&gt; You do pay taxes in (for example) Hong Kong. It&#x27;s just not as a high as the US rate.<p>Then you&#x27;d pay a proportionately lower rate for your US burden. The overall amount of tax owed should be relatively constant.<p>&gt; I think a more thorough analysis of income sources is also in order<p>I suspect the issue here is the manpower required to do it and&#x2F;or the potential for extra loopholes. Could I start a company in Singapore that just happens to derive all its income from US sources and has me as its sole employee? Taxing by amount makes a certain degree of sense in that regardless of shenanigans, if you get money at the end, we tax that money. (Though of course, we don&#x27;t actually do this in the US with things like capital gains.)