Top Asset Holding Jurisdictions for Americans Living Abroad

GWM Gems

💎 Foreign Grantor Trusts are the core structure, but the planning purpose differs depending on whether the client is a U.S. person, expatriating American or non-U.S. grantor with U.S. beneficiaries.

💎 Malta’s proposition centres on trusteeship, governance, banking continuity and regulatory credibility rather than tax arbitrage.

💎 Malta trustees may administer trusts governed by Cayman law or other foreign trust laws.

💎 U.S. nationals living abroad remain taxable in the United States on FGT income and gains where the structure is grantor-tax transparent.

💎 Expatriating Americans may use FGTs as pre- and post-expatriation containers for estate containment and custody continuity, subject to careful sequencing.

💎 Non-US grantors with US beneficiaries may access materially different outcomes, because foreign-source income and clean capital distributions can be treated differently where the grantor is not a U.S. person.

💎 EU-regulated trusteeship and institutional acceptance are becoming increasingly relevant in international private client planning.

💎 Malta’s residence and citizenship options add a separate mobility layer for internationally mobile families seeking European settlement optionality.

Why Americans Abroad Need Structures

US nationals living abroad often discover that asset holding becomes harder, not easier, after leaving the United States. The challenge is not merely legal. It is operational.

Banks may restrict direct accounts for US individuals. Investment platforms may limit access or set caps. Families may hold assets across the United States, Europe, Switzerland, the Gulf or the Caribbean. Succession planning may involve US heirs, non-US spouses, international custody arrangements and tax reporting in several systems at once.

For these families, a trust structure is often less about secrecy and more about order. The question becomes: who holds the assets, under which law, with which trustee, and with what reporting discipline?

Malta’s role in U.S. wealth planning

For U.S. citizens and long-term residents, global wealth structuring starts with a hard truth: citizenship-based taxation does not disappear because the family lives outside the United States. The Foreign Grantor Trust is therefore not a magic cloak – despite what some dinner-party “offshore experts” might imply after the second espresso.

The strategic issue is more practical. Many U.S. nationals abroad face banking friction, succession complexity, custody restrictions, investment onboarding hurdles and long-term family governance concerns. These problems are often less about avoiding tax and more about making international life administratively workable.

The U.S. rules distinguish domestic and foreign trusts through the court and control tests. A trust is treated as a U.S. person only where a U.S. court can exercise primary supervision over the trust and U.S. persons control all substantial decisions; otherwise, it may be a foreign trust. The U.S. court and control tests for trusts therefore sit at the centre of the classification analysis. For foreign trusts with a U.S. owner, the IRS Form 3520-A instructions state that the form reports information about the foreign trust, its U.S. beneficiaries and any U.S. person treated as an owner under the grantor trust rules.

In that context, Malta’s role is best understood as jurisdictional infrastructure. It offers an EU trustee seat, English-speaking professional services, common-law trust familiarity and international regulatory credibility. The presentation to Andersen advisors framed Malta as combining immigration, tax, legal and corporate structuring in one European jurisdiction, while also noting its EU, Eurozone and Schengen status, English language environment and common-law influence familiar to U.S. and UK advisors.

Foreign Grantor Trusts for Americans

The central structure for U.S. nationals living abroad is the Foreign Grantor Trust.

For U.S. nationals living outside the United States, a properly structured FGT may allow a non-U.S. trustee, including a Malta-based trustee, to administer the trust while the U.S. grantor remains taxable in the United States on income and gains. This is the critical boundary. For a U.S. grantor, the FGT is generally not a U.S. income tax mitigation tool. It is a governance and administration tool.

The structure may help international families separate legal administration from personal ownership, improve institutional account onboarding, maintain continuity of custody and create a more stable succession framework.

That distinction matters. For U.S. advisors, Malta’s value is strongest when presented with technical precision: U.S. tax transparency remains intact, while Malta contributes regulated trusteeship, institutional comfort, law-of-choice flexibility and reporting discipline.

“Foreign Grantor Trusts are already familiar to U.S. private client advisors. Malta’s role is to provide a regulated European trustee platform that can support those structures with law-of-choice flexibility, institutional credibility and coordinated reporting.”

