Taxing Ghosts: Closing Residency Loopholes to Fund Post-Pandemic Recovery Efforts, Digital Nomads: Metadata and Documentation, 2022-2025

Surak, Kristin and Weber, Simon (2025). Taxing Ghosts: Closing Residency Loopholes to Fund Post-Pandemic Recovery Efforts, Digital Nomads: Metadata and Documentation, 2022-2025. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service.

Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic depends on the ability of governments to find resources to fund essential public services. Most governments will need to do so by raising tax revenues. However, wealthy individuals have become impossible to tax effectively, as they are increasingly able to manipulate their legal residence into tax haven locations, in effect "ghosting" the tax systems from which they collectively benefit. Multinational corporations routinely book profits in tax favorable formats and locations, ghosting the very systems that have been built and maintained to make their existence and profitability possible. Ghosting is a global phenomenon that affects states both rich and poor, but its outsize impact on developing countries makes it a systemic threat to global economic stability, materializing into fiscal crisis in countries around the world. Reform proposals currently circulating at the international level focus on the specific needs of globally dominant (mostly wealthy) states, and do not fully contemplate the problem of ghosting as a systemic, worldwide phenomenon that must be addressed directly to build a tax system that will both enable the current post-Covid recovery and prepare for future pandemics and other fiscal shocks.

This project focuses on the international tax reform agenda that illuminates the systemic problem of ghosting and demonstrates the procedural and substantive reforms needed to address it. The significance of our research lies in our holistic, system-based approach, drawing on research and expertise from law, sociology, international migration studies, and African development studies to examine relevant legal and geo-political factors comprehensively. We will research the national and international factors that facilitate tax ghosting by wealthy individuals and corporations, demonstrate the disparate economic threats created by such tax ghosting, analyze why states have failed to recognize the threats to date, and propose novel yet feasible policy solutions based on our findings.

Data description (abstract)

This dataset is collected as part of a study examining the experiences of digital nomads, a rapidly emerging phenomenon in the global workforce. It focusses particularly on navigating