Overview
A collected list of the mistakes covered individually throughout this guide, gathered in one place — useful as a final gut-check before making a move.
Tax Mistakes
- Assuming FEIE eliminates self-employment tax. It doesn't — FEIE excludes foreign-earned income from federal income tax only. Self-employed remote workers still generally owe the 15.3% self-employment tax on the same income, unless a totalization agreement applies.
- Assuming moving abroad ends state tax obligations. California, New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia in particular continue pursuing former residents on worldwide income for years, unless domicile was properly and provably severed before leaving.
- Working "for convenience" from a convenience-rule state's employer (New York, Delaware, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Arkansas) without realizing the state can still tax that income even though you never set foot there.
- Not filing a US return at all, mistakenly believing that owing no tax (via FEIE or low income) means no filing obligation exists. The obligation is separate from whether tax is actually owed.
Visa and Legal Mistakes
- Assuming a retirement visa's favorable tax regime extends to a digital nomad visa. These are frequently separate programs with separate tax treatment, even in the same country.
- Not confirming with an employer whether remote work from a specific country is actually permitted, discovering only after committing to a move that the employer's policy, legal, or tax-nexus concerns rule it out.
- Treating visa approval as the final step, missing a required local residence-permit registration that many countries require as a separate follow-up.
Practical/Logistics Mistakes
- Choosing a destination purely on lifestyle appeal without checking time zone fit against actual client or employer needs first.
- Relying on a US employer health plan's coverage abroad without confirming it directly — many provide little to no coverage for care received outside the US.
- Underestimating how "habitual abode" and pattern-of-life drift can trigger tax residency, even for someone who believes they're genuinely rotating and never crossing a day-count threshold in any single country.
The Single Biggest Meta-Mistake
Treating any one of these as a standalone decision rather than an interconnected system. Your entity structure affects your tax exposure; your tax exposure affects which countries make sense; your visa choice affects your tax treatment; your state-of-domicile choice affects everything else. The guides on this site are organized by topic for clarity, but the actual decision is genuinely one connected picture — worth reading more than one page in this guide before making a final call, and worth a real conversation with a cross-border tax specialist who can see the whole picture at once.
Sources
- Synthesized from every other page in this guide
This is general education, not personalized advice. This list reflects common patterns, not an exhaustive risk assessment for your specific situation.