For some Americans, the idea of living abroad has escalated from an idle fantasy to a more serious consideration: one year into Trump’s second term, they are weighing the possibility of starting anew elsewhere — and Europe is a top choice for them.
“It’s been a really insane year for demand and people reaching out. Our firm has more than doubled in less than a year,” says Arielle Tucker, a Certified Financial Planner® and Enrolled Agent, and the Founder and Managing Partner of Connected Financial Planning. Originally from the U.S. and now living in Switzerland, Tucker specializes in assisting fellow Americans navigate the complexities of moving abroad.
Tucker’s firm serves some tech executives and other highly compensated tech professionals. The one priority shared by all of her clients is a higher quality of life. “There’s been this real push for a return to office, and another thing I’m hearing from my clients is that the 996 culture is creeping in — that Chinese startup culture of, like, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week,” she says. This shift stands in contrast to the flexibility many enjoyed during the COVID pandemic: “So many people took advantage of working remotely, going abroad, and discovering work-life balance. And now they feel like they’ve completely lost it, and they need to overcorrect. And for a lot of people, that’s going to Europe.”
While European workplaces may not be as laid-back as the “European Boss” sketches popular on TikTok suggest, they differ from their American counterparts in ways that often translate to a better work-life balance. “In Europe, we have a lot more worker rights and protections, so even tech workers here — yes, they do work longer hours than an average worker, but still have more vacation time, more public holidays, better protections should you lose your job,” says Tucker.
Still, she cautions that it’s not all sunshine and roses on this side of the Atlantic: “The tech industry is hard everywhere right now. I have clients at Microsoft, Meta, and Google [in Europe], and they’re all pretty miserable and very nervous right now.”
In this interview with TechTalents Insights, Tucker discusses some of the hurdles American IT workers face when migrating to Europe, including lower salaries (especially challenging for those burdened with U.S. student loan debt), different tax systems, and cultural differences.
Read on for the full conversation with Tucker.
TechTalents Insights: What do your clients value most about living in Europe?
Arielle Tucker: I only work with U.S. expats: U.S. citizens, U.S. green card holders, and others who are somehow U.S.-connected. They’re very globally mobile. And really, what they value the most is work-life balance. That comes up, honestly, as the number one thing.
So, especially from a tech perspective, hours can be really, really long. There’s also been this real push for a return to office, and another thing I’m hearing from my clients is that the 996 culture is creeping in — that Chinese startup culture of, like, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. And I think people really appreciated all the flexibility during COVID; so many people took advantage of working remotely, going abroad, and discovering work-life balance. And now they feel like they’ve completely lost it, and they need to overcorrect. And for a lot of people, that’s going to Europe.
In Europe, we have a lot more worker rights and protections, so even tech workers here — yes, they do work longer hours than an average worker, but still have more vacation time, more public holidays, better protections should you lose your job. There’s still a better balance here, I think, for most people.
TechTalents Insights: What are some key challenges American IT professionals face when relocating to Europe?
Arielle Tucker: It’s not all just sunshine and roses here. I have a lot of tech clients. The tech industry is hard everywhere right now. I have clients at Microsoft, Meta, and Google [in Europe], and they’re all pretty miserable and very nervous right now.
But I also had a call with someone in San Francisco today, and they’re also miserable and nervous in San Francisco, and are like, “Well, at least if I was in Europe, it would be a little bit better in some ways.”
TechTalents Insights: How much of an issue is the salary difference for them?
Arielle Tucker: I live in Switzerland, which is known for having really high salaries. A lot of our clients are in Switzerland, so they may not have much of a salary difference coming from the U.S. to Switzerland. And actually, for Switzerland in particular, if you can get a relocation to Switzerland, it can be really interesting, because you can leave a high-tax state like California or New York, and you can actually save some taxes.
But we have other tech workers who go to Berlin. And that’s a very different consideration, because the wages tend to be lower, and the taxes are higher, and so you really have to make an individual calculation of what makes sense for you. But in Germany, there are easier pathways to immigration because they’re looking for highly skilled, highly compensated tech workers. Because Americans are non-EU, the company has to really prove that it couldn’t find anyone in the country, on the continent. You have to be extremely specialized. So, I would say that if you’re actually looking for a new job, then it may be easier to go to a country like Germany as a highly skilled tech worker.
But you still need to run the numbers. So, for example, I joined a tech startup in Berlin in 2019, and when we were talking salary, they came back with almost 50% of what my current salary was then. But they pitched it with, well, the cost of living is significantly lower. And while the cost of living is lower in Germany than it is in most places in the U.S., it’s important to still run your numbers, because as expats, we have different expenses that local individuals don’t have.
