Very few desirable countries (other than say Singapore, etc) have lower taxes than the US, so FEIE might be irrelevant if your local country has high income or capital gains taxes.
If you’re doing the digital nomad thing to avoid paying taxes anywhere (except to the US, which you can’t avoid) that might make QSBS more desirable, but under the specific scenario that:
- you live in a low tax country like singapore (or you intend to stay a traveling digital nomad for years to dodge any non-US taxes)
AND
- your business doesn’t pay you a salary significantly higher than the FEIE cap of roughly 100k/yr
If you make $500k/yr living in Singapore, the FEIE is irrelevant (since as a victim of American global tax you’ll pay US income tax wherever you are) and it’d be better to convert as much of your salary into dividends/distributions as possible to pay lower cap gains rates.
If you’re doing the digital nomad thing to avoid paying taxes anywhere (except to the US, which you can’t avoid) that might make QSBS more desirable, but under the specific scenario that:
- you live in a low tax country like singapore (or you intend to stay a traveling digital nomad for years to dodge any non-US taxes)
AND
- your business doesn’t pay you a salary significantly higher than the FEIE cap of roughly 100k/yr
If you make $500k/yr living in Singapore, the FEIE is irrelevant (since as a victim of American global tax you’ll pay US income tax wherever you are) and it’d be better to convert as much of your salary into dividends/distributions as possible to pay lower cap gains rates.