tax free zone. Its much harder for the tax ground to shift under the feet of such zones compared to what can happen for businesses operating outside their special conditions.
Finally, to return to the subject of Malta:
Lots of people come and go from Malta. People who leave tend to move on with their lives and not bother posting on forums about why they left. So if anyone wants to know more about the ups and down sides of Malta from the view point of long term resident expats who actually lived there full time, then feel free to contact.