My husband and I live in the US, but he's from Australia originally and we've gotten Australian citizenship for our 2 kids. We're happy where we are for the time being, and having recently discovered the joys of Mustachianism, we're working to grow our business and max out all our tax-advantaged investment accounts to fund an early retirement.
College is, obviously, a big expense on the horizon, though not for about a decade. We're considering whether that might be a good time to retire (if we can), head to Australia or New Zealand, where I could also get a visa easily, and enroll the kids in school there (where average tuition even for top schools seems to be in the range of $5000-8000 USD per year). As our business is remote, we could potentially keep it going from there, though time zones would be a bitch with our US clients. My husband also has a lot of family over there, and his parents probably won't be able to travel much at that point - plus better healthcare, and generally far more reasonable people/culture, so we think we would like to make the move at some point -- but want to make sure we don't get screwed on taxes.
We'll plan on talking to an expat tax advisor soon, but a few Qs if anyone knows/has experience in this field:
- We're working to fund ROTH IRAs as well as 401ks. The US won't tax the growth, but if we're living in another country at the time we want to cash the accounts out, would they consider the gains to be taxable?
- Would we be able to continue running a US-based business, with US employees, from AU or NZ? Who would tax that if so? We currently have an LLC taxed as an S Corp, not sure if we'd need to change that.
- Could we keep our US investment accounts open and keep putting money into them?
- Any other challenges/pitfalls we should be aware of?
Thanks for any help!