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The idea behind the PT magic is that if Ceasar doesn’t know you’re there, Ceasar can’t find you for rendering.  Nevertheless, many of us with families and pets (and emotional needs for home), long for a single, safe place to reside in relative peace, away from the watchful eye of big brother. And it is to these needs that I have been giving a great deal of thought recently.  I have decided to call the resulting concept QT  life on the quiet as opposed to PT  life on the go. Increasingly, deciding to vacate one’s homeland is not just a matter finding a better innkeeper, it’s a matter of lodging a protest against one’s government by voting with one’s feet.  It’s for the reason of trying to get another point of view on one’s homeland  from distant shores.  So, even if one can learn to live in one’s homeland invisibly, that does not give the relief from culture or politics, nor the perspective of distance. As a result, even though you know how to ‘exist’ in your own homeland the cheapest and easiest of anyplace, it will often just not suffice.  However, even if you relocate, there may come a time when you wish to re-patriate. Living on the QT may be useful both as you seek greener pastures and when you decide to return.  It is a life philosophy that you may find serves you well. That search for a life on the QT quickly takes two branches of thought  both useful.  One requires finding a country that is benign of people, politics, climate and economy  some version of Utopia.  My experience is that most first world countries no longer have much of a sense of humor when it comes getting their due and making sure its citizens check in and toe the party line. Admittedly, some are easier to stomach than others, but choosing the best of breed is, in the end, a personal  matter based on your own solution matrix.

AJC delle Marche is better known as the Stealth Expat - He is very adept at attaining second passports for his clients In addition to 'front door' citizenship programs he is also able to get passports under difficult circumstances by way of his contacts with government officials in various countries. Officials who are willing to listen to reasonable proposals. delle Marche is relocating his offices to the offshore banking district of Panama and will soon be available for personal consultation.

Personally, my greatest sense of this kind of “freedom” has come during travel in third world countries where there is no mindset nor funds to care whether your child goes to school or how you go about living your life or, for that matter, whether you live or die.  And, while third world countries have a lot wrong with them, by definition, I am predisposed to admit that this may be as good as it gets when it comes to finding Utopia. While first world countries sequester civilization’s art and much of what passes as culture, and hold forth sizzling economies where fortunes can be made day trading, and warehouse most of the world’s goods “worth” purchasing, the price of affluence is invariably a loss of freedom except what you can carve out with the help of expensive lawyers holding the remnants of a tattered Constitution as a shield.

The other “branch” of thinking is stolen from the old hippie concept of just “dropping out” wherever you are  well, in our case, after leaving town.  There is a working model of this that may be illustrative.  As most of the world knows, the U.S. is inundated with “illegals” from south of the border.  (Illegals from north of the border and more socially acceptable.)  Mexicans (and other non-desirables who have overstayed their visas) supply the underground labor force that feeds many a large city.  The bus boys, dishwashers, food preparers, landscapers, field hands, diggers, maids, helpers, hod carriers, grunts of the construction industry  in short, the people that make all things possible.  They more often than not support families in Mexico or Central America and visit home infrequently since re-entry is so difficult. 

What all these people have in common is that they live on the QT -- quietly.  They are not models of how to do it, since they do it usually with false papers and are always a step away from being evicted from the country.  [As an aside, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), as they’re rounding up the usual suspects for deportation are now required to collect any wages due in cash and give it to the deportees  thus being the basis for rapid illegal re-entry, often within 24 hours.]

