LA couple (51/54) considering retiring to Ireland — tax/residency advice?
LA couple (51/54) considering retiring to Ireland — tax/residency advice?
My wife and I are 51/54, no kids, and have lived in Los Angeles for the past 27 years. We’re hoping to retire in about three years, and my wife is increasingly itching to get back to Ireland (Cork).
We’re both dual U.S./Irish citizens. At this point we’re trying to figure out what retirement might actually look like — full-time Ireland, splitting our time between Ireland and the U.S., etc. We haven’t yet seriously dug into the tax implications of becoming Irish tax residents.
My understanding is that Ireland generally considers you tax resident if you spend 183+ days there in a year, but there’s also the 280-day test over two consecutive years, so it’s not quite as simple as “stay under six months.”
Our tentative plan would be:
- Sell our home in Los Angeles when we retire.
- Buy a small apartment somewhere on the U.S. East Coast as our U.S. base.
- Rent in Ireland initially and potentially buy there later.
- Keep essentially all of our investments/assets in the U.S. — 401(k)s, traditional/Roth IRAs, HSA, taxable brokerage accounts, etc.
- Potentially spend a significant portion of each year in Ireland.
What I’m particularly interested in is hearing from other dual U.S./Irish citizens who retired to Ireland after accumulating most or all of their assets in the U.S.
How did Irish tax residency affect your U.S. retirement accounts and brokerage investments? Were there any tax surprises you wish you had known about before establishing Irish residency? And did you ultimately decide to become full-time Irish residents or structure your time so that you remained U.S. tax residents?
We’ll obviously hire a professional who understands both U.S. and Irish taxation before making any decisions, but I’d love to hear from people who have actually gone through this.
Any advice, experiences, or things we should be researching now — three years before retirement — would be greatly appreciated.
