Investors researching a second residence usually ask whether the permit will turn them into a taxpayer. For wealth taxes, the answer is almost always no.
The question that replaces it is harder, and most people ask it too late. What exposes you is the location of your assets.
Fourteen countries charge an annual tax on what you own rather than on what you earn. In the ones examined here, the tax code decides who pays by counting days and weighing ties.
Argentina alone writes an immigration status into that test.
Thirteen of the 14 then tax a non-resident anyway, on whatever they own inside the border. Italy is the one that does not, and Portugal skips the residence question altogether.
What counts as a wealth tax here
A wealth tax falls every year on the stock of what you own, measured on a fixed date, whether or not the asset produced a cent of income. That is the definition this article uses, and it takes in more countries than the number usually quoted.
Of the 38 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), four levy a general net wealth tax on total net worth: Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and Colombia. The OECD counted 12 such countries in 1990.
Five more governments outside the OECD charge the same kind of tax. Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Liechtenstein, and Venezuela all assess a percentage of net worth every year.
Then there are the narrow versions, which behave like wealth taxes on one slice of a balance sheet. France limits its charge to property.
Belgium reaches securities accounts and nothing else, while Italy taxes only the foreign assets of its own residents.
This article leaves out ordinary property taxes that every owner pays regardless of value, such as Italy’s IMU or Greece’s ENFIA. Portugal’s AIMI is included because it applies above a threshold and was designed as an additional charge on high-value property.
The permit is not the test
Tax residence and immigration status are decided under two different bodies of law, and in almost all of these countries they never touch.
Spain writes the tax test into Article 9 of Ley 35/2006: More than 183 days in Spanish territory during the calendar year, or the main base of your economic interests in Spain. A residence permit appears nowhere in it.
Spain also supplies the clearest warning against conflating the two. Its immigration rules use a separate 183-day test for renewing a non-lucrative permit, written into Royal Decree 1155/2024 as ciento ochenta y tres days, spelled out in words rather than digits.
The two tests live in different codes and happen to use the same number. Passing one says nothing about the other.
The same separation applies in Norway, Switzerland, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Colombia, Uruguay, and Portugal. Investors with a Portuguese golden visa, a Swiss B permit, or a Dutch or Norwegian residence authorization do not become taxpayers because of the document.
Argentina and Hungary are the exceptions
Two countries write an immigration status directly into the tax code, and both write the same one. Hungary belongs here because its own residence test would govern the wealth tax it has proposed.
Argentina’s income tax law makes residencia permanente under migration law sufficient on its own to create tax residence, with no day count needed. A temporary authorization instead requires that the person remain in the country for 12 continuous months.
Hungary arrives at the same place by a different route. A third-country national becomes Hungarian tax resident by default only once permanently settled, a status granted under Hungarian immigration law.
In both countries the trigger is permanent residence. An investment-linked or temporary permit does not pull you in.
The nine general wealth taxes
Norway taxes worldwide net wealth above NOK 1,900,000 for a single taxpayer in 2026, up from NOK 1,760,000 in 2025. The combined rate is 1%, split between a 0.35% municipal charge and a 0.65% state charge, rising to 1.1% above NOK 21,500,000.
Spain applies two wealth taxes at once. The Impuesto sobre el Patrimonio charges a progressive state scale above an exempt minimum of €700,000.
The Impuesto Temporal de Solidaridad de las Grandes Fortunas then adds a second charge on net assets of €3 million or more.
Spain legislated the solidarity tax as temporary in 2022, for two tax periods. It has since become permanent.
Switzerland has no federal wealth tax. Every canton levies its own, because federal law compels them to while leaving rates to cantonal choice.
In Zurich the first CHF 81,000 of wealth is free, and the cantonal scale reaches its top rate above CHF 3,304,000. Each commune then applies its own multiplier on top.
Colombia taxes net wealth above 72,000 Unidades de Valor Tributario at marginal rates of 0.5%, 1.0%, and 1.5%, under a law passed in 2022. Most figures published this year describe something else.
President Petro cut that threshold to 40,000 UVT and raised the top rate to 5% by emergency decree at the end of 2025. The Constitutional Court struck the decree down in April 2026, in judgment C-079 of 2026, and ordered refunds of what had been collected under it.
Colombia’s new president, Abelardo De La Espriella, pledged abolition in his inaugural address in August. That pledge needs ordinary legislation and has not become law.
Argentina is phasing its Impuesto sobre los Bienes Personales down by removing the top bracket every year, under Ley 27.743. For tax period 2026 only two rates remain, 0.50% and 0.75%, and a single lower rate replaces both from 2027.
Read that table carefully against the year. The rates the tax authority publishes for period 2025, which people file during 2026, top out at 1.00% and describe a different year.
Uruguay taxes only assets located in Uruguay, and it does so whether the owner lives there or not. Residence changes the rate applied, never the base.
Bolivia charges its Impuesto a las Grandes Fortunas on net wealth above BOB 30 million, at progressive rates between 1.4% and 2.4%. The government moved to abolish it, and a committee of the Chamber of Deputies rejected that bill, so the tax applies unchanged.
Liechtenstein collects its wealth tax through the income tax. The law multiplies taxable wealth by a standard interest rate of 4% to produce a notional income, which is then taxed with the rest of your income.
