Is it possible to emigrate to Australia and/or New Zealand if all you have to contribute is a lot of spending money? There are rules for direct relatives, students and jobs, but what if I just want to retire to those countries and I can show that I have sufficient funds to contribute to their GNP, so to speak?
People who wish to retire in Australia must be over the age of 55. With the exception of your spouse, who does not need to be over 55 to qualify, you cannot have any dependents. People who apply for the standard retirement visa will be awarded a temporary visa in the first instance, which is valid for four years.
The temporary retirement visa
Will require $750,000 in qualifying investments, together with a $500,000 sum for maintenance and an income of at least $60,000 per year. The visa can be renewed on a bi-annual basis provided that all criteria are met. In order to qualify for the temporary retirement visa applicants also need to be over 65 and must hold comprehensive health insurance for the duration of their permit.
Investor Migrant: If you have significant funds to invest in New Zealand you may be able to qualify for an investor visa. In order to do so, you will need to have at least $1.5 million NZD to invest if you are under 65 or $10 million NZD if you are over 65.
1 U.S. dollar gets you 1.63 New Zealand dollars, so that would be a little over 6 milllion for me.
Paradise isn’t cheap.
Also helps keep out the riff raff.
There are also various business start-up and investment visas for under-55s.
No, it is not possible to emigrate to Aus / NZ, or anywhere: emigrate from, immigrate to.
An American woman I know married an Australian in the early 90s. She was able to immigrate, but could not work in her profession for 5 years after that.
also be aware that no matter where you live, an American has to pay income tax to the IRS.
Although this is correct in principle, in practice foreign tax credits will overwhelm any US taxes due. In my case, tax credits for Canadian (including Quebec) are pretty double what I would otherwise owe. You do have to file returns, though, and that is a pain. You will also likely have to fill out a FUBAR report (on foreign bank accounts) and that is an even bigger pain, especially since everything on it is already in the 8938 (don’t ask).
I would want someone younger than that.
Many Americans believe that the US has some of the toughest immigration laws, when in reality we are somewhere in the middle of developed countries.
Immigration control is rather easier when an island with hundreds of miles of open sea to navigate.
You should be aware that (in the case of New Zealand), that puts you firmly in the ‘very wealthy’ category.
We’re less than three months away from a General Election, and two of the three left-leaning parties currently in Parliament have a wealth tax as their policy. The present Labour government’s Revenue Minister also wanted a wealth tax, but when the Prime Minister ruled it out (having seen the polls…) the Minister resigned his Revenue portfolio.
Will you be comfortable paying 42-48% income tax, plus possibly a Net Wealth tax? The Māori Party wants one of those (up to 8%!), although the chances of them forming part of a near-future government and getting extreme policy like that passed is remote.
N.B. New Zealand’s parliamentary terms are only three years. So even if we vote in a business-friendly government this October, by the time you get your paperwork sorted, there’s no guarantee that we won’t have swung back to a socialist ‘tax the rich!’ mentality again.
If you are seriously considering retiring to New Zealand, I’d recommend visiting beforehand and talking to a tax advisor about your situation. Don’t get me wrong - New Zealand’s awesome - but there’s plenty of people here who firmly believe that no-one should be ‘that’ rich. And ‘that’ is probably a much lower level than you or I would consider reasonable.
…without taking this into the realm of politics: this post is an inaccurate summation of the two-left-leaning parties policies, in our MMP system of government neither of these two parties would even be able to implement their tax policies anyway, the OP doesn’t have to worry about potentially paying “42-48% income tax, plus possibly a Net Wealth tax”, most of the people here who " firmly believe that no-one should be ‘that’ rich" are talking about vulture capitalists and not the person making a few hundred thousand dollars a year.
In our MMP system, while the smaller parties get a voice, the larger parties control the agenda.
The question was about emigrating from the US to Oz/NZ.
I linked to the actual policy on the Māori Party website, so anyone can check what tax rates they are proposing.
I also noted the likelihood of that policy being implemented.
As a general point being made to someone considering bringing their lifetime accumulated wealth to another country, I don’t consider it ‘inaccurate’ to warn them of the political landscape here.
Yes, I was being pedantic about the OP’s phrasing (“to emigrate to”). Every immigration is also an emigration, and vice versa (unless you just die at sea or something).
If you start to get serious about Oz, one thing I’d take a look at fairly soon in the process is health insurance. A few years ago my husband had an employment opportunity with an Australian firm. It was mostly a pretty sweet deal, but a close reading of the health insurance plan showed that it wouldn’t work for us, because it covered health care just about anywhere EXCEPT in the United States. On that basis, he turned down the offer.
There is no way that we, as Americans with family in the US that we would definitely want to visit, could guarantee that we would never, ever need health care in the US. What if, for example, my husband went back to South Carolina for his brother’s 50th birthday party and was in a car accident, which caused injuries that resulted in an inability to travel for several months? The insurance package wouldn’t have paid a dime. And I don’t think travel insurance is designed to cover more than short-term emergency medical care (although you could of course check that out).
Of course, if you don’t anticipate needing/wanting to travel much to the US once you are firmly settled, it may not matter for you. But it is something to consider.
ETA: Actually, I’m not thinking too clearly. The above is all true, but if you want to maintain health insurance with a US carrier, you can of course arrange to get insured. (I don’t think Medicare works outside the US, though - I’m not sure.) However, private insurance with an American company is going to be pricy.
On the plus side, you probably wouldn’t have much difficulty getting insurance to pay up for any non-US expenses. I’ve billed American insurance companies for significant health care in Singapore and South Africa, but the care in those two countries (very high quality, by the way) was so much cheaper than in the US that the insurance paid off instantly. I think they wanted to settle the claim before they realized I’d made a mistake on the cost. Nope, folks: it really is much cheaper to get health care outside America. We suck.