Most people choose a country before they understand their own tax exit. They read a blog post about Dubai or Lisbon, fall in love with a lifestyle photo, and only later discover that their home country has a deemed-disposal rule, a five-year departure tax, or a CFC regime that follows them across the border. The result is an expensive lesson: a residency permit in a 0% jurisdiction that delivers nowhere near 0% in actual savings because the exit was sloppy.
Tax Residency Consulting is the part of our work that fixes this. We do the strategic, country-agnostic analysis first — your income, your assets, your family, your home-country exit rules, your timeline — and only then recommend a jurisdiction. The deliverable is a written residency plan you can act on, with us or with another advisor.
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What We Do
Tax Residency Consulting is a fixed-scope advisory engagement. It is not the application paperwork (that is Residency Application Assistance) and not the company move (that is Business Relocation & Setup). It is the upstream thinking that makes both of those work.
- Situational triage — A structured review of your current tax exposure, income mix (active, passive, capital gains, crypto, royalties), asset holdings, family situation, and home-country residency and domicile rules. We identify the binding constraints before we look at any country.
- Exit-tax and departure modelling — Quantified estimate of what leaving your current country will actually cost: deemed-disposal events, exit taxes, trailing source-rule taxation, CFC pull-back rules, and the impact of the day you choose as your residency-cessation date.
- Jurisdiction comparison — Three to five candidate countries scored against your specific profile across tax treatment, day-count requirements, banking quality, treaty network, family rules, citizenship pathway, cost of living, and geopolitical stability.
- Written residency plan — A 15–25-page document recommending one primary and one fallback jurisdiction, the program within each (e.g. UAE Golden Visa vs investor visa, Italy €300K flat tax vs ordinary residency, Cyprus 60-day non-dom vs 183-day), and the sequence of moves over a 12–18 month timeline.
- CRS and treaty review — Review of how the Common Reporting Standard, your existing tax treaties, and any tie-breaker rules will apply during and after the move. We flag dual-residency risks before they happen.
- Decision support — One follow-up call to walk you through the report, plus written answers to clarifying questions. After that you decide: execute with us, execute with local counsel, or stay where you are.
Our Process
A standard Tax Residency Consulting engagement is a four-step process delivered over four to six weeks.
- Free 30-minute consultation (Week 1) — A real situational triage, not a sales call. We ask about your residency today, your income sources, your family, your timeline, and the two or three jurisdictions you have already been thinking about. About one in five calls ends with us recommending you do not engage us — usually because the case is straightforward enough to handle yourself, or because you need a tax attorney first.
- Discovery deep-dive (Week 1–2, two hours, €450) — Paid working session where we map every income stream, asset, entity, and family member to their tax treatment. We collect tax returns from the last two years, ownership documents for any operating company, and a one-page summary of your goals. Output: a one-page situation summary and a scoping memo for the strategy phase.
- Strategy and modelling (Weeks 2–6) — We compare three to five candidate jurisdictions using our internal scoring rubric. For each, we model your projected tax liability under the new regime, your home-country exit cost, and the realistic timeline to a clean break. Where relevant we model two or three exit dates to find the one that produces the smallest exit-tax bill.
- Written plan and walk-through (Week 6) — Delivery of the residency plan plus a one-hour walk-through call. The plan covers: recommended jurisdiction and program, fallback jurisdiction, sequence and dates, document checklist, government fee estimates, and a first-year compliance calendar. You own the document — there is no lock-in to use us for execution.
For clients with a CRS deadline, an active home-country audit, or a pending business sale, we run the discovery and strategy phases in compressed two-week sprints. Expect higher fees and shorter sleep.
Who This Service Is For
Tax Residency Consulting is the right starting point for almost everyone considering a move. It is the wrong starting point only if you have already filed an application and just need execution help — in which case Residency Application Assistance is the entry point.
Profile 1: Pre-exit founders and HNW individuals
Founders 12–24 months from a sale, executives with vesting equity, and HNW individuals with mixed capital-gains and dividend income. The biggest value comes from the exit-date modelling: choosing the right calendar year for residency cessation can shift seven-figure outcomes. Typical move: France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, or a US state → UAE, Italy €300K flat tax, Cyprus non-dom, Switzerland lump-sum, Singapore. See For Entrepreneurs.
Profile 2: Digital nomads with multi-country presence
Self-employed consultants and remote employees earning $80K–$300K who already split their year across two or three countries. The risk here is not high tax — it is accidental tax residency in a country they thought they were just visiting. Strategy work pins down a primary tax home and a defensible day-count plan. Typical move: high-tax EU country → Georgia, Bulgaria, Portugal IFICI, Thailand LTR, Malta non-dom. See For Digital Nomads.
Profile 3: Retirees with passive-income protection needs
Pensioners, dividend earners, and rental-income owners moving to lock in 10–20 year tax holidays. The strategy work focuses on pension treaty articles, withholding tax recovery, and the interaction between source-country and residency-country rules. Typical move: UK, Canada, Northern EU → Portugal D7, Costa Rica Pensionado, Panama, Paraguay, Malaysia MM2H, Uruguay 10-year holiday. See For Retirees.
Profile 4: Crypto founders and Web3 builders
Crypto-native founders and traders with volatile capital-gains exposure. The strategy work focuses on which programs treat crypto as capital, which treat it as income, and which still have unsettled treatment. Typical move: US, UK, Australia → UAE (0% personal), Cayman, BVI, Cyprus 8% crypto regime (2026), Vanuatu, or for US persons specifically Puerto Rico Act 60. See For Crypto Founders.
