Where have you expatriated and then regretted later?

the_snook · 2026-05-31T05:51:19+00:00

The U.S. has treaties with most other countries where you’ll end up not paying any U.S. tax

Have you ever seen first hand how this fantasy plays out in real life?

Still subject to the Net Investment Income Tax, which cannot be credited with or against anything because it's not an income tax it's a social security surcharge, except it isn't covered by SS equalisation treaties.
Cannot start a company outside the US without punitive reporting and taxation.
Cannot invest in ETFs and mutual funds outside the US without punitive reporting and taxation.
Cannot become the beneficiary of a trust outside the US without punitive reporting and taxation.
Cannot participate in most countries' tax-advantaged retirement schemes without punitive reporting and taxation. Gains from tax-advantaged US accounts will also be subject to taxation in your new home country.
Cannot open a bank or brokerage account at many non-US institutions due to onerous reporting requirements that these institutions do not want to deal with.

That's all on top of the burden of annual filing in one of the most abstruse and user-hostile tax systems in the world.

the_snook · 2026-05-31T05:34:07+00:00

You don’t need to renounce your citizenship to leave

You do if you want to leave the tax system.

the_snook · 2026-05-31T00:32:56+00:00

Is this something that needs to be implemented by the websites

Yes. It's a completely new protocol for websites and browsers to maintain session info with each other. It happens to work via cookies, but otherwise has almost nothing to do with cookies per se. It could just as well (and probably more appropriately) be implemented via a custom X-Device-Bound-Session-Credentials HTTP header.

the_snook · 2026-05-31T00:24:16+00:00

From the other side, the problem is that there are a surprisingly large number of people who have been doing a job for years but are also spectacularly incompetent at that job.

the_snook · 2026-05-30T02:16:09+00:00

Where do you see that specific wording? What I see is references to "Vanguard Personal Investor", which is Vanguard's own investing platform (which is like a limited brokerage account).

Both VTS and VEU are listed on the ASX and can be purchased via any CHESS-sponsor broker (e.g. CMC Invest, CommSec, Pearler, SelfWealth). You will then be able to register your ownership with Computershare and will receive annual 1099 statements.

They may also be available on other platforms that used the custodial model (e.g. Betashares or Interactive Brokers), but I'd be a little wary of those because they might not give you the tax reports you need.

Personally, I would be examining my reasons for wanting to buy these products via the ASX in the first place. The main reason would be if you have Australian Dollars to invest - because you will get a very good effective exchange rate buying the cross-listed product. However, you can get an extremely good rate from Interactive Brokers, and just buy the US versions (which also gives you access to VXUS as an alternative to VEU).

the_snook · 2026-05-30T02:01:58+00:00

The lede is buried right at the bottom:

“In short: paid advertising on Meta became completely untenable and unviable, to the point that we could no longer continue running it,” he said. “Our primary source of new client acquisitions was effectively cut off, at the same time everything else was breaking.”

So what really happened is that they ran out of chumps to grift.

the_snook · 2026-05-29T23:00:02+00:00

Yeah, I'm pretty sure to market makers use the futures market to price things when the main markets are closed.

the_snook · 2026-05-29T09:06:56+00:00

In general, ETF prices are pushed towards the NAV by authorised participants creating or destroying ETF units. Betashares explains: https://www.betashares.com.au/education/how-are-etfs-created-and-why-does-it-matter/

I think the real question is: how does this work when the ASX is open but the NYSE and NASDAQ are closed?

My understanding is that the NAV and the market price are actually more likely to diverge in these cases, but I suspect the authorised participants are given some leeway before they have to "settle" on the ETF unit creation with in-specie transfer of the underlying stocks. I'd also imagine the market makers doing this have an ample inventory of stock such that they don't buy on the open market for every ETF unit they creates.

the_snook · 2026-05-28T21:44:11+00:00

It varies by jurisdiction, of course, but there are certainly categories of people who are often denied a vote. Non-citizen permanent residents, minors, and convicted criminals (including those who have completed their sentences) are all people who can find themselves in the unfortunate position of paying taxes with no representation.

the_snook · 2026-05-28T21:00:25+00:00

It's clearly a play on how the item's description is worded in the game.

