IMI Podcasts

If you have Antigua and Barbuda citizenship, or plan to buy it, Europe could suspend your visa-free trips within months without a deal. In an October 30 letter to EU Commissioner Magnus Brunner, Prime Minister Gaston Browne offered to close the citizenship by investment program by the end of 2030 if the EU helps pay for the transition, after Brussels asked for June 1, 2028. Browne says EU officials laid out three paths: continue and risk the visa waiver, close by June 2028, or commit to ending the program and negotiate more time and support. Antigua and Barbuda chose the third, and without an agreement Browne says the Commission could announce a suspension in January 2027 taking effect around March or April. This episode covers why the government wants until 2030, how the offer moved from defiance to a deal, what the other four Eastern Caribbean programs may do, and the five dates that decide what happens next, while Sam Bayat of Bayat Legal Services and Daisy Joseph-Andall of Joseph Rowe Law weigh in on what the offer gives away and who should pay for it.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.

If you live in Italy with 800,000 euros or more in investments, leaving could soon cost you 26 percent of gains you never sold. It is a proposal in Italy's draft budget, not law, and parliament can amend it before the final vote, normally by the end of December, to apply to people who move abroad from January 1, 2027. Article 17 of the draft would tax the paper gains of anyone who lived in Italy for six of the last ten tax periods and owns assets and rights worth 800,000 euros or more. Move to Spain with shares bought for 1.2 million euros and now worth two million, and the bill would be 208,000 euros due within 180 days, though people moving within the EU could pay half up front with a guarantee and defer the rest, owing nothing on the second half if they sell nothing for five tax periods. The draft copies France's exit tax down to the six-of-ten test and the 800,000 euro line, while leaving open how it would treat foreign residents on Italy's 300,000 euro annual flat tax. Federico Salmoiraghi of OFF Italy Consulting calls the measure poorly defined, noting the government's own revenue estimate is just 3.37 million euros in 2027, about what 11 new flat-tax residents pay in a year. This episode ends on four checks to make before the final vote.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.

Your heirs could owe inheritance tax to a country you left years ago, or to one you never lived in. Leave Britain after 20 years, and its 40 percent inheritance tax can follow your estate for up to ten years. A second citizenship from the Caribbean changes none of that. The United States taxes its citizens' estates wherever they live; in 2026 each citizen can leave 15 million dollars free of estate tax, with 40 percent charged above it. This episode follows the three claims a country can make on an estate: citizenship, residence and the location of the assets. Germany taxes its nationals for five years after they leave, and the Netherlands and Japan count ten, while France and Spain can tax a resident heir on an inheritance from a parent who never lived there. Italy's flat tax of 300,000 euros a year for new arrivals lets foreign assets pass to heirs free of Italian inheritance tax, Portugal's bill at death is close to zero for most golden visa families, and Turkey is the one citizenship by investment country that adds a tax. Koen Lozie of Aver Associates explains where a second citizenship does change the outcome, and the episode ends on five checks to make before you write a will.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.

Singapore's passport opens 192 destinations without a visa, yet Singapore bans dual citizenship, so taking a second passport costs you the first. A visa-free count says nothing about where you can settle, which taxes follow you abroad or whether you may add another citizenship. This episode names the best citizenship in each of seven world regions, judged on four tests: settlement rights, a second passport, tax and border treatment. The picks start with Singapore in Asia, Canada in North America, New Zealand in Oceania and Mauritius in Africa, and end with the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf, Chile in Latin America and Ireland in Europe. Canada beats the United States because American tax follows its citizens abroad, while Ireland beats Sweden on settlement rights across the European Union and the United Kingdom. The episode ends on the Irish and Chilean pair, called the world's most effective two-passport combination, along with the 168-destination gap between the strongest and weakest passports.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.

