How to choose your expatriation country: the 5-step method

Every plan starts with the right of residence, and it falls into two cases. Within the European Union, freedom of movement settles the question: a French national can settle in Portugal, Spain or Romania with no visa and no income requirement.

Outside the Union, each destination sets its own conditions: sponsored employment, investment, passive income, professional qualifications. These conditions rule out most applicants before the tax question even arises.

A distinction must also be drawn between the right to reside and the right to work. Most permits granted to retirees, people of independent means and remote workers do not allow the holder to carry on a local activity.

And a distinction must be drawn between the residence permit and tax residency: the two follow different rules and are governed by different authorities, and neither can be inferred from the other.

This first step is handled with documents, not impressions. An income requirement, an investment threshold or a list of eligible occupations is checked with the competent authority of the target country, and nowhere else.

For a household with school-age children, the schooling on offer often decides the destination. The French school network abroad is dense in countries with a long-standing French presence and very sparse elsewhere.

The availability of a place cannot be negotiated, and consulates' school grant campaigns follow a timetable that starts well before the start of the school year.

Health comes immediately after. Several destinations require evacuation to a third country for major procedures, and insurance becomes expensive, then difficult to take out, with age and medical history.

These two items — school and health — determine a household's budget far more than taxation does, and they do not offset each other.

The cost of living shown in comparisons is almost always that of a local lifestyle. Reproducing European habits — imported food, international schooling, private healthcare — changes the equation entirely.

Housing is also segmented in ways that averages conceal. In Bali, Lisbon or Medellín, the market aimed at foreigners bears no relation to the local market.

Exchange rates are the third factor. A budget pegged to a favourable rate becomes unsustainable if the local currency appreciates, and this variation runs to tens of percent over a decade.

We do not publish a typical monthly budget for any country: none of the official series we consulted measures a basket of spending comparable to that of an expatriate.

The fourth question is the stability of the framework. A preferential regime can be closed to new entrants overnight, as Portugal has shown; a standard rate, such as Romania's 10%¹ or Bulgaria's 10%², does not expire.

A residence scheme can also be suspended: Malaysia did so, and Vanuatu lost the visa exemption that gave its passport its value, which fell to about 95³ destinations.

Only the fifth question is about tax. And it arises in two stages: what the host country levies, and what France continues to levy as long as the departure has not actually taken effect.

Article 4 B of the French General Tax Code sets out four alternative criteria — home, principal place of stay, professional activity, centre of economic interests — and any one of them is enough to keep a person domiciled in France for tax purposes.

Finally, departure triggers the exit tax above more than €800,000⁴ in securities, with a deferral application to be filed at least from 90 days⁵ before the transfer if the destination is outside the European Economic Area.

Asking these questions in this order rules out most plans before they cost anything. That is precisely the point of the method.