FTv3

If anyone is thinking of living in Europe (or internationally in general) and especially if you have multi-nationalities, consider the following:

If you live in Europe as a European citizen (read: reside/qualify for a “tax home” status over there), you will be subject to Euro income taxes, healthcare obligations, and a whole slew of other gotchas. Further, not being a US resident while working in the US for a US company complicates a lot of things like our pension, DC and 401K plans, insurance benefits etc; eg., the tax shelter of these plans doesn’t necessarily exist in the eyes of a foreign tax authority; its all dépendant on the tax treaty between countries and note that those treaties are usually only at a federal level and not necessarily with lower levels of govts (think of an EU equivalent of a state level govt / income tax). Also, few if any US bank accounts or credit cards etc., will allow active participation to non US residents; foreign resident investments in US brokerages gets really complicated really quickly. Last, UPS will only direct deposit to a US bank and will apparently only accept a US address in their HR system (I’m not clear on the exact details of this). Depositing a US payroll check into a foreign account also gets interesting especially with currency conversion hits and fees (and how would one even get that check when UPS sends it to US address on file?). Even moving to Europe and paying their taxes as a resident is really messy and ends up wasting a good chunk of money. Eg, you pay for health care over there but still required to hold the one through UPS = double paying. I’m pretty confident these guys are living in the states and just visiting their family and hometowns on a frequency that our profession and travel benefits allow. If they don’t have EU passports then this is all a moot point as they would have no rights to residency over there.