Asset protection
outside the EU

Dear reader,

It is impossible to overlook the growing criticism, and at times hostility, towards high achievers and top earners. It seems ever more socially acceptable to attack precisely those who already carry a disproportionate share of the tax burden. In the UK, the top 1 % of income tax payers alone are liable for more than a quarter of all income tax (27.2 % in the 2023 to 2024 tax year).

Look at Germany, the EU's largest economy. The German daily Die Welt reported recently:

At a strategy conference of the Left Party, leading members found it amusing to muse about whether the rich in Germany should be shot or sent to labour camps.

At demonstrations in Berlin, placards reading “Kill your Landlord” were on display, and posters all over Berlin advertised the “Revolutionary May Day demonstration” with a large guillotine.

Next to it stood the slogan: “Against the city of the rich”

The same people who are hypersensitive whenever they sense criticism of members of minorities have no objection when so-called “high earners” are vilified.

And politics? Far from condemning such behaviour, it often pours oil on the fire, calling again and again for a wealth levy, higher top tax rates and even a Lastenausgleich, a one-off capital levy (in plain terms: expropriation), all for more “tax fairness”. And all in a Robin Hood tone which suggests that “high earners” are the heartless, money-grabbing profiteers of an escalating global crisis, so a little redistribution is only right and fair.

Fittingly, Klaus Schwab, the 84-year-old German founder of the WEF in Davos and a guru to many EU politicians, has dusted off his old chestnut of “stakeholder capitalism” and served it up again for the COVID era, loudly and ominously, under the title “The Great Reset”. For 50 years now he has been hawking this lightweight thinking like stale bread rolls. The German edition of the book is called “Der große Umbruch”, the great upheaval. Or did he perhaps mean the great overthrow?

“You will own nothing and you will be happy” is one of his visions for 2030. Put the disturbing core statements of his theses to Schwab or other WEF figures, and it is all one big misunderstanding. Believe that and you will believe anything.

Are you, as a citizen, the state's guarantor?

Citizen and guarantor are different words, yet those in power hardly tell them apart. The citizen is seen above all as the state's patient guarantor, made to stand surety with ever higher taxes for ever new and ever higher state debts. Hardly a country in the world is an exception (Liechtenstein, perhaps?).

In the UK these are hard numbers. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the government's own fiscal watchdog, expects tax as a share of GDP to pass its historical high of 37.2 per cent in 2027-28 and to keep rising in every year of its forecast. Measured against the size of the economy, Britons are heading for the highest tax take on record.

And that is only the forecast. It is hard to imagine what the cost of the energy transition, and the steady loss of industry in the name of climate protection, will do to public finances and to the country as a place to do business over the long term.

Yet politicians refuse to learn. Since 6 April 2026, inheritance tax relief for family businesses and farms has been capped: full relief only on the first £2.5 million, 50 per cent above it. From 6 April 2027, most unused pension funds will count towards your estate. Capital that has already been taxed is taxed again.

Asset protection is first and foremost protection from the state

Of course divorce, personal liability or an incapable next generation are all dangers to your family's wealth.

But asset protection is first and foremost protection from the state's reach. Whether through high taxation, arbitrary rules changed after you have made your plans, such as moving pensions into inheritance tax, or “soft” expropriation through a possible wealth levy: unchecked, the state is a destroyer of wealth.

Anyone who wants to protect their wealth from the state should look at asset protection outside the EU, whether through a foundation-style Limited (Company Limited by Guarantee), an Asset Protection Trust or a Wyoming LLC.

Now, EU harmonisation teaches us one thing: what applies in Germany today will be law in Spain, Croatia and Greece tomorrow. The best example is the German exit tax on moving a business asset abroad: since 1 January 2020 it has applied across the EU under the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive.

Moving to a low-tax country is the biggest lever in asset protection

We advise every client to move to a low-tax country. The asset protection measure with the greatest leverage is relocating your residence. But it does not have to be a country outside the EU. There are interesting options inside the EU, too, that are compatible with asset protection outside it.

An example: you move to Portugal. The classic NHR regime is closed to newcomers; its successor is the IFICI (“NHR 2.0”). If you meet its conditions, for example through qualified work in research, innovation or a certified start-up, foreign dividends are tax-free for 10 years. You set up a Family Investment Company (FIC, a family holding company) in London, in other words outside the EU. It founds a start-up that is sold after 3 years for 3 million euros. Thanks to the UK holding company privilege and because the UK levies no withholding tax on outgoing dividends, you can receive these 3 million euros in Portugal as a dividend, entirely tax-free.

Countries are competing for you and your wealth

Our colleagues at Nomad Capitalist have made a fine motto their flag: “Go where you are treated best”.

In fact it is propaganda and well-calculated brainwashing by your home state to make you believe that your country is the best, the most beautiful and the most economically stable. That only here can you be happy, have children and raise them in the best conditions.

You are living in a matrix. Seriously. You can assume there are countries today where you could achieve more than would be possible in your home country. Where you can really take off without obstacles being put in your way at every turn.

But things are moving. For one thing we have to thank the coronavirus: the COVID pandemic undoubtedly accelerated a trend that already existed into a megatrend. Those who could escaped the grey of lockdown for sunnier, more carefree places such as Dubai, Mexico or Tahiti. For many, a whole new way of life opened up. And because even the most conservative family business owner suddenly accepted that service providers and freelance advisers work remotely, unimagined freedoms appeared overnight.

We had to see freedom with our own eyes and, like a doubting Thomas, touch with our own hands what we had thought impossible.

And then the penny drops and you suddenly realise that there are countries and places where you are treated quite differently from at home. By the people, and by the government and administration.

Where you are respected, where people value what you have achieved. And where they would like to persuade successful people like you to settle.

There, they have understood that a society needs high achievers like you in order to function. And they know that good people attract other good people.

And in return for pitching your tent in their country, they grant you generous tax breaks or other tangible advantages.

Go where you are treated best!