Dr Jean-Philippe Chetcuti
Senior Partner, Private Client and Citizenship by Merit

Why Malta Works for Trusteeship

The strongest Malta argument is the separation between trustee seat and governing law.

U.S. advisors may be more comfortable using Cayman-law, Jersey-law or another familiar trust deed. Malta can still be relevant because the trustee seat need not dictate the trust’s governing law. This allows advisors to retain familiar drafting and asset protection language while using a European trustee jurisdiction with regulatory credibility.

For readers seeking a fuller legal overview, the publication on Malta trusts explains Malta’s trust framework, including trust legislation, trustee regulation, trust duration, trust types and the use of trusts in international asset holding and wealth structures.

The practical value for U.S.-connected families lies in trustee neutrality outside the United States, access to an EU-regulated fiduciary environment, professional administration of foreign-law trusts, compatibility with U.S. reporting requirements, continuity for banking and custody relationships, and governance structures suitable for multi-generational families.

In this respect, Malta is not competing only on tax. It is competing on institutional acceptance. That is a more durable proposition.

Expatriating Americans and Sequencing

For expatriating Americans, the same FGT structure may serve a different strategic purpose. The trust may be tax transparent before expatriation, then operate as a continuity and containment structure once the client’s U.S. tax status changes.

The word “sequencing” does a lot of work here. Trust planning after expatriation is rarely as clean as trust planning before expatriation. Pre-exit structuring allows advisors to coordinate U.S. tax, estate, reporting, immigration, banking and succession issues before the client’s tax status changes.

For expatriating Americans, Malta’s role may therefore include trustee continuity before and after renunciation, European custody and banking continuity, succession planning for U.S. and non-U.S. heirs, separation of personal ownership from long-term family governance, and coordination with U.S. exit tax and reporting advice.

This is not a “renounce and relax” narrative. Covered expatriation, exit tax analysis, Form 8854 compliance, foreign trust reporting, U.S. beneficiary planning and estate tax exposure require specialist U.S. counsel. Malta’s role is jurisdictional and fiduciary, not a substitute for U.S. tax advice.

U.S.-Connected Non-U.S. Families

The materially different case is the non-U.S. grantor with U.S. beneficiaries. In that scenario, the trust logic changes because the grantor is not a U.S. person.

Where the grantor is a non-U.S. person, a Foreign Grantor Trust may produce more advantageous U.S. tax results, particularly where foreign-source income and later distributions to U.S. beneficiaries are analysed correctly. This is genuine tax planning, but for a different taxpayer profile. It should not be confused with planning for U.S. citizen grantors.

Malta Mobility Options

Trust structuring often sits alongside mobility planning. A family considering a European trustee jurisdiction may also ask whether Malta can provide a residence base, settlement option or future citizenship framework.

The Malta Permanent Residence Programme is a regulated permanent residence route for non-EU nationals, granting the right to live in Malta and visa-free travel within the Schengen Area. It is relevant for families seeking a stable European base, English-speaking infrastructure, long-term relocation optionality and family continuity planning.

Separately, Malta Citizenship by Merit may be relevant for exceptional contributors, entrepreneurs, technologists, philanthropists and other individuals whose profile aligns with Malta’s public interest and national development priorities. This should be framed carefully. Citizenship is not a tax planning tool and should not be presented as transactional. The correct post-2025 framing is contribution, merit, residence, public interest and lawful discretion.

For wider context, the European citizenship after Commission v Malta analysis addresses how Malta’s citizenship framework is best understood through contribution, public interest, lawful ties and discretion rather than automaticity.

Wealth Solutions for Americans: Andersen Webinar

Dr Jean-Philippe Chetcuti delivered a webinar to Andersen tax advisors in the United States and worldwide on Malta’s role as a European structuring jurisdiction for globally mobile wealth. The session connected U.S.-connected trust planning, international tax reporting, Malta trust law, European residence and citizenship planning, family office governance and wealth holding structures.

The webinar was significant because it brought together complementary professional disciplines that are often considered separately: U.S. tax analysis, Maltese trust law, regulated trusteeship, residence planning and citizenship advisory. For U.S.-connected families, this integrated approach is essential. Trust structures cannot be assessed in isolation from tax reporting, banking continuity, estate planning, family mobility and future succession objectives.

