Perpetual Traveler - PT

[Peter Taradash]

If you are low profile & don't have any visible income or assets in the
place where you live & sleep, you can't be taxed there.
This is a simple fact that can be useful to P.T.s and others.
How this can be arranged is another story for another day.

 

[JohnnyDoe]

If you are low profile & don't have any visible income or assets in the
place where you live & sleep, you can't be taxed there.
This is a simple fact that can be useful to P.T.s and others.
How this can be arranged is another story for another day.

This is called dodging taxes. In today’s world, it’s quite unrealistic if you have a decent income and don’t want to live like a rat.

 

[Marty McFly]

The PT thing was good 20-30 years ago… the world has changed!

 

[JohnnyDoe]

PT no longer means Perpetual Traveler.

It means Prison Time.

CRS, FATCA, exit taxes, metadata, automatic exchange of information and the authorities’ insatiable hunger for money killed the fantasy.
Those still clinging to PT are running a strategy that stopped working long ago. It will end for everyone with assessments, penalties, frozen accounts, travel restrictions, and a prosecutor explaining reality very slowly.

 

[Peter Taradash]

"PT no longer means Perpetual Traveler. It means Prison Time."
NONSENSE!
Sorry, if one has a good passport (Not USA*) & spends time living as a non-resident tourist;
no matter how well they live (for 3 months at a time) tourists never have tax authorities
chasing them. Still, low profile is always recommended.
*Even American Citizens who are non-resident get a large (over $100,000) annual tax exemption.

Invisible assets include but are not limited to crypto & physical gold.

One alternative is having a legal residence in a tax haven.
There are many of these besides Monaco. Bermuda & the Bahamas comes to mind. Puerto Rico also can be used by Americans to escape the tax net, legally.
If you are rich enough there are places with a flat tax or no tax special deal to be negotiated. This includes some European countries like Liechtenstein. Or Israel.
Or Turkey where $400, 000 invested in real estate gets not only a nice apartment, but also a passport, a residence & a tax pass.
Non PTs have always said "It doesn't work." But those who walk the walk know
if one keeps up with the new laws, etc. it works fine. Not only that, they can stay more or less permanently anywhere in the world they want to stay.
One doesn't "evade" the law- one must avid the effects of some laws almost always aimed at residents within the jurisdiction.
There is also a decent book on this topic called "The Invisible Investor."

 

[JohnnyDoe]

non-resident tourist;

It means you are resident somewhere else.

they can stay more or less permanently anywhere in the world they want to stay.

Stay permanently=reside

No doubt one can avoid taxes. But evading them under the false pretense of being a tourist no longer works.

 

[Peter Taradash]

If you stay in a place with a tourist visa if required , or a visa upon arrival, you really are a tourist. No false pretenses. In UK it is for 6 months. Similar rule in Thailand & many other places. You can leave the country and after a visa run as short as 60 seconds, you re-enter for the allowed period, again ... People do this in many spots. In Argentina for instance, it's a great place to live indefinitely & cheaply. Obviously this PT stuff doesn't work if you have a taxable Johnny Lunchbucket job there or own a store on main street. You need assets abroad or an invisible income to be a tourist. Traders, people who make online incomes or consultants have this. "Try it, you'll like it!" No complicated and costly corporations, trusts, LLC's etc. needed. I agree that it is difficult to maintain bank accounts outside of tax havens but, conventional banks are useless these days, The new online banks that will allow you to cash out & trade crypto are available without much KYC.

 

[Paratore]

It’s not like it used to be. That’s for sure. Visa runs are harder. Income isn’t invisible anymore. You might still get away with being a perpetual traveler, but I would expect it’s going to rake more work. It depends on which country you are escaping, which countries you are visiting, and what you have to setup. UK? Italy? Australia? Spain? They’ll chase you. Others? Maybe not so much, especially if enough time passes. Choose the countries you visit wisely? Maybe they won’t care or aren’t organized enough to care. Set up some kind of paper tax residency and pay some nominal amount to a country of origin that isn’t going to care to dig deep if the papers are in order? Maybe.

 

[Peter Taradash]

I agree with the above. Except that a country even as strict as Spain or Germany don't "catch up" with anyone living there low profile for at least 3 years. And that is only if they attract notice.
Some of the readers and commenters here seem to equate the PT life with something illegal. On the contrary, a PT is and has to be low profile & as clean as a white cloud
--following the laws , rules & local customs, never breaking them. A PT is automatically considered a resident of the country who pass[port he is travelling under even if the
country itself has been notified that he is no longer resident. Thus, it is helpful, but not absolutely necessary to have a legal residence in a de-facto tax haven (like some European countries & most Central & South American countries are).
Most of them do not tax income generated abroad. That is why so many have Paraguay residence cards. Yes I know, many banks are disregarding (for KYC purposes) passports or residence cards that were
essentially purchased. But many people {digital nomads} do not have a "real" fixed place of residence. Nothing illegal about that!

 

[JohnnyDoe]

This conversation is going in circles because it mixes three different things that are not the same.

Tourist status is an immigration concept.
Tax residency is a factual assessment.
“Low profile” is not a legal category anywhere on this planet.

Visa runs do not reset tax facts. Staying a few months as a “tourist” while living, sleeping, consuming, and centering your life in a place creates habitual abode and center of vital interests issues regardless of what stamp is in the passport. Every OECD country applies this. Many non-OECD countries quietly apply it when money comes to surface or when another authority asks questions.

“Invisible income” is not invisible. Crypto exchanges report. Onramps report. Offramps report. Banks report. Payment processors report. Travel patterns are logged. Telecoms log location. The idea that online income floats in a legal vacuum is 2006 thinking.

“No one chases you for years” is not a defense. Delayed enforcement is the norm, tax reassessments are retroactive, penalties compound. Criminal thresholds are easily crossed and inexorably enforced.

Having a passport or residence somewhere else does not allocate tax by magic. You are not “automatically resident” of a country because you hold its passport. Citizenship and tax residency are separate constructs almost everywhere.

Yes, you can avoid taxes. That requires an actual residency solution, actual substance, actual compliance, and usually actual taxes paid somewhere. What does not work anymore is pretending to live nowhere while living somewhere.

PT as folklore survives. PT as a strategy does not.

 

[Columbus]

I’m sure being a PT works, yet I guess it is quiet tiresome to move/travel countries every 3 months (less than 3 months).
Also I’m sure americans adapt to such lifestyle a lot easier.

 

[Peter Taradash]

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, even if it is demonstratably wrong.
A young person recently insisted to me that it is impossible to get really rich today.
And that in my days, 60 or 70 years ago it was easy.
That is plain WRONG. In my day there was oil, or real estate. Not much else could take an
average person from zero to millionaire. Today IMO there are many more options and opportunities.

Same with PT. 50 or 70 years ago there were problems. PT wasn't suitable or doable except for a small
minority . They discovered & were willing to use the (then) five flags. It is the same today.
There are many more PTs around in 2025 than there were in 1975.
PTs were a tiny minority then and they are a tiny minority now. But thousands exist and
prosper. There are whole industries catering to them.
They used to be called "Sovereign Individuals" now "Digital Nomads."

 

[JohnnyDoe]

They used to be called "Sovereign Individuals" now "Digital Nomads."

and they end up very badly. Give time to the slow machine of the judiciary.
You don’t see TikTok videos of how this fantasy can end, but you see plenty promoting services for digital nomads.

Btw the videos of those idiots pretending to be above the law in court or at traffic stops based on the sovereign individual theory are hilarious.

 

[Paratore]

I’m sure being a PT works, yet I guess it is quiet tiresome to move/travel countries every 3 months (less than 3 months).
Also I’m sure americans adapt to such lifestyle a lot easier.

It’s more that Americans know what their dragon is: the IRS. That one will chase you around the world for life. The trick for Americans is to legally reclassify income using the US tax code and tax treaties (which are labyrinthine) while not stepping on the tail of another sleeping dragon. That fosters a different mindset than those who can escape from their dragon (and choose more tractable ones) with a bit of work.

Low profile just means no one is paying attention to you. That works very well right up until someone starts paying attention to you. Then you’ll need something else.

Everything is logged these days. If you enter an airport, you’ve created a record. If you use a cellular phone, you’ve created a record. If you use a bank, you’ve created a record. There are a lot of records out there. Not all databases talk to each other (yet). It’s not easily possible to look at all of them. Few have the desire to dig deep unless you do something noticeable. That’s steadily changing as people start to apply AI to this data. Part of it depends on who is looking. A divorce lawyer? Laughable. A powerful nation state? They’ll find you. Even the illegals in the US who only pay cash, never travel, and have no ID? We find out ICE always knew where they were and just now started taking action.

A digital nomad who is not making much money and moving around on 90 day visa free access? That person will escape notice for a while. If you start buying real estate, moving large amounts of money through banks, etc., then that will attract attention. If you have permanent residence or citizenship? That will put more eyes on you. You’ll need paper in either case.