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8 CRS Holdouts and How to Get Residency There · IMI Podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: More than 120 countries automatically hand your income and transactions to your home tax authority, and nobody asks your permission.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the eight places we'll reveal today are still outside that CRS system, and in every one of them, you can get residency or even citizenship.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: IMI has all the info.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the banking-friendly jurisdictions, here's a bit about the CRS framework and why it can be dangerous.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: The Common Reporting Standard or CRS is the system the OECD built in 2014 to end banking secrecy worldwide.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Under it, your bank knows where your tax resident, then reports your name, your balance, and your yearly interest and dividends straight to that government or tax authority.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Automatically, once a year, with no court order or even a heads up to you.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: More than 120 jurisdictions now operate under the framework, and more countries join each year.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, Thailand, Kenya, Ukraine, and Armenia all started exchanging within the last two years.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: That leaves us with a shrinking group of CRS holdouts.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: The first of which is Serbia, which is on the OECD's list of developing countries not asked to commit.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So for now, bank account information held there doesn't flow out automatically.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: The catch is that Serbia is a European Union candidate, and candidate states tend to align with European transparency norms as they move toward membership.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So read this privacy as a function of where Serbia is in its accession timeline, not a permanent feature.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: The way in, though, is one of the most accessible in Europe.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: The real estate route carries no fixed minimum.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can buy residential or commercial property anywhere in the country at any price point and pick up temporary residency within 30 to 60 days.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: A company formation route also runs alongside it, needing around 50,000 euros held in a Serbian bank account.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: This route can lead to permanent residence after three years and citizenship after another three.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Serbia also holds an E2 treaty with the United States, which gives its citizens an oft-forgotten separate path to American residency.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Serbia is a small economy.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: The next holdout is a full-sized one.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Number seven is the Philippines.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: The OECD lists it as a developing country not asked to commit, with no date set for exchange.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: What makes it notable is scale.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is a functioning banking sector inside a substantial economy, not a micro jurisdiction selling offshore secrecy.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: The route often taken is the newly designed Fab Investor Visa, or FIV.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: It grants indefinite renewable residency in exchange for a$75,000 investment in securities listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange or in a qualifying local enterprise in the Freeport area of Bataan.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: A separate route is the Special Investors Resident Visa, or SIRV, which covers a wider range of qualifying investments.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Neither asks you to physically live there, and the residency remains valid as long as you keep your investment in place.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number six is the United States.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It never joined CRS.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, it runs its own system, President Obama's Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, which forces foreign banks to report American account holders overseas to the Internal Revenue Service.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So while America collects data on its own citizens abroad, it does not reciprocate the way CRS countries do.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: A non-American banking inside the US generally falls outside automatic exchange entirely, which by some measures makes the United States the world's largest jurisdiction for non-resident financial privacy.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Moreover, 10 years in, FATCA shows no sign of changing.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: The residency route, if one chooses to obtain it, is the EB5 Immigrant Investor Program, a green card in exchange for a qualifying investment in a US business that creates at least 10 jobs.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: The standard minimum is$1 million dropping to$800,000 for a project in a targeted employment area.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is residency, not citizenship.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Though the green card opens a conventional naturalization path after five years.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Keep one thing straight though, the privacy here works for non-Americans banking in the US, not for U.S.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: residents or citizens, who FATCA is built to track both domestically and internationally.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Next is Bolivia, a jurisdiction that never signed CRS, hasn't adopted the newer crypto asset reporting framework, has no FATCA agreement with the United States, and is outside the OECD's base erosion framework too.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: The cheapest route into the Andean country is a one-year temporary visa on a sufficient funds basis, which requires roughly$4,800 in available funds or about$400 in monthly income, with no investment required.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: For some, the cleaner path may be a three-year temporary visa through your own Bolivian company, which takes one to two weeks to form.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: After three continuous years, permanent residency and citizenship are both options.