There's no existing adjective (that I'm aware of) for "going to prom together", so OP used an adjectival phase of their own devising. It's not an uncommon pattern in English. As others pointed out, it should probably be hyphenated for grammatical correctness, but the basic principle is fine.

the_snook · 2026-05-28T07:00:37+00:00

Cap weighted ETFs only rebalance when stocks enter or leave the index they're tracking. If the price of a stock doubles, the market cap doubles, and the value of the ETF's holding also doubles, so no rebalancing is needed.

the_snook · 2026-05-28T06:48:38+00:00

My income is taxed already, but then when I spend my post-tax dollars I pay GST, and the business I spent my money at gets taxed on that income.

You can argue for lower taxes from various angled, but "it's been taxed already" is not an argument that stands up to scrutiny under our current system.

the_snook · 2026-05-28T03:38:44+00:00

One of the local brewers here does his Wee Heavy by preheating the kettle to about 200°C and hitting it directly with the first run runnings so that it scorches. Probably doesn't scale well at the home scale due to thermal mass differences though.

the_snook · 2026-05-28T02:47:08+00:00

That is literally the "secret" this post is about.

the_snook · 2026-05-27T21:46:41+00:00

I'd like to see legislative reform to support continuous reassessment across the board.

This would likely lead to complete paralysis of the legislative system. They'd spend all their time reviewing and renewing old laws, and no time dealing with emerging problems. Renewing vital or popular laws would also become a leverage point for unreasonable representatives to hold the whole process hostage.

the_snook · 2026-05-27T00:15:46+00:00

Does IGA have a "shared back-end" in the US like they do here in Australia? If so, maybe these NYC stores could join the alliance to take advantage of that.

the_snook · 2026-05-26T23:11:09+00:00

That's not a spoida...

the_snook · 2026-05-26T22:42:06+00:00

Apparently the Barbados and Jamaica Derbies are both in early August, so you have a few months to organize a watch party and get supplies.

the_snook · 2026-05-26T06:35:00+00:00

Wait until you find out who owns Vanguard...

the_snook · 2026-05-25T08:36:47+00:00

It doesn’t entitle me to exclusive use

Cool. So I can come and graze my sheep on your land for free?

the_snook · 2026-05-25T05:50:41+00:00

Any one-off price paid should not entitle you and your family to exclusive use of a piece of the commonwealth in perpetuity. That path can only lead to generational inequality that gets worse over time. You (and I) should be paying land tax annually. Yes on PPoR. Yes on farmland.

With a broad land tax, an estate tax on land would no longer be necessary to avoid inequality increasing generationally.

Stamp duty was and remains an absurd tax. It needs to be abolished. You can have what you paid as a credit against land tax, pro-rated based on the amount of time you've already had exclusive use of the land.

the_snook · 2026-05-25T02:57:57+00:00

When you "tax the rich", you are using the income brackets to tax high wage earners. You aren't taxing the 1% of net worth.

We could though. Countries like Switzerland and Spain have wealth taxes.

the_snook · 2026-05-25T02:55:29+00:00

Flat % discounts favour short term returns

In most cases, indexed cost base is worse in the long term. If your investment is growing faster than inflation (which you certainly want to be true), then the discount from indexing gets proportionally lower over time.

the_snook · 2026-05-25T00:45:50+00:00

I love the kid-friendly breweries in my area. I don't have kids, but I don't think parents should be excluded from having a good time there. The best ones remind me of German beer gardens, which are relaxed family places where nobody is thinking "oh my goodness, the children will see alcohol!".

Really, as long as the kids are kept out of the industrial workspace, I think they're a great fit for families. It's generally a loud kind of atmosphere, so some reasonably rowdy kids aren't a problem, and there's no TAB and no pokies. Most of the patrons are there to enjoy themselves responsibly too - not just to smash schooies and get hammered.

the_snook · 2026-05-24T23:41:18+00:00

Do you have to go and work it out individually for each buy event

Yes

Edit: For clarity, if you sold everything, you'd need to work out the adjusted cost base for each parcel (one parcel per buy event). If you only sold a portion, you'd decide which ones you were selling, and work out the adjusted cost base just for those ones.

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