But one must concede that, at some level, it is possible to live in a first world country without technically or lawfully “being” here.  The question then is how one lives in your home country or a new, adopted country without officially “being there”.  Let’s start with the basics.  What things do you need from a country that necessitates “checking in” in order to get them?  Well, the first is usually “a job”.   So you get around that by either false papers or NO JOB!  Income, but no job.  To be discussed below.  Another thing you often need is “permission to stay”  a permanent residency permit or a visa.  If you are a permanent resident, well, you’ve obviously just “checked in”.  In return for dad’s permission to live there, you have become a tax paying member of the family.  This is not all bad.  Declaring the minimum one might need to live there and filing a simple return may be a small price to pay for admission to a great place like New Zealand.  Visas are another form of  “permission,” but much more benign.  And if you play the 90 day or 180 day hop across a border and come right back, then no one ever knows you’re there and you haven’t had to ask anyone for anything.  This is opposed to the neat and tidy approach of getting permission in the form of permanent resident permits which is tantamount to sending an engraved notice to the country that you have arrived and are ready to be plucked.

What else do you need from a country?  I’m assuming that public infrastructure is there for the using.  I’m talking things like health care.  Two ways around this.  Cash for care.  Or private expatriate health insurance.  Yeah, just look it up on the web.  Tons of it to be had.  Maybe it costs a thousand dollars more a year than if you checked into the system, but look at the extra cost as a “tax” and you’ll get to compare the added cost of living on the QT with that of checking in and paying 40% - 70% of everything you earn to a government. A really radical plan?  Just show up at a hospital that receives public funds and they MUST treat you.  This plan is not available in third world countries.  Best to take your vitamins there.  And watch for cars.  Pedestrians are usually fair game.

        What else do you need from the state that requires a form and a name?  Driver’s license.  In most countries, if you tell them you’ll be visiting for awhile, they’d prefer you had one of theirs and are most accommodating.  If they’re not, the hell with them.  International driving permits are available all over.  U.S.$200 or less.  Get one.  They work.  Ok, what else do you need?  Banking.  So?  Open a foreign account.  No one needs anything except your passport and one more ID.  Like, maybe, an international driving permit.  Be sure to get one with an ATM card and maybe even one that comes with a MasterCard logo and works anywhere in the MasterCard system like a debit card.  (Wells Fargo has one in the U.S.)  Schools for the kid?  Home schooling or private.  Or the “just Passing Through” explanation.  Next?  Car and insurance.  You’re visiting.  You think it might be better to buy than rent.  There are programs everywhere.  Next?  House.  Rent it or have your trust or IBC rent it for you.  Your company attorney calls and says, hey, we’re sending some of our employees to your country for vacations as a bonus for working so hard and we’d like to rent a house or buy a house so they can use it when they’re there.   Will anyone accommodate?  Of course!  Telephone?  That will depend on the country.  A hefty deposit will cure most anyone’s concerns.  If you rent, have the landlord get it and transfer it to your company. 

Do any of these “schemes” involve added cost.  All of them.  But if they don’t add up to 40% of your income, then . . . like what’s the question?

So that gets us to the big question . . . can you live in your own country as a foreigner on the QT.  I really don’t see why not.  I suggest you move somewhere where everybody doesn’t know you as Nancy Jones who grew up just down the lane, but other than that, let’s examine, for instance, what you’d have to do to live in the U.S.  the self-appointed junk yard dog to the world when it comes to tracking down illegals. 

The watershed question is “what are you going to do for work” and this gets back to the old PT concept of a portable trade or occupation.  But say you want to run a dry cleaning plant.  Hey, don’t laugh.  No glamour, but decent money.  Here’s the way the game’s played.  A corporation owns it or a limited liability company, even a low cost trust.  The company pays you dividends, not salary, and sends the dividends to you, Mr. Foreigner, at hopefully your foreign address.  The company is required to withhold 30% of the amount as a tax.  If you file, you might reclaim some of it.  But you won’t.  Instead you’ll let the company pay many of your expenses.  Why do you think so many families that just got off the boat open restaurants?  Why do they often live behind their shops or over them?  The challenge facing any business person is to convert as many personal expenses to deductible business expenses as one can.  But, you say, don’t you have to file tax returns?  No, you don’t.  Get a CPA or tax preparer to file the trust, corporate or LLC return.  You’re just a foreign share holder.  You don’t file a damned thing.

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