Countries that do not charge WHT to non-residents on interest earned in savings accounts

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WorldCitizen99

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Feb 12, 2022
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The purpose of this little research project was to find countries where you could park some money as a non-resident and not have to worry about paying withholding tax.
You still might have to pay tax on the foriegn income if you live in residence-based tax country or the US.
I also wanted to cross-reference it with countries that had special visa regimes where you could get a residence permit with just a bank deposit (no income or property purchase reqd).

Monaco - 500K EUR min
Phils SRRV - 20K USD
Panama - 200K USD x 3 yrs for TR, 300K for PR
Latvia - apparently they have a TR program for about 280K EUR

I excluded sub-Saharan Africa except for South Africa and Mauritius

Method: I used the following 2 websites to screen
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/quick-charts/withholding-tax-wht-rates
https://dits.deloitte.com/#TaxGuides
I checked almost every country on the Deloitte, but there were a few missing so I either looked at Ernst&Young tax summary
https://www.ey.com/content/dam/ey-u...l-tax-and-immigration-guide-april-2024-v1.pdf

or i did a query with ChatGPT 4o (chatgpt.com)
or just did a Google search


There were some surprises (tax havens like St Kitts and Antigua that charge 15-25% WHT, and normally high tax EU countries that charge 0%)

Halfway through, I realized that I should've written down if gov bond interest was also exempt. So I only managed to write down a few of them

A couple countries don't charge WHT per se, but would charge the interest as domestic income tax even for non-residents so it is basically equivalent

Please give feedback if you see any that are inaccurate. I tried to keep this research project ot just a couple of hours and the screening process was good I think but not perfect.


Europe
Andorra/Luxembourg/Liechtenstein/
Monaco
San Marino - hard to tell, probably 0%
Switzerland - US residents exempt
UK/Jersey/Guernsey/Isle of Man/Gibraltar
Bosnia
Cyprus
Malta
Denmark/Finland/Norway/Sweden
France
Germany
Estonia
Latvia - 0% if not in a "low-tax jurisdiction", otherwise 20%
Netherlands
Ukraine - only 0% for gov bonds
Spain - 0% if EU/EEA resident
Romania

Latin America
Puerto Rico
Panama - sav accts and gov bonds

Caribbean
Bermuda
Anguilla
Aruba
Bahamas
Barbados
BVI
Cayman
Curacao
St Marten


Gulf States
Yemen
Oman
UAE
Kuwait
Bahrain

MENA
Libya
Israel - certain public bonds

SEA
Singapore - approved banks/debt securities
Laos
Malaysia
Phils - Expanded Foreign Currency Deposit System (EFCDS) only

East Asia
HK/Macau

Central Asia
None

Anglosphere
US - as long as not ECI to US trade or biz, must fill W-8BEN
 
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#3
SCHLOSSFINANZ said:
whats the point? With CRS you can't evade taxes in your residence country
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Yes, it will only be completely tax-free if you have your fiscal residence in a territorial country (which i will be arrranging this year for myself) or a tax haven
The point of the exercise was to see where you could diversify with bank accounts and not have that country withhold tax on the interest (AND maybe get a residence permit out of it just for parking the money there with min phys preence req's - note: Monaco you'd have to spend at least 3-6 months to keep the permit.)
 
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#4
In terms of the usual places people like to get accounts:

Switzerland would charge you a default 35% WHT (could be reduced with a treaty, or 0% if US-resident), whereas Liechtenstein is 0%
For SIngapore, it has to be an approved bank - couldn't find out if any of the major banks were not approved
USA - see above conditions

Should also add that it would benefit non-dom/remittance tax-payers in addition to territorial and tax haven residents
 
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#5
WorldCitizen99 said:
Yes, it will only be completely tax-free if you have your fiscal residence in a territorial country (which i will be arrranging this year for myself) or a tax haven
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You can also profit if you live in a country which does not tax personal interest received.

Yes. But I highly advise you not to rely an treaties to lower the interest. Depending on the country or origin of your interests, you may have to manually apply for a refund with the tax authority and they are under no obligation to accept any of those tax certificated but are very well allowed to perform any checks they deem necessary to see whether you really fulfill the conditions of the DTA.

WorldCitizen99 said:
Switzerland would charge you a default 35% WHT (could be reduced with a treaty, or 0% if US-resident), whereas Liechtenstein is 0%
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I do not know where this US story comes from, but you can see the list of threaties where there is no or less WHT here:
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/switzerland/corporate/withholding-taxes
US is just many of them. And probably the most irrelevant if you consider the amount of filing you would have to do from FBAR and then paying interst in the US on all your Swiss interests. Not to mention that the Swiss ESTV is known to perform checks before waiving WHT, unlike many other places (see the discussions about how to avoid US WHT on royalties in this forum).

Also, kindly note that the Swiss franc is not exactly known for high interest and that Swiss banks are not known for paying a lot of interest on foreign urrencies.

WorldCitizen99 said:
For SIngapore, it has to be an approved bank - couldn't find out if any of the major banks were not approved
Click to expand...
See here
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/singapore/corporate/withholding-taxes
"Exempt if paid by a financial institution."

WorldCitizen99 said:
USA - see above conditions
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The goods news is that for any common setup, it is always exempt. If you do business in the US, you of course pay tax.
 
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#6
daniels27 said:
You can also profit if you live in a country which does not tax personal interest received.
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Other than non-dom and remittance-based tax regimes, can you list a few examples?
daniels27 said:
I do not know where this US story comes from, but you can see the list of threaties where there is no or less WHT here:
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/switzerland/corporate/withholding-taxes
Click to expand...
Only listing the US exemption was bc of the ChatGPT result.

That pwc 'Corp WHT by country' table is great. I didn't realize that a treaty could bring the rate down to 0%. According to the table, there are many such countries.

I was thinking that I could get the 'general' WHT rate for interest for individuals from the Deloitte sheet, but now it seems I would have to go back and check the Corp WHT table for any country where I wanted to get a bank acct. OK that was big learning point.

After having a quick look throught the pwc sheets for the countries I listed, I can say that most of the time, it is still 0% if it is bank interest being received by a non-resident individual, but there are exceptions and people should consult the tables before deciding to open an account.
Your other points were duly noted.
Thanks daniels! - this was the high-level critique I was looking for. Cheers
 
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