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, Bolivia runs a territorial tax system, like number one on today's list as well, and citizenship carries Mercosur settlement rights across nine South American countries.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: But there is an important caveat here.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bolivia landed on the Financial Action Task Force gray list in June 2025, so international banks scrutinize Bolivian accounts harder, which also means that banking comes with friction.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Number four is Egypt.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It appears on the OECD's not asked to commit roster with no exchange date set, so account information held in Egyptian institutions doesn't currently flow outward.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: The status is administrative rather than ideological, which means it could shift if the OECD's posture toward the region changes.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: What Egypt offers is a direct citizenship program, established in 2019 with four routes: a non-refundable$250,000 contribution to the Treasury, a$300,000 real estate purchase held for five years, a$350,000 business investment paired with a$100,000 donation, or a refundable$500,000 bank deposit returned after three years.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: A$10,000 state fee applies to every route and there's no residency requirement at all.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: If one simply desires residency, the country also has a residency by investment program, but with no path to citizenship.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Number three is Cambodia.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's on the OECD's not asked to commit list with no exchange date set and has long featured on advisory shortlists of non-reporting banking jurisdictions, though account opening has tightened as global compliance pressure spreads.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Cambodia also runs the only citizenship by investment program in Southeast Asia, which traces back to the 1996 law on nationality that waived the usual residence and Khmer language requirements for qualifying investors and donors.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Rumors circulated in late 2025 that Cambodia will raise its investment thresholds, and in early 2026, they did.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: The donation required to obtain direct citizenship is now around$1 million, up from$245,000.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Citizenship is typically granted within about six months, with no prior residency required, and Cambodia permits dual nationality.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now the following countries pair non-reporting with a tax system that rarely raises your annual bill.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Number two is El Salvador, which again is on the not asked to commit list, and it has no FATCA agreement with the United States either.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: That dual absence makes it one of the more decisively non-reporting jurisdictions in the entire Western Hemisphere, and its 2024 decision to exempt all foreign source income from tax only sharpens the appeal.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: The headline route is the Freedom Passport, which grants immediate citizenship in exchange for a$1 million investment in Bitcoin or US dollars.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: The price tag limits it to a narrow band of applicants, but few programs anywhere hand serious citizenship eligibility to those who can afford it this quickly, typically within three months.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: These banking-friendly jurisdictions and the programs that make residency or citizenship feasible are exactly the kind of thing we get into inside the IMI Sovereign's private investor community, even more so in our Sovereign Signals live sessions, where our editors talk through the off the record soon-to-be published news before it goes public.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Link and a nice discount are in the description.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, number one is Paraguay, and it's the outlier of the group.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: One, it isn't on the not asked to commit roster.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And two, its account information still doesn't flow out automatically, which puts it cleanly outside data exchange for now.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Paraguay launched the Investor Pass in April 2026, granting direct permanent residency with no temporary residency stage through one of three routes:$150,000 in a qualifying tourism project, or$200,000 in Paraguayan real estate, which requires just$60,000 upfront investment, or the same amount in securities on the Asuncion Stock Exchange.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: The older SUACE route, which asks for roughly$70,000 in business investment with local job creation, also remains alongside the newer thresholds.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: The draw to Paraguay is the combination of these factors: a low residency by investment threshold, a territorial tax system that doesn't touch your foreign income, and a three-year path to citizenship among the shortest in the hemisphere, provided you create ties to the country and society.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a caveat.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: The OECD treats Paraguay as a jurisdiction of relevance for future CRS adoption.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: So of all eight countries here, its non-reporting status may be the least secure.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But today, in 2026, it's one of the best values on the list.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you do with all this information?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: The lesson to be learned here isn't about one single country.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: CRS roots your data based on where you're tax resident, not where you bank.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Getting residency in Serbia or the Philippines, while you remain a tax resident in a CRS country, changes very little about what your foreign banks report.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: The jurisdictions that disrupt the flow are the ones that combine non-reporting status with a territorial or zero tax regime, which is why Paraguay, Bolivia, and El Salvador draw the most attention despite their drawbacks.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the eight places CRS still can't reach.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: The bigger question is how it reaches everyone else.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: We made a full breakdown of exactly how it works called How More Than 100 Countries Track Your Money and How to Avoid It.
• 10:41
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• 10:43
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