In every global city and every major city in Europe, there is a housing crisis, there is a housing shortage. So, someone who moved to Berlin 10 years ago, or Munich 10 years ago, they’re locked into a much better rate at rent than someone who’s trying to find a rental property now. And so, you’re gonna pay more for rent than a local likely would.
Plus, as a non-EU person, you are also at the short end. If you don’t speak the language, there can be a lot of challenges. If your kids are older and don’t speak the local language, you need to figure out a clear pathway to an international school for them, which comes with an additional cost. Your family might still be abroad, and you want to go and fly back to see them a couple of times a year.
So, you have to understand what your actual budget is. That’s different for every person. I get these inquiries all the time: “I was offered $170,000, I was offered $120,000. Is that enough for me to live on?” I don’t know. I don’t know what your budget is, I don’t know how you’re going to live, and you really need to go through that exercise quite in depth — getting on the ground before you make that move, because I think a lot of people end up spending more, especially in that first year or two when they’re settling. Maybe there are temporary housing costs, additional moving expenses. And they’re just kind of like, “Wow, that costs way more”. And unless you’ve made a long-term commitment to that country, you may not get a return on that, in a way.
TechTalents Insights: Browsing the AmerExit subreddit, which discusses emigration from the U.S., we can see that a frequent concern for IT workers is student loan debt. When they have to take a pay cut in Europe, it becomes a big issue because they still need to make their loan payments.
Arielle Tucker: I think that’s a great point, because again, the U.S. system is set up completely different than the European system. So, in the European system, wages are lower, taxes are higher, you’re in more of a social state; you’re paying higher taxes so that university students aren’t paying $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year for university. It’s a completely different university experience in Europe than it is in the U.S.
A lot of U.S. highly skilled workers are graduating with maybe six figures of debt at this point. And so, I think it’s a really important consideration, and it depends on how your loan is structured in the U.S. Are they based on repayment of your income? And so, again, maybe you’d have a lower payment if your earnings are lower, but you’re still going to be stuck paying those loans back. They don’t just go away. You can’t declare bankruptcy anymore and get rid of your student debt, and so you really have to weigh that carefully as a financial decision.
And I would say that for people who are thinking about a career in Europe, they should maybe even take a step back and think about whether they should start their education process in Europe, as costs are much lower in Europe than in the U.S.
TechTalents Insights: Let’s turn to a complex topic. The U.S. taxation is citizenship-based. How does America’s citizenship-based taxation impact these workers’ decisions and experiences?
Arielle Tucker: This is another point against global mobility for U.S. citizens. Unlike pretty much every other country in the world, we have citizenship-based taxation, not residence-based taxation. So, if you move abroad and establish a new residence, obviously you’re going to have a tax filing due in your new local country, because you’re a resident. But on top of that, you still need to file a tax return back to the U.S.
There are a couple of major provisions to help reduce or even eliminate double taxation. In the U.S., we have the Foreign Tax Credit, meaning you basically get a dollar-for-dollar credit for taxes that you pay abroad. So, if you’re moving to a high-tax country, like Germany, or Spain, or France, then you’re likely going to have enough foreign tax credits to offset your U.S. tax liability.
The other provision that we have is the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. If you earn up to $130,000 per year, you can fully exclude that on the U.S. side.
Now, the issue that a lot of Americans run into is different taxation. That becomes the real issue. So, for example, in Switzerland, we have a wealth tax. Well, we don’t have a wealth tax in the U.S., so you end up paying a wealth tax in Switzerland, but you can’t apply that on the U.S. side. So, you pay wealth tax in Switzerland, but Switzerland doesn’t have capital gains tax. So now you’re paying capital gains tax in the U.S., and you’re paying wealth tax in Switzerland.
This also becomes very complex when you’re thinking about gift or inheritance tax issues, because in the U.S., our threshold for that is maybe 12 million dollars, but if your parents pass away in the U.S., all of a sudden, you inherit a couple of million dollars from your parents, you’re now on the hook for paying German inheritance tax.
We also have different tax incentives. Germany and other countries may really incentivize home ownership, so your primary home may sell tax-free after a number of years, but in the U.S., we have a completely different framework around that. So again, different taxation.
Some countries don’t have taxes on cryptocurrency or capital gains transactions. The U.S., we do.
So, you’re always, as a U.S. person, you’re always going to pay the highest tax rate, whether it’s in your local country or it’s in the U.S. And it can cause a lot of stress for Americans in Europe. The tax system is very different here. Oftentimes, you don’t even have to file a tax return: all that information is being collected, and the tax authorities may send you something at the end of the year and say, “Just sign this if this is correct”.