Profile 5: Family offices and multi-jurisdictional cases
Engagements involving spouses with different citizenships, school-age children, trusts, or operating businesses in two or more countries. These cases need real strategy work because the binding constraint is rarely tax — it is custody arrangements, school fits, or trust governance. Tax structuring fits around those, not the other way around.
Pricing & Engagement Model
Tax Residency Consulting is billed as a fixed scope, not by the hour.
| Component | Fee (EUR) | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Initial 30-minute consultation | Free | Same week |
| Two-hour discovery deep-dive | €450 | Week 1–2 |
| Jurisdiction strategy & written plan | €2,500 – €4,500 | 2–4 weeks |
| Multi-jurisdiction or family-office complexity | €4,500 – €9,000 | 4–8 weeks |
| Add-on: exit-date modelling for a planned business sale | €1,500 – €3,500 | Bolt-on |
The base fee covers a single individual or married couple, up to three candidate jurisdictions, and standard income mix. Larger families, complex corporate structures, simultaneous multi-jurisdiction modelling, or US-person planning move the fee into the higher band. Government fees, third-party legal opinions, and tax filings are not included.
We do not take referral commissions from real estate brokers, golden-visa fund managers, or banks. The advice is the product, and the only person paying us is you. That is the only structure that keeps the recommendations honest — the moment we are paid by the destination, we are no longer telling you whether the destination is right.
What the Written Plan Covers
The deliverable is the document. Here is what is in it, in the order it appears:
- Executive summary — one page, the recommendation in plain English
- Situation analysis — your current tax exposure, broken down by income type and country
- Exit cost estimate — modelled departure-tax and trailing-tax exposure under at least two exit dates
- Jurisdiction comparison matrix — three to five candidates scored on 12 weighted criteria
- Recommended primary jurisdiction — program, eligibility check, day-count plan, banking landscape, family treatment, citizenship trajectory
- Fallback jurisdiction — same depth, in case the primary becomes unworkable
- Timeline — month-by-month sequence with dependencies and decision gates
- First-year compliance calendar — every filing, fee, and day-count check for the first 12 months in the new country
- Risks and unknowns — what we do not know yet, and how to find out
If you have read other consultancies’ “strategy” outputs and found them to be glossy brochures pointing at the same five Caribbean programs, this is the document that exists to be the opposite of that.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why pay for strategy if I can read about countries online?
Public information is enough to short-list countries. It is not enough to choose between them, because the choice depends on facts that are not on the public internet — your income mix, your home-country exit rules, your treaty position, your family’s binding constraints. The strategy work is the modelling that turns generic information into a decision.
What if I already know I want to move to the UAE / Portugal / Italy?
Roughly a third of clients arrive with a country in mind. About half of those leave with the same country and a fully-modelled execution plan; the other half discover that a neighbour or alternative is materially better for their specific situation. We will tell you on the first call whether your pre-selected country is plausibly right.
Do you handle US-person planning?
Partially. US citizens are taxed on worldwide income regardless of residency, so a tax-free residency move alone does not eliminate US tax. The realistic options are Puerto Rico Act 60, expatriation under section 877A, or relocating for non-tax reasons. We always work with a US tax attorney in coordination — our scope is the foreign jurisdiction side. See our territorial vs worldwide tax explainer for the framework.
How is this different from a private bank’s wealth-planning service?
Private banks structure investments around your existing residency. We restructure your residency. The two are complementary — most clients use both — but they are not substitutes, and the bank’s incentive is to keep your assets on its books, which biases the advice. Our incentive is the fee from you and nothing else.
What if the country I move to changes its rules?
It happens, and we plan for it. Every plan includes a fallback jurisdiction precisely because programs are political. The UK abolished its 200-year-old non-dom regime in April 2025; Cyprus is reforming its non-dom in 2026; Portugal closed NHR and replaced it with the narrower IFICI in 2024. Programs change. The defence is having a Plan B already mapped, not having to re-do strategy under pressure.
Can I just buy a one-hour consultation instead?
Yes — the free 30-minute call is the entry point, and we offer paid one-hour calls at €250 for clients who do not need a full written plan. About a quarter of clients use this format because they have already done their own analysis and just need a sanity check. We will tell you on the free call whether a one-hour conversation or a full plan is the right scope.
Do you guarantee tax savings?
No, and you should be wary of any advisor who does. We guarantee independent analysis, a written plan, and that the plan reflects the law as it stands on the day of delivery. The savings depend on you executing the plan correctly and the law not changing in ways no one foresaw. We will be honest about ranges; we will not promise outcomes.
Ready to Get Started?
The free 30-minute consultation is the right next step regardless of where you are in the process. Bring a rough sense of your income, the country (or countries) you are considering, and your timeline. We will tell you whether the case is straightforward, whether a paid scope makes sense, or whether you should talk to someone else first.
Book a free consultation — same-week availability.
For background on the concepts that drive the strategy work, see our pillars on the 183-day rule, territorial vs worldwide tax systems, and the difference between a visa and tax residency.
Last updated: 2026-04-26
Sources:
– OECD — Common Reporting Standard implementation status (oecd.org/tax/automatic-exchange)
– PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries — jurisdictional tax-residency rules (taxsummaries.pwc.com)
– KPMG — Individual income tax rates table (kpmg.com/xx/en/services/tax)
– European Commission — Country-by-country tax residency frameworks (taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu)