Good for them. My Australian application is presently sitting in the queue, and I've already had extensive conversations with a number of lawyers about UK and Dutch immigration.
Yes. The downside is the wealth tax, and it can also be very difficult to socially integrate into a country where English is not the first language. (I can learn Dutch of course, but it would take many years.)
My wife is American. Judging by her progress learning Dutch well enough to be able to speak would take 6 months.
It will take her years because she does duolingo for 5 minutes every day and speaks a bit of Dutch with me.
But given by how her progress goes, I'd say it'd take 6 months if you go intensely about it.
Dutch is close to English in vocab.
And by the wealth tax you mean box 3? I don't know how other countries do it but as we currently have it, I find this way more chill than the US. You don't need to log your trades, you don't need to care about capital gains. You'll roughly pay 1% about your net income.
If you want to avoid that a bit: buy art in your house that's stable (if I recall correctly, I'm not a laywer) and your house is your primary residence. So any money that you put into that doesn't get taxed.
We'll change soon to a capital gains system probably anyway, a few years tops, so this point is probably moot.
Again, I'm not a laywer or financial advisor. I sometimes read up on these things, but I'm not razor sharp on it.
Most of the tax begins at $80k+ and then $110k+ yearly income but not so much wealth from my understanding.
PS; The Dutch government may reverse the negative expat changes, especially regarding the special status for capital gains from outside the country in the coming years. And check out Germany. They may also shortly set up a scheme.
Even Boris Johnson can't hold a candle to the imbecility of Trump. And a parliamentary system generally acts as a better safeguard of sensible governance. UK might not be doing great right now, but I feel tentatively positive about the next 5-10 years.
Plus, as a self-employed business owner, I need health care, and I'm not confident that Obamacare will survive the next administration.
Hhhm, no not really unless you are in the bottom 30% of earners in the US.
You can get US-like outcomes (or worse) on the NHS with the waiting list, or you can get good health care on time with private health insurance. However, you have to pay for the NHS (via National Insurance and higher income taxes) either way on top of private health insurance.
Quality of life and life expectancy/hospital outcomes like Cancer 5 years survival rate, stage of diagnosis are generally worse or equal in the UK to the healthcare the majority of Americans receive. The UK stats are on paper equal or only slightly better on a population basis, but strip out people in the UK with private healthcare or look at it regionally and you will see the sad truth that the NHS has pretty bad outcomes. As in our left wing politicians in power are calling it broken. It is very bad. Really really bad.
If you take out people on private healthcare, there is little difference in outcomes, and you'll be paying the same at the end of the day, just in the UK, without sufficient coverage, options to pay massive sums for the top treatments are often not available in the first place.
What kind of prices for private health care are we talking about? For me, single, in California, the price for good insurance without any subsidies would be around $800/month. And that doesn't include the deductible (~$3000) or copays.
