Tax-free country retirement calculator

Nine jurisdictions charge a resident individual no income tax at all — no tax on salary, no capital gains tax, no tax on dividends, interest or personally received rent, and no state or provincial layer underneath. Coastline models all nine with one projection engine, because they share one tax rule: there isn't one. This page is about what that does to a retirement plan, and about the four things that genuinely differ between them.

The nine, and what actually differs

Since the tax answer is identical, the useful comparison is structural: the currency you would be planning in, whether there is a statutory end-of-service lump sum, the employee payroll contribution the engine discloses but does not deduct, and how big an uninsured medical bill the plan should brace for. The last column is the floor Coastline's Life Risk simulation uses for a catastrophic out-of-pocket shock, in each jurisdiction's own currency.

Two patterns matter. The five Gulf states all have a statutory end-of-service entitlement and it is not a small difference between them: 25 years of service earns the equivalent of 1.97 years of final pay in Bahrain and 1.88 in Saudi Arabia, against 0.88 in Qatar — a difference driven by whether the formula runs on the basic wage or the whole package, and by where the statutory cap bites. The gratuity calculator works through each formula. The Bahamas, Cayman, Monaco and Brunei have no service-based gratuity at all; severance on redundancy is a different thing and is not modelled.

The other pattern is the medical column, and it is the one that should change a plan. These are private-insurance markets with no public safety net for an expatriate. In the Bahamas and Cayman, US-priced private medicine with air ambulance to Florida as the normal path for anything serious means materially the US exposure; in Monaco a resident reaches the CCSS and French systems, and Brunei's public system is heavily subsidised, so the uninsured tail is much shorter.

Monaco: the exception that catches people out

Monaco's own tax authority states the position plainly: Monegasque nationals and residents of the Principality are not liable for income tax, with the exception of French nationals, who are governed by the 1963 bilateral convention between France and Monaco.

That exception is not a footnote. Under the Franco-Monegasque Convention of 18 May 1963, a French national who took up residence in Monaco on or after 13 October 1957 remains subject to French income tax as though still resident in France. Only two narrow groups escape it: French nationals who were resident in Monaco before 13 October 1957 (for at least five years as at 13 October 1962), and French nationals born in Monaco who have lived there continuously since birth. If you hold French nationality, this engine does not describe your position — model France instead.

Monaco is also unusually explicit about the limits of its own exemption, which is worth quoting because it applies to all nine of these jurisdictions: the exemption "only relates to activities that are carried out and persons who are genuinely established in the Principality", and it "does not affect rules applied by other States". A citizenship-based tax system, such as the United States', therefore still reaches its citizens in Monaco — see below.

Why Oman is not on the list

Oman is usually named alongside these nine, and Coastline deliberately excludes it. Oman has legislated a personal income tax that takes effect 1 January 2028: a flat 5% on income above OMR 42,000, applying to the worldwide income of tax residents, citizens and expatriates alike. A retirement projection runs for thirty to fifty years, so a plan that showed Oman as tax-free would be wrong for all but its first two years — and modelling it properly means a real bracket engine, which is precisely what this one does not have. Oman belongs in a progressive-tax engine, not this one.

Can you safely withdraw more than 4% if nothing is taxed?

A little more — and mostly because of your horizon, not your tax rate. Here is the capital that 100,000 of annual spending requires, and the largest annual spend a portfolio sustains to 95, with no tax at all against a comparable US retiree in Texas with no pension income. Multiples and rates, so no currency conversion is doing any of the work:

The zero-tax draw runs from 3.70% at 45 to 4.90% at 65 — a spread of 1.20% driven entirely by the horizon. The tax rule itself is worth roughly a tenth of a percentage point against that US retiree: 4.45% against 4.30% at 60. That is far smaller than most people expect, and the reason is that a US retiree drawing modestly from a taxable-heavy portfolio already owes very little federal tax — the standard deduction and the 0% long-term capital-gains bracket absorb most of it. Your horizon moves the answer several times more than your tax system does, which is the honest reason a flat "4% rule" misleads in both directions.

The two kinds of column answer slightly different questions: the multiple solves for the capital a fixed spend requires, the draw for the largest withdrawal a fixed pot supports. They are near-reciprocals rather than exact ones, and the gap is wider on the US side because there the tax owed depends on how much you draw. Both are solved to the engine's search resolution.

