Hello, Gustavo here! Did you know that the benefits of having a dual nationality go far beyond having a free pass to travel anywhere on the planet and can even mean opportunities for you to do new business.

Let’s talk a bit about that in this article.

A second nationality can help you when you are setting up a business, it can help you prosper financially. Let’s talk about the advantages of a second nationality.

I want to make a little differentiation here, a lot of people talk about wanting to take a dual citizenship, to have a citizenship, whether it’s Italian, German, Portuguese or wherever. The fact is that there is a small differentiation between nationality and citizenship.

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What is the difference between Nationality and Citizenship?

Nationality is when you are considered to belong to a certain country, while citizenship is when you have political rights in that country, the rights to participate in the so-called party of democracy. But in all cases, when someone is talking about nationality or citizenship, it’s the same thing, which is this double passport, I was able to access Europe because I’m of Italian, German or Portuguese descent. It’s difficult for people to make this distinction, this is just a detail on my part. That said, let’s see what the benefits of this dual nationality are.

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What are the advantages of having a second nationality?

Living in another country

The first and most obvious advantage of dual nationality is that it gives you the right to move to another country, at least to the country of which you have a second nationality. This is advantageous not only for those who want to move away from their country of birth, but also for those who want to look for another opportunity to study abroad, or to undertake an enterprise, or even to look for a job.

Studying for little money

This possibility of living in another country also interests those who want to retire and want their children to study, and by the way, in Europe, colleges are much cheaper for those who are European, or sometimes even free, and if you get this dual nationality you can make your studies much more affordable, and at the very least, have this opportunity to qualify better.

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Facilitated tourism

Another advantage of the second nationality is mainly for people who want to do tourism, after all, depending on where your passport is from you will be able to travel more freely around the world. For example, a Brazilian passport means you can travel to 62 countries without needing a visa, while a passport from Italy or Portugal, on the other hand, allows you to travel to 98 countries without needing a visa. You know, the Brazilian passport and is not that strong of the International Community.

Hence, the best passports will be those of the so-called Schengen Zone, which is an area of Europe of 26 countries that have abolished the control between the mutual borders, this means that you can move freely through all of them if you have a European passport. And there is more, depending on where your European passport is from, it means that you will also have easier to enter even in the United States, the Luxembourg passport for example, you do not need a visa to go to the land of Uncle Sam, you only need to communicate 72 hours before your departure, you ask for an authorization, in fact it is more like a communication than an authorization request, quite different from what happens with those who have Brazilian passports.

Plan to escape from your country

The other advantage of having a dual nationality is to have an escape plan in case everything goes wrong in your country. If your country is going through extreme legal and political uncertainty, where a simple law of a judge can change the whole scenario for you. If your country is going through economic problems and is experiencing various instabilities.

Access to a new health system

Besides this, another advantage of dual nationality is that you have access to another health and private pension system, and I, Gustavo, am personally a constant critic of the welfare state, not only of the state but of all these policies. In any case, I have to recognise that if you have a dual nationality of a developed country, this ends up working as life insurance for you, because you see, suddenly you are at a moment in your life when you need health treatment and the system in your country is not working, but then you have a Luxembourg nationality, so you can go there to get treatment.

Access to another pension and retirement system

Or, you have worked in your country all your life, you have contributed to your country’s social security system, you are on the verge of retiring but you think that your country’s private pension system will not sustain you until then. What you can do if you have dual nationality is to take advantage of the years worked in your country, where you have collected your taxes and retire there from Italy, for example. Not that at the time the Italian pension system is going to be excellent, but the simple fact that you at least have this alternative means that you do not depend only on the economic success of your country.

And being able to retire in euro, in a country where the rules are at least at least but predictable, is certainly not bad at all.

Investment and entrepreneurship

This advantage of your dual nationality goes mainly to people who are ‘skin in the game’, to investors and entrepreneurs, to those in the business world.

This is because dual nationality makes it easier for you to set up businesses abroad and especially to open bank accounts, invest in international stock markets and build credit. For those who want to set up a bank account abroad it is much easier with a European passport than with a Moroccan passport, for example.

Then you can build credit in a country where interest rates are more attractive to borrowers and it is easier to build credit.

For countries where interest rates are lower, loans and the possibility of creating credit in another country may be a more viable alternative for you to leverage your profession, your business. From an investor’s perspective, having a European nationality, for example, makes it easier for you to have access to brokerage houses that invest in the stock markets there, which is not open to those who are not nationals of that country.

In short, dual nationality is very advantageous for investors and entrepreneurs. But what about taxes, does it also bring some advantages?

In fact, unless you are American, you have no advantage.

What happens is that you pay tax in the country where you are tax resident. So it makes no difference in this sense, only when you change your tax residence, that a change in taxation is made, which will depend on the country you are in as a tax resident. Is that clear?

I hope I have solved some of your doubts about nationality and citizenship.

Until the next article, bye bye!