There are genuinely favourable regimes for a retiree moving abroad. Greece taxes a retiree's foreign income at 7% for fifteen years, and that is real.

But one rule comes first, and nearly every list forgets it.

Your new country does not decide

The tax treaty between it and whoever pays your pension does.

Two immediate consequences, to know before you look at a single destination:

A public sector pension almost always stays taxable in the state that pays it. That is the paying-state principle, and moving does not get around it. A former civil servant, a soldier, a state school teacher: their pension often stays taxed at home, whatever regime the destination offers.

And some countries keep their basic pension too. Germany is the clearest example: it continues to tax its statutory pension paid abroad, and removes the basic allowance from the non-resident along the way. A German retiree who leaves without doing anything is taxed from the first euro of the taxable share, when they paid nothing at home.

So the first question is not "which country", it is "which pension". Public or private, basic or supplementary, annuity or lump sum: they are not treated the same, and sometimes not by the same country. Within one household, two pensions can fall to two different states.

Read the pensions article of your treaty before choosing. Two neighbouring countries can be opposite on it, and the gap is larger than anything a regime will give you.

The three regimes that genuinely exist

Greece, the clearest

A retiree who moves their tax residence to Greece pays 7% on all their foreign-source income, for fifteen years.

Read the middle of that again. Not just the pension: everything. Dividends, interest, rents, capital gains, at 7%.

The conditions fit in three lines: not having been Greek resident for five of the last six years, coming from a country with a treaty with Greece, and living there more than 183 days a year. That last one is not a formality: the regime asks you to live in Greece, not to hold an address there. Greece ranks 193rd in our ranking on its ordinary scale, which reaches 44%, but that is not the one you will pay.

The real gain is often not the pension, which may stay taxable at home, but everything else: the portfolio, the let flat, the interest. See our Greece guide.

Italy, with one more condition

7% for ten years on foreign income, provided you settle in an eligible southern municipality and were not an Italian tax resident for the previous five years.

The extra condition is not a detail: you have to actually live where the regime is offered. But it has just loosened. The municipal population ceiling rose from 20,000 to 30,000 on 7 April 2026, opening 74 further towns, and they are the mid-sized ones, the ones with a hospital and a station. For a retiree that is exactly the detail that decides. Italy also has its flat charge for very large fortunes, which is a different thing entirely and does not concern an ordinary retiree. See our guide.

Morocco, on the remitted share

Morocco grants an 80% reduction of the tax due on the share of pension transferred to Morocco.

The mechanism differs from the other two: it is not a reduced rate, it is a reduction of the tax itself, and it bears on what you bring in. Morocco is close to Europe and its cost of living is far lower. See our guide on retiring to Morocco.

Portugal is no longer the answer

This is the most important item in this article, because much of the web still has not caught up.

The NHR status is closed. Anyone who moved in after 1 January 2024 cannot get in. Those who obtained it before keep it to the end of their ten years.

The regime that replaced it, the IFICI, is often called "NHR 2.0" and that is misleading: it is narrower, it targets skilled professionals in listed sectors, and it excludes pensions. A retiree moving to Portugal today is on the ordinary scale, which reaches 48%.

If you read a page explaining how to apply for the NHR, check its date. See what is left after the NHR.

The other route: territoriality

A territorial country does not tax what you earn elsewhere. For a foreign pension the effect is close to an exemption, and it does not expire after nine or fifteen years.

  • Panama, 33rd, with a well-established retiree programme.
  • Malaysia, 36th, with good private healthcare in Kuala Lumpur and Penang.
  • Costa Rica, 56th, stable and with no army, but more expensive than its neighbours.
  • Paraguay, 19th, the most favourable of the group, but you must spend more than 120 days a year there.

Careful: territoriality does not protect you if your treaty leaves the taxing right with the paying country. It works on the second layer, not the first.

What not to do

Buy a passport. Citizenship programmes give mobility, not tax residence. They change nothing about how your pension is taxed.

Count on a nomad visa. Those visas target working people, not retirees, and most are not exemptions.

Pick a country with "no income tax" without checking access. Qatar, Kuwait and Bermuda levy no income tax, and none has an entry route for a foreign retiree. See why the top of the ranking is not the answer.

And the question that actually decides

Health. It is the first subject of retiring abroad, far ahead of tax: what cover, at what price, how far from a hospital that can treat you, and what happens to it at eighty-five rather than sixty-five.

We do not publish that data, and we are not going to invent figures to look complete. But a ten-point tax saving does not pay for a medical evacuation.

The full ranking gives all 217 countries, and the FiScore page explains the calculation.

Sources

The Greek, Italian and Moroccan regimes are set out on each country page, with their source and verification date. Checked in August 2026. A reported error is corrected.

This page informs, it does not advise. The pensions article of your treaty decides more than anything written here: have it read, as our terms say.