Moving to Antigua and Barbuda: an English-speaking island with no income tax

Antigua sits in the Eastern Caribbean, about 3 hours and 30 minutes from Miami. English is the national language, not a tourist convenience, so leases, court documents, bank forms and doctor's appointments all happen in it. The Eastern Caribbean dollar has been pegged at EC$2.70 to the U.S. dollar for decades, which takes exchange-rate risk off the table entirely.

The country abolished personal income tax in April 2016 and hasn't brought it back. Capital gains, wealth and inheritance go untaxed, too. Antigua also runs the Caribbean's oldest citizenship-by-investment program, which is why so much of what you'll read online about the place is written for people buying a passport rather than for people planning a life.

Who tends to land well here

Retirees with a paid-off house and fixed income, remote workers who already earn in dollars, and sailors. That last group is not a joke: English Harbour and Falmouth are a working superyacht economy; the marine trades are a rare place where an outsider can plug into the local job market. Antigua Sailing Week fills the island every spring. Being in the Eastern time zone helps too, since the islands stay on UTC-4 all year. This puts you on the same clock as New York in summer and one hour ahead of it in winter.

Here's the catch

It's small, and small is the whole experience. There's one supermarket chain worth the name and no way to drive somewhere else for the weekend. Electricity is expensive, tap water comes mostly out of a desalination plant, and hurricane season runs June through November every year. If a September spent watching the forecast makes you tense, this is not your island.

The tax math for an American, done honestly

Zero local income tax sounds like a zero tax bill. It's not; that gap between those two things is where Americans get caught. The U.S. taxes citizens on worldwide income wherever they live, so you keep filing a 1040 plus FBAR and FATCA reports. There's no U.S. tax treaty here or totalization agreement. Because you pay nothing locally, you have no foreign tax credit to claim; the move does nothing for tax on a pension, dividends, capital gains or Social Security. Earned income can sit under the foreign earned income exclusion; everything else is taxed exactly as it was. Antigua reports under FATCA and the Common Reporting Standard, so your accounts are visible. Talk to a cross-border accountant like MyExpatTaxes before you move, not after.

What you do pay locally is 15 percent sales tax on almost everything, property tax of 0.1 to 0.5 percent of assessed value, and customs duty on imports.

Healthcare is competent, and thin

Mount St John's Medical Center in St John's is the only full hospital, a teaching hospital of around 185 beds, backed by roughly 25 community health centers across six districts. Barbuda has an eight-bed facility and nothing more. Emergency treatment is free to anybody, including visitors. The Medical Benefits Scheme covers under-16s and over-60s at no charge. Anything complex means flying to Guadeloupe, Barbados, Puerto Rico or Miami, and air ambulance costs are widely quoted between $15,000 and $50,000, which is why evacuation coverage through a broker like ExpatInsure is not a nice-to-have.

Two honest notes: the decompression chamber exists but is not always working, and abortion is broadly illegal here with narrow exceptions centered on the mother's life, which is worth knowing if reproductive access is part of why you are leaving.

Buying, and the license a foreigner needs

Foreigners can own freehold property, but a non-citizen needs an Alien Landholding License costing 5 percent of the value, which takes a couple of months. Add 2.5 percent stamp duty for the buyer and 1 to 2 percent in legal fees, so budget 8 to 10 percent on top of the price. Sellers pay 7.5 percent, and a non-resident seller pays a further 5 percent appreciation tax. Sit on undeveloped land as a non-resident and you're taxed 10 to 20 percent of its value, rising the longer you hold it, which is deliberate. The license is waived on approved property bought through the citizenship program, and nobody foreign can buy a building plot on Barbuda, where land is held communally. The market is thin; a house can take 6 to 18 months to sell, so buy here to live in what you own.

The passport's worth less than the brochures say

Two governments moved against it in 2026. From January 1, a U.S. proclamation partially suspended visa issuance to Antiguan and Barbudan nationals, covering immigrant visas plus visitor, student and exchange categories. The Congressional Research Service says plainly that the country was listed because of its citizenship-by-investment program. In June, the European Commission wrote to Antigua and four neighbors asking them to wind those programs down by June 2028 or risk losing visa-free Schengen access. No Schengen suspension has happened. Dual nationals traveling on an unaffected passport are exempt from the U.S. measure, so an American who naturalizes here still enters the U.S. on a U.S. passport. If you want this citizenship for travel, read both documents first. If you want it for a zero-tax base, a Caribbean home and CARICOM rights across 15 countries, none of that is under threat.