Venezuela levies the Impuesto a los Grandes Patrimonios on net worth of 150 million tax units or more, at an applicable rate of 0.25%. It reaches only taxpayers the administration designates as special, a base narrow enough to explain why international comparisons leave it out.
The five narrow versions
France abolished its general wealth tax in 2018 and replaced it with the Impôt sur la Fortune Immobilière, which reaches property and nothing else.
France charges it only when net taxable property wealth exceeds €1.3 million. Rates then climb from 0.50%, after an allowance of €800,000, to 1.5% above €10 million.
French lawmakers rejected two attempts to broaden it during the 2026 budget, including the 2% levy on fortunes above €100 million proposed by the economist Gabriel Zucman. IMI covered why France’s Zucman wealth tax failed when the vote happened.
Italy charges residents on assets they own abroad. IVIE applies 1.06% to foreign property, dropping to 0.4% for a foreign main home, and IVAFE applies 0.2% to foreign financial assets, doubling to 0.4% where those assets are in a jurisdiction Italy treats as privileged.
Foreign bank accounts attract a flat €34.20 each, waived when the average balance for the year is €5,000 or less. IMI’s full breakdown of Italy’s IVIE and IVAFE regime covers the domestic parallels.
Belgium taxes securities accounts that reach or exceed €1 million over the reference period. The rate doubled from 0.15% to 0.30%, applying to reference periods that end from the date the law appeared in the Belgian Official Gazette.
The Netherlands does not call Box 3 a wealth tax, and it works like one. The tax authority assumes a return on your assets and taxes that assumed figure at 36%.
For 2026 the assumed return is 6.00% on investments, with 1.28% on bank deposits and 2.70% on debts, the latter two provisional until early 2027. The first €59,357 per person is free.
A Dutch investor who owns equities is taxed on a return the portfolio may never have earned.
New legislation taxing the return an investor receives is announced for 2028. Only the lower house has voted for it, and as of September 2026 the senate vote is pending, so that start date is not secure.
Portugal charges AIMI on Portuguese residential property and building land, above a tax registration value of €600,000. The rate for an individual is 0.7%, with higher marginal rates on the largest holdings.
Where a non-resident gets caught anyway
This is the part that decides most investors’ exposure, and the countries diverge far more here than their rates suggest.
Spain reaches the most. A non-resident pays on every asset situated in Spain, exercisable in Spain, or to be fulfilled in Spain, and at the same scale a resident pays.
Property, shares in Spanish companies, and Spanish accounts all count.
Portugal does not ask. The AIMI statute makes any owner of qualifying Portuguese property a taxpayer and contains no residence qualifier at all.
A non-resident owner and a Lisbon resident are taxed identically.
Norway, France, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein reach property. Each narrows a non-resident’s base to property and business establishments located in the country, and leaves foreign portfolios alone.
The Netherlands names a short list. Dutch property is taxable for a non-resident, and a Dutch bank account is expressly outside the charge.
Belgium follows the intermediary. A resident is taxed on securities accounts anywhere in the world, while a non-resident is taxed only on an account with a Belgian institution.
Italy reaches nothing. IVIE and IVAFE apply to residents only, and only to foreign assets, so neither one ever touches a non-resident’s Italian property.
The charge that does reach that owner is IMU, a municipal property tax that Italian law does not treat as a wealth tax.
Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, and Venezuela follow the familiar shape, taxing residents on worldwide wealth and everyone else on locally situated assets.
The regimes that shield a new resident
Four countries let an incoming resident cut a worldwide wealth tax base back down to a local one.
Spain’s Beckham Law does not exempt anyone from the wealth tax. It moves the beneficiary onto the footing a non-resident occupies, taxed on Spanish assets alone, and the Agencia Tributaria states this in its own guidance.
Italy’s flat tax for new residents exempts participants from IVIE and IVAFE outright. Switzerland’s lump-sum taxation computes the wealth tax on a negotiated base rather than on worldwide assets, and it is the only one of the four with no time limit.
Greece and Uruguay both offer tax holidays that leave their property taxes untouched, because those taxes were already tied to asset location and never needed a shield.
Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Colombia offer no wealth-tax shield to a new arrival at all.
What is moving
Hungary levies no wealth tax today. A 1% charge on wealth above one billion forint goes to parliament in October, and IMI has covered why a Guest Investor permit alone would not trigger it.
Treat it as a proposal. No text has passed, and nobody can say yet whether it would reach a non-resident’s Hungarian assets.
Colombia points the other way, where the new president has made abolition a stated priority. Bolivia’s repeal already failed in committee.
Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg, and Sweden all abandoned their general wealth taxes between 1994 and 2007. That is how the OECD count fell from 12 to four.
What this means if you are choosing a residence
Ask where your assets are before you ask which permit to apply for. In all but one of these countries the permit changes nothing about your wealth tax position, and in 13 of them the assets you own locally change everything.
Count your days precisely, because that is the test almost every one of these countries applies. IMI’s guide to how tax residency is triggered country by country sets out how differently the same 183 days are measured.
If you are weighing Argentina, read the permanent residence rule before you upgrade your status. That upgrade is the moment the tax test changes.
And check the year on any rate table you are handed. Colombia’s headline rate, Belgium’s rate, and Argentina’s top bracket all moved in 2026, and the figures circulating for all three describe a position that no longer applies.
Tax rules change frequently, and individual circumstances vary. Consult a qualified tax professional before making decisions based on the information above.