The thing that is missing, and what it costs

None of these nine offers an expatriate a contributory state pension, and none offers a local tax-advantaged retirement account. The engine holds both at zero and folds any 401(k), 457(b), Roth, RRSP, ISA or HSA balance you arrive with into the ordinary investment account, since locally that is exactly what it is. The consequence is worth stating in numbers rather than adjectives — in US dollars, so the US side's brackets land where they should: a tax-free retiree spending $100,000 needs $2,240,000, while a US retiree drawing the $47,259 a year of Social Security that a $150,000 career earns needs only $1,820,000 for the same lifestyle. A state pension is worth more, in the spending phase, than never paying income tax. The zero rate's value is in the accumulation years — see the Gulf career comparison for that half of the trade.

If you hold a US passport or green card, read this first

The United States taxes its citizens and permanent residents on worldwide income, wherever they live. Moving to one of these nine does not end that. You still file a US return every year, and you are still taxed on your investment income and capital gains. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and the foreign housing exclusion can wipe out US tax on a salary earned abroad, and foreign tax credits offset tax you actually paid elsewhere — but in a jurisdiction with no income tax there is no foreign tax to credit, and neither provision shelters dividends, interest or realised gains. A zero-tax country is not tax-free for a US filer.

This calculator models the local position only. It does not model US expatriate taxation, the FEIE, PFIC rules, foreign-account reporting or the exit tax, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Monaco makes the point explicitly: its exemption "does not affect rules applied by other States", so a citizenship-based system still reaches its citizens there. If you are a US person, run the numbers as a US taxpayer too, in the retirement calculator, and take the more conservative of the two.

What this does and doesn't model

• No state pension, and no tax-advantaged retirement account. Neither exists for an expatriate in any of these jurisdictions, so the projection pays no benefit and holds no wrapper balance. A 401(k), 457(b), Roth, RRSP, ISA or HSA balance you arrive with is folded into the ordinary investment account on day one — which is exactly what it is locally: a pot whose growth and withdrawals are untaxed. Nothing disappears when you switch country.
• Business and self-employment income is out of scope in three of them. The UAE charges Corporate Tax at 9% on a natural person's business turnover above AED 1,000,000; Qatar can tax a self-employed individual's Qatar-source business profit; and a Saudi resident's non-employment business income is taxed as a permanent establishment. All three exempt employment income outright, and this engine models employment and personal investment income only.
• Employee social-insurance contributions are disclosed, not deducted. In the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Brunei an expatriate employee genuinely has no employee-side deduction — those schemes bind nationals. Four jurisdictions do have one (Bahrain 1%, the Bahamas about 4.65%, Cayman 5%, Monaco about 6.85%) and the engine leaves it out, because it also leaves out the contributory pensions those payments buy; modelling the cost without the benefit would understate the plan. Add it to your living expenses if it matters to you.
• Oman is deliberately not included. Oman legislated a personal income tax that takes effect 1 January 2028 — 5% on income above OMR 42,000, for residents and expatriates alike. A retirement plan runs for decades, so showing Oman as tax-free would be wrong for all but the first two years of it.
• Saudi and Kuwaiti rules for GCC nationals are not modelled. This engine is built for the expatriate case throughout. A national of a GCC state faces mandatory social-insurance contributions and a contributory pension that an expatriate does not, and neither the cost nor the benefit appears here.
• Student loans have no local scheme. None of the nine has income-driven repayment, forgiveness or a forgiveness tax bomb, so an entered balance is amortised as an ordinary fixed-term loan and never forgiven. Charitable giving likewise carries no relief — there is no tax to relieve, so a gift costs its full face value.
• Consumption taxes and fees are out of scope. VAT (5% across the Gulf, 10% in the Bahamas, 15% in Saudi Arabia), customs and import duty, municipality and housing fees, property tax, stamp duty and work-permit fees are all excluded — exactly as their US, Canadian and UK equivalents are excluded from those engines. In Cayman and the Bahamas import duty is the main reason the cost of living is high, so put it in your living-expenses figure.
• Visas and residency are not modelled at all. Nothing here says whether you may live or stay in a given jurisdiction, and a zero tax rate is worth nothing if the residency ends.
• The math is shown. Every figure in the calculator has a click-through breakdown, and the methodology page sets out the sources.

Every zero-income-tax claim above is sourced on the jurisdiction record the engine reads, with the authority named in the app's methodology panel — primarily each government's own tax authority and the PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries country pages. Educational projections, not tax or immigration advice; residency rules change, and so do tax laws.

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