It’s a very different system, and U.S. individuals often still have investments in the U.S., so we may have investment income, or rental property, or businesses. So, how is your new country — your resident country — going to treat that type of income? You have to file that tax return, and then wait for it to be processed. And then you need to file your tax return in the U.S., and there may be different tax deadlines to consider.
Or even, if you’re thinking about the UK, they have an entirely different tax year than we have in the U.S., which is the calendar year. And we have all these mismatches, and it can be very stressful for U.S. expats to try to navigate all of this stuff.
You’re always trying to do the right thing, but it’s not logical, it’s not intuitive in any way. It’s a pretty high barrier, so it often requires professional support. The average U.S. expat is paying $2,000 a year for U.S. tax compliance.
And so, this is just additional expenses that they’re gonna have now that they live abroad. So again, you’re paying the highest tax rate, and then you’re also paying additional funds for tax support. So, it’s just more money into the budget, and if you’re making a lower wage, it just consolidates everything.
TechTalents Insights: Does it pay off? What do your clients say?
Arielle Tucker: We do a lot of tax planning, but we don’t let tax dictate our lives. We’re not going to move to the UAE because there’s a 0% tax rate there. Because, really, what we want to do is ski in the Alps in the winter. And so, we really have to decide what is the most important thing to us, and then find the planning opportunities in that scenario.
TechTalents Insights: It’s been a year since Trump’s election win. Have you observed a rise in interest among professionals considering leaving the United States for political reasons since then?
Arielle Tucker: Yes, absolutely. It’s been a really insane year for demand and people reaching out. Our firm has more than doubled in less than a year.
I mean, even just today — I had started working with a client in California with a plan of leaving in 5 years. We had a call today about how to accelerate that plan, because politically, they just feel like they’re not aligned with what’s happening in the U.S. I mean, we have clients across the political spectrum, but we definitely have noticed [a rise in interest].
Another example is that a lot of tech employees go on a secondment, so it’s an expat assignment for maybe 2 to 5 years; they’re kind of on loan to the foreign entity, with the intention of going back. And so, we had a lot of people who have been abroad, and have always been, “Okay, I’m going to go back at some point”, who are now thinking, “How can I get permanent residency? How can I get citizenship? How can I have a right to stay here, even if I lose my job or if I want to change jobs at some point? Because I don’t want to go back to what’s happening in the U.S. right now.”
We’re seeing a move to the right in Europe as well. And I talk about that with my clients as well. It’s not that the U.S. has moved to the right and Europe has continued to be super progressive. We’re seeing the same move to the right, but things here in Europe move a lot slower. There’s a lot more bureaucracy, there’s not just a two-party system — there’s often multi-party systems — so things can’t just move at the pace that things are moving ahead in the U.S., where it feels like we thought we had the safeguards, and they’ve just completely disappeared overnight.
There are still really good opportunities to move to Europe, especially if you’re in major cities. They tend to be very diverse, progressive areas where Americans still feel like they can find community in a place.
TechTalents Insights: So, considering American tech workers, what are the most popular European countries when they choose to migrate?
Arielle Tucker: Germany is super popular. You think about the Southern European countries, and I think they’re trying to get in people with wealth. It’s more about getting money into the country than about getting skilled workers in, if that makes sense. If I think about Germany in particular, its visa policies have been really amazing at attracting those skilled workers who want to come over, invest in the country, stay, and build a life there. Germany also went forward with loosening its immigration and citizenship rules. So, there’s a clearer path to citizenship for highly skilled, highly educated workers.
Again, we’re kind of seeing this move to the right, so that’s being walked back a bit. But I feel like Germany has done an excellent job in providing this pathway.
I think the Netherlands is another country that’s done an excellent job. Again, they’ve had some tax incentives; they had the 30% ruling for years. They no longer have that.
The UK is always incredibly popular for U.S. expats because we don’t have the language barrier. Now, there’s still the cultural barrier to consider, which sometimes I think is harder than the cultural barrier for Germany, but there are still lots of opportunities.
Ireland always comes up as a country for tech workers.
There are still a lot of pathways for people. I’ve seen a huge move of academics and tech workers, especially.
TechTalents Insights: You also host a podcast, Passport To Wealth, a podcast for Americans living abroad or aspiring to do so. Can you talk a bit about it?
Arielle Tucker: The podcast was meant to become a resource for Americans currently living abroad, so they are more aware of the tax and financial implications of leaving the U.S., which is really very complex, unfortunately, for U.S. citizens.
Once you arrive in Europe, a lot of banks and financial institutions don’t want to work with you, because you’re American, so there are all the FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) rules. The banks are really unable to support a lot of U.S. expats beyond just saying, “Okay, here’s a bank account.”
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