Best Places In The World To Retire

If you move your residency to Portugal, under Portuguese law you are liable to pay taxes in Portugal. Portugal has signed treaties to prevent double taxation with 71 countries (including most European Countries, United States and Canada) that assure its citizens and residents the protection against being taxed in more than one country.
 
If you move your residency to Portugal you may be entitled to benefit from the Non Habitual Resident Regime that allows you to obtain tax...

If you move your residency to Portugal, under Portuguese law you are liable to pay taxes in Portugal. Portugal has signed treaties to prevent double taxation with 71 countries (including most European Countries, United States and Canada) that assure its citizens and residents the protection against being taxed in more than one country.
 
If you move your residency to Portugal you may be entitled to benefit from the Non Habitual Resident Regime that allows you to obtain tax exemptions on several types of income earned aboard such as pension income, dividends, interests, etc.
 
I cannot expand on the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion available to US taxpayers as I am not expert in US tax regulations.  If you are a US taxpayer I recommend that you ask your tax expert about the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, and how it could be combined with the Portuguese Non Habitual Resident Regime in order to give you the best outcome.

 

(View of the rooftops and the  seaside from The Blue Boutique Hostel and Suites, Estoril, Portugal, pictured.)

The standard of living in Ambergris Caye is probably the highest in all of the country of Belize. Overall, people do fairly well here in Ambergris Caye. The cost of living here is higher than any place else in the country of Belize, which is more pronounced from a local standpoint.  From a gringo standpoint, it is not quite so pronounced.
 
What the locals pay for food and rent here is probably double than what they pay in any place else in Belize. It is very difficult for...

The standard of living in Ambergris Caye is probably the highest in all of the country of Belize. Overall, people do fairly well here in Ambergris Caye. The cost of living here is higher than any place else in the country of Belize, which is more pronounced from a local standpoint.  From a gringo standpoint, it is not quite so pronounced.
 
What the locals pay for food and rent here is probably double than what they pay in any place else in Belize. It is very difficult for Belizean people to come out here and do well. There are lots of people, especially construction workers / laborers who come here and they have to share a room with four or five people. From the perspective of the lower end of the labor pool, it is not very good.  However, from the perspective of resort employees, management people, and office people, they do fairly well and they are used to a higher standard of living than in any place else in the country of Belize and their salaries reflect that. The middle class here in Ambergris Caye does better than any place else but the people on the low end of the spectrum spend a lot more money on lodging and food than they are any place else in the country of Belize.
 
From an expat perspective, you can live in whatever level you want here in Ambergris Caye. We have great restaurants, gourmet food shops and gourmet wine shops, spas, salons, dog grooming centers, a dozen supermarkets, a dozen large hardware stores, and so on, so you could get almost everything that you want here. What you can’t get here, you can have shipped in from Belize City almost immediately simply by making a phone call.
 
You can divide the expats here in Ambergris Caye into three groups: 

There is a place for all three groups here. You don’t necessarily know which group someone is in just by looking at them. It is very difficult to discern a person’s status here in Ambergris Caye because everybody wear t-shirts, shorts, and flip flops, and nobody drives a Mercedes Benz here. Everybody has a golf cart. What makes it really interesting is that you will never know who you are talking to or what they are all about other than based on the conversations that you have. You cannot place people based on what they are wearing or the car that they drive.  

 

(Expat in Paradise, Belize designed by Jet Metier, pictured.)

The minimum wage in Nicaragua is generally around US $230 a month. So if you were, for example, to hire a full-time gardener, or a different full-time household employee, you would have to pay that amount or more, if your employee works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, even though you have the option to make him work on Saturdays because the actual work week is 44 ½ hours. 
 
If the task is not full time, and it’s very small and very simple, then it’s very...

The minimum wage in Nicaragua is generally around US $230 a month. So if you were, for example, to hire a full-time gardener, or a different full-time household employee, you would have to pay that amount or more, if your employee works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, even though you have the option to make him work on Saturdays because the actual work week is 44 ½ hours. 
 
If the task is not full time, and it’s very small and very simple, then it’s very important to speak openly with the person that you’re going to hire, because if what you need is less than full time, the price you pay could be $8 to $10 a day depending on what you’re going to have them do. Generally, in this case, you wouldn’t need to pay for social security for hiring them. But if you were to employ them more than that, they’re going to be regularly going to your house working for you, well then, it would be very important for you to do a contract so that the person understands why and what they’re going to be doing for you.  Also, if for any reason that person maybe doesn’t end on good terms with you, the contract that you signed with them is a protection for you as their employer, whether it was part-time or full-time.

 

(Walled garden in Granada, Nicaragua, pictured.)

FATCA seeks to turn non-US financial institutions into reporting agencies for the IRS. In essence, the regulation  mandates that foreign (ie. non-US) financial institutions (FFIs) check their accounts for "indicia of US ties". That is, the FFIs need to identify their account holders who may be subject to US tax and report certain information regarding these accounts to the IRS.

 

FATCA can affect US persons living overseas in four ways (and one of these points also pertains to...

FATCA seeks to turn non-US financial institutions into reporting agencies for the IRS. In essence, the regulation  mandates that foreign (ie. non-US) financial institutions (FFIs) check their accounts for "indicia of US ties". That is, the FFIs need to identify their account holders who may be subject to US tax and report certain information regarding these accounts to the IRS.

 

FATCA can affect US persons living overseas in four ways (and one of these points also pertains to non-US persons with accounts in the US):