I’ve seen several YouTube videos about this. One another there it was also said that transportation workers don’t have to pay taxes to the states they work out of just like military personnel. So if you work for MSC and only sail out of California for 12 months you don’t pay any California taxes.
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I had a Great Uncle who was a Long Shoreman there. He took me around when I was a kid and showed me the large boats etc. Those were in break bulk days and ironically so many West Virginians contracted Black Lung from working around coal.(even working on Tow Boats pushing barges full of coal)
Well, Unk got emphysema from going inside the dusty holds of so many of those big ships. He counted manifest there. When he came back to West Virginia he was seeing the same Doctors the coal workers were seeing.
There are tonnes of people that think different. Large numbers choose to expat retire overseas. And the new thing is digital nomads. Where people make their money online so they can live anywhere. In Thailand, Vietnam, Columbia, Ecuador, Malaysia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Argentina, and even Portugal you can live great on about $1,500-$2,000 a month. Plenty of YouTube videos about this. Kinda why I started thread.
Yes, In the states alone many are making “rigs” out of Vans, Trucks, Utility Trailers etc to go on the road as “Nomad” and work from their rigs and use WIFI to upload their work. Some use their Cell as a WIFI hot spot to Boondock while living on Government land for allowed periods of time for free. Digital Nomads.
It is a growing trend now especially with young graduates who can retire their student loans in a few years on the road and the retired, widows, & widowers
who want a new chapter in their lives. They can live a more minimalist life
travel and see things meet new interesting people,
Students who marry and produce a family and buy a home may not have their student loans paid off until their 50’s and the widow/widowers may spend their last years in the shadow of the life they once had. (not knowing what to do and fearing their age in their early 60’s)
An adage follows this:
“Better the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty”.
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Sailed with a guy once who lived in Colombia due to family, not for tax reasons. He ended up on the no-fly list because he was buying short notice, one-way tickets to the US from Colombia. He said it was a serious hassle to get off the list, everyone knew how to put him on it but no one it seemed knew how to take him off.
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Be VERY careful with this. Youtube is not a great source for this sort of information. You pay state taxes based on the state you reside in. The Amtrack law regarding state taxes covers this for mariners. Most CPAs are not familiar with the Amtrack law. If my mailing address on my W-4 was Oregon for example I had to pay Oregon tax even though I sailed out of California and never spent a day in Oregon. California could not charge me due to the Amtrack law but Oregon sure could. If you work for MSC all your income is reported to your home state as listed on your W-4 and of course you will pay Federal.
My last comment wasn’t so much about thinking but more about our personal feelings about retirement locations. Absolutely, nothing wrong with living or retiring outside of the US. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life outside of the US. Right now I spend about 7 months a year elsewhere & speak Spanish at home when we are in the US. We haven’t ruled out the option of living outside of the US in retirement but we’re pretty sure we won’t retire to some paradise country with a high infant mortality rate for locals & where abject poverty is normal for much of the local population. That’s just us. Both of us have seen too much suffering & poverty to want to see it on a regular basis.
And yes, we are aware most inexpense countries, even the US, has problems with poverty & suffering in large metropolitan areas. Once out in the rural areas & behind the walls of gated communities things get more normal & less desperate.
I started to question the damage to my morality from living & working overseas when I was in my early 20’s. Families would pay the agent/chandler a fee to dig through our trash. They would tear every bag open & spread it over a big empty field next to the boat. Once everything was picked through it would be picked up a taken away. We would watch babies digging in our trash. My oilers were making $14US a day. Sure, the minimum wage in that country was only $5US so they were doing okay but a beer was still $1US, a 200ml Diet Coke $0.60 & a combo meal from McDonald’s was $7.50US a piece. There were no way any of the oilers were taking their wife & kids to McDonald’s for Happy Meals with those low foriegn wages & moderate American prices. It made me feel bad. Then when co-workers would brag about getting maids, cooks & gardeners for $5US a day I felt even worse for those people. In my travels around the world I still walk pass a lot of old people, cripples & kids with their hands out like they aren’t even there. For me personally, I don’t want to do that on a regular basis for the rest of my life. The Hungarian-American captain articulated perfectly what I had been feeling for years. I’m not knocking anyone who does or who can but I don’t want to live in an area where the gap between the poor & middle class is too wide. That’s just me. Good thread. Glad you started it.
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One becomes a bit numb but if you are human you never forget about living among real poverty. I lived for years in one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. I was there due to work and made way more than the average wage of about $2.00 a day at the time. Some of the best people I have known I met there. Their perseverance and knowledge of the things that really matter in life stuck with me. The people that ran the country were very rich, about 5-10 families. They regularly attended US State Department meetings as did I but behind their back the career State Department officials referred to them as MREs [morally repugnant elites]
Eventually, the hopelessness and constant cons the majority try because it is the one hope they have starts to get to you. I have owned land there and other places in the Caribbean and recently SE Asia. I find that if you maintain a bit of humility,learn the language, don’t try to compare cultures and accept folks as they are one can get along fine most anywhere. What I missed most is convenience, I will never forget spending an entire day in town looking for ONE 3/4" PVC elbow. Thank goodness now is SE Asia you can find pretty much anything you need as the economy is doing OK, or was pre Covid 19.
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Nope. Being on an American flag vessel in international waters is still being in America.
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This site is were I learned about transport workers tax home. Which, is why so many mariners live in tax free states.
Many of my former crewmates moved to Florida and Tennessee that were’nt already there. Texas dudes stayed put.
Thanks, glad to know that.
I am more interested in how I, as an American, can end up on a foreign flagged ship/tug from a first world country. I would love to live/work in Australia/NZ/EU/Canada. Just anywhere but the US right now.
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I noticed that the companies I worked for outside of the USA had trouble understanding the non IMO standard USCG issued tickets.
Unlimited tickets not so bad but the rest are messy
The other problem for Americans outside is you cant do any course updates like the rest of the world can so you have to go home to do anything.
Perhaps maintaining a ticket is ok but I am pretty sure you cant upgrade if any course is done outside the USA
My first wife was Canadian, and I met her while living in Ft. Lauderdale. . . her folks were great people. . (and lived in Lauderdale - by - the - Sea).
Guessing this doesn’t apply to you then…
Actually. . . . we moved to Texas in 88. When we split, she moved to Virginia, and then back to Florida. Then, surprising both me and the kids, she moved back to Texas. . .
Many also use a mailing service to establish a tax free state address. Get a trilor spot for a month or two to get a utility bill and voila ! Fine with me. Many companies do the same. Good for goose good for gander.
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Oz has no fleet so no jobs. The other countries make it hard to transfer licenses. And then the fact that they pay less. I read the UK rules and it can be done but, getting a work permit would be near impossible. There’s not a employee shortage. The only Americans I’ve seen sailing are US female Deck Officers on cruise ships. And I’m guessing they are there because there are too few females going to sea in their own countries. One ship went to sea with an all female officer crew to celebrate Women’s Day.