Comment by merek

19 hours ago

> Then, in April 1996 - by which time I’d expatriated to the Kingdom of Tonga and was working on various internet startup schemes

Why would an American working in software in the mid 90s expatriate to Tonga, a tiny island nation, population ~100k, virtually no tech industry, with little or no internet back then? (assuming Eric is American).

Maybe a govt IT contract, but it sounds at odds to "working on various internet startup schemes".

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merek

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Barbing  19 hours ago

Tax (not cheating!,) optimization?

(Retract the cheating dig if not applicable. Make it in the first place b/c I’m bummed when folks who make their money thanks to a country’s infra, laws, etc. don’t pay their fair share, at least in those cases when there’s so much you can even give back half and have immense riches.)

  • merek  19 hours ago

    Don't Americans pay US tax regardless of where they live?

    • gnopgnip  18 hours ago

      The first $130k or so is excluded if you are outside the us for 11.5 months. Not sure what the amount was in 1997