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These 8 Countries Will Tax You to Hell (Avoid 100%) · IMI Podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard of the EU's Tax Haven Blacklist, a list designed to shame countries that don't tax enough.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a far more dangerous list nobody talks about.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: The countries whose tax policies are so infernal you'll think you died and went to hell.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're going through IMI's Tax Hell Blacklist.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: These are countries that treat you like a cow they can milk, aggressively.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: In 2025, however, you don't have to put up with it anymore.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Where you choose to live and not to live will define how much of your wealth you keep over your lifetime.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because tax systems aren't neutral.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: They reflect a country's ideology, attitude towards success, and how much freedom you're allowed to have while a resident or citizen of that country.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with Spain.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: More than one in three audits in Spain result in added assessments because tax agents receive performance-based bonuses.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's right.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Spain's tax authority rewards agents financially for uncovering additional taxable income.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Incentivized taxation.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: This means the system is structurally built to assume you're guilty.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: When the person auditing you gets paid more if they find something wrong, guess what?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: They will find something wrong.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The tax burden is heavy, yes, but the real danger is the rigidity of enforcement.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you succeed, the system assumes you owe more, and it's prepared to spend years proving it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Success in France is treated as suspicious, just as in Spain.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just take a look at their now routine vote on citizenship based taxation and additional wealth taxes.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Recall that their wealth tax experiment in the 2010s failed miserably, and President Macron had to repeal it in 2017.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It comes up in Parliament year after year, and in 2025 it was rejected by just a single vote.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: What about next year?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Brazil.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Brazilian companies spend 1,500 hours or more per year on tax compliance, the highest in the world.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Brazil has over ninety taxes across federal, state, and municipal levels, and the rules change constantly.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you want to comply, you can't.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not even the best tax lawyers are able to stay on top of this ever-moving Byzantine system.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: When compliance is impossible, everyone is always in violation by design.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: India.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: India has over 4.7 million unresolved tax cases in the courts.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Entrepreneurs lose years to disputes over interpretation.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: The tax system doesn't only tax income, it taxes your time.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: South Africa.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: It can take South Africans twelve to eighteen months just to receive approval to move assets abroad legally.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the system doesn't just tax wealth, it traps it.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when your money can't leave, neither can you, well, not without major sacrifice.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: The United States The US is one of only two countries on Earth that taxes citizens no matter where they live, earn, bank, or invest.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the other is Eritrea, a military dictatorship in East Africa that has little to no capacity to enforce its overseas tax policy.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in the US, if you try to renounce your citizenship, there's an exit tax waiting for you.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: One final big bite of your assets before they let you go.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Canada.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Canada's Income Tax Act is over 1.13 million words long.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's longer than the Bible, War and Peace, and Lord of the Rings combined.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Complexity is in and of itself a form of taxation.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: If the rules are impossible to fully understand either by those who they affect or those who wrote them in the first place, all enforcement becomes discretionary.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Power shifts from citizens to the administrators.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: If they want to get you, they always can.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Norway.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Among the 400 richest Norwegians, 30% have already moved abroad, mostly to Switzerland.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: They've taken tens of billions in assets with them and more are moving every single week.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Norway doesn't just tax your income, it also taxes your savings every year.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're trying to leave this abusive relationship by moving abroad, they'll tax you again.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like in the US, one final big bite, taking 38% of the market value of everything you own.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: The result is predictable.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Norway is haemorrhaging talent, job creators, innovation, and contrary to its goal, its own tax base.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not being replaced.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: The EU says low-tax countries are non-cooperative, but the real non-cooperative jurisdictions are the ones that treat wealth as something to be controlled, limited, or punished.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: The good news is that it's never been easier to leave a bad tax relationship.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you have wealth, there are plenty of countries around the world that will welcome you and treat you right.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: We've organized more than 250 capital based residency and citizenship programs on IMIDaily.com.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Find your new country that treats you not like a cow to be milk year after year, but like the entrepreneur, investor, or talented individual you are.