If Antigua and Barbuda goes on selling its citizenship, every Antiguan could need a visa to visit 29 European countries. On October 24, Prime Minister Gaston Browne said Cabinet discussions favor suspending the program, with no final decision made. Europe wants the five Caribbean states that sell citizenship to commit by November 12. This episode weighs both options: sell on and risk visa-free travel to the Schengen Area, or suspend the program. It covers the European rule that made investor citizenship grounds for suspension, traces the four months between a June letter asking for a 2028 phase-out and the October deadline, and puts a price on the program, about 518 million US dollars in 11 years. Canada and the United States already restrict Antiguan travelers, and Vanuatu went on selling citizenship after losing its European waiver. Experts from Apex Capital Partners, Bayat Legal Services and Frederick Capital split on who is to blame, and the episode closes on what a November 12 commitment would mean for applicants whose files are already in process.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.

Portugal gives its migration agency 90 days to issue a residence permit, and the agency has taken two to three years. Only then does the ten-year count to citizenship begin. Every nationality law prints one number, but a second one, set by the queue, decides when the passport arrives. IMI follows eight routes: Portugal, the United States, five Caribbean programs, Paraguay, Panama, Spain, Poland and Italy. In the September 2026 Visa Bulletin, the final action date for Chinese investors in the unreserved EB-5 category was December 1, 2016. Caribbean brochures advertise three to six months, while IMI's Processing Times Tool recorded roughly five to 18 months on fourth-quarter 2025 data. The episode also covers Paraguay, where a bill admits proceedings of three to five years against a three-year rule. In Panama, each grant needs a presidential decree. Spain lets you appeal after a year of silence, and Poland's six-month deadline excludes most delays. In Italy, a booking portal split people with identical ancestry. It ends on four questions that find the date nobody prints.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.

Turkey has taken back the citizenship of 6,134 people who got it by investing, and 743 of them were never accused of fraud. Every citizenship by investment program reserves the right to revoke, but the grounds, the procedure and the record differ widely. IMI ranks 12 programs in four tiers. Tier one is Turkey's sweep and Cyprus unwinding its program. Tier two is Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Vanuatu and Saint Lucia, which have moved against named people. Tier three is Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Nauru, Egypt and Jordan, whose laws are broad and whose records show no published revocation. Malta is alone at the narrow end. The episode also covers Vanuatu, where a government spokesman said Andrew Tate's citizenship had been revoked before the Citizenship Commission said no such decision had been made, as well as the filing rules in Malta, Ireland and the Netherlands that can cost a passport without any wrongdoing.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.

Germany let new citizens retain their old passports in 2024, and a record 332,500 people naturalized in 2025. Senior figures in the ruling CDU are now drafting a plan to end it. No bill exists yet, and any law would need the Social Democrats. In the United States, the Justice Department made denaturalization an enforcement priority in 2025. A false tax return filed before naturalization can now start a case to strip a person's citizenship. IMI covers what the German plan could mean for Germans who buy a second passport, a Houston accountant whose 7,712-dollar refund led prosecutors to move against her citizenship, and an IRS checkbox for dual citizens that the agency has considered.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.

IMI's review of more than 100 countries and territories found only eight places that charge no annual property tax on a home. They range from Monaco and Malta to the Cayman Islands and the Gulf. In New Jersey, the average owner pays 1.88% of a home's value every year. IMI covers what the eight collect instead and why a property tax rate tells you little. It also covers how a second home abroad can cost more than the one you live in. It ends with the heaviest bills in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, including Florida's ballot measure on its homestead exemption.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has said his country may have to "defend our border at some point," as IMI reports. Less than a week earlier he spoke of "an army on our border with Germany," a fellow member of Europe's passport-free Schengen Area. IMI covers the chain from Spain's 1,174,978 regularization applications and the Ceuta crossings to the EU summit. It also covers what that could mean for an EU passport.Read the full analysis here.Access a suite of powerful tools and the world's #1 private investor community as an IMI Sovereign. Use code SOV10 for 10% off your first month.