Where U.S.-connected families require coordination between trust structures, reporting obligations, tax residence and cross-border succession planning, related Andersen in Malta insights provide a useful reference point for wider tax and private client context.

“Where the client is U.S.-connected, the safest Malta message is also the clearest one: trusteeship, governance and reporting discipline first; tax claims only where the client’s U.S. tax profile actually supports them.”
Dr Jean-Philippe Chetcuti
Senior Partner, Private Client and Citizenship by Merit

Planning U.S.-Connected Wealth Mobility?

Families and advisors considering Malta for U.S.-connected wealth planning should begin with a coordinated review involving U.S. tax counsel, Malta trust lawyers, regulated trustee providers and international mobility advisors.

Three Client Profiles

For US nationals living abroad who are not expatriating, the FGT is primarily an access and governance tool. It may assist with banking, investment platform access, continuity and family administration, but it should not be described as a US income tax mitigation device.

For expatriating Americans, the same structure may be used differently. Pre-expatriation, it remains US tax transparent. Around expatriation, sequencing becomes critical. Post-expatriation, the planning focus may shift towards estate containment, custody continuity and reducing the risk that assets re-enter the US tax net through heirs or later family events.

For non-US persons with US beneficiaries, the analysis changes materially. A properly structured FGT created by a non-US grantor may, depending on the facts, allow foreign-source income to remain outside the US tax net and distributions to US beneficiaries to be treated as clean capital. That is genuine tax planning – but only because the grantor is not a US person.

Malta Compared with Alternatives

Delaware and South Dakota trusts remain prominent in US domestic planning. Cayman, the Cook Islands and other offshore jurisdictions remain familiar in asset protection and international private client work. Malta’s role is different.

It offers a European trustee seat, not a replacement for every trust law. It can sit between US adviser comfort and European institutional credibility. A Cayman-law trust administered by a regulated Malta trustee is therefore not an oddity; it is the essence of the proposition.

The cleanest message to US advisers is simple: Malta is not selling a new trust concept. It is offering a trustee platform that can administer the trust law they already trust, while supporting US tax-compliant reporting.

Practical Takeaways

The most important planning boundary is also the most important compliance message: FGTs for US nationals living abroad are not tax arbitrage. Any pitch suggesting otherwise is risky and inaccurate.

For US advisers, the better question is whether a Malta trustee can help deliver bankability, governance, reporting discipline and continuity across generations. For internationally mobile families, that may be valuable enough.

For expatriating Americans, sequencing is the pressure point. The structure must be considered before expatriation decisions are implemented, not retrofitted after custody, tax status or estate planning assumptions have already shifted.

U.S.-Connected Trust Planning FAQs

Can a U.S. citizen abroad use a Foreign Grantor Trust?

Yes. A U.S. citizen living abroad may use a Foreign Grantor Trust, but the trust is generally tax transparent for U.S. purposes. The U.S. grantor remains taxable on income and gains. The structure is usually used for governance, succession, banking continuity and administration.

Does a Malta Foreign Grantor Trust reduce U.S. income tax?

For a U.S. person, generally no. The U.S. grantor remains taxable on income and gains. Malta’s value is trusteeship, law-of-choice flexibility, reporting discipline and institutional credibility.

Can a Malta trustee administer a Cayman-law trust?

Yes. One of Malta’s key advantages is that the trustee seat and governing law may be separated. A Malta trustee may administer a trust governed by a preferred foreign law, including Cayman law, where properly structured and advised.

Is Malta useful for expatriating Americans?

Malta may be useful as part of a wider expatriation plan where trust continuity, European custody, residence planning and estate containment are relevant. The structure should be planned before expatriation and coordinated with U.S. tax and immigration counsel.

Are non-U.S. grantors with U.S. beneficiaries different?

Yes. Where the grantor is not a U.S. person, Foreign Grantor Trust planning may produce materially different U.S. tax outcomes for foreign-source income and later distributions to U.S. beneficiaries. This is a separate analysis from planning for U.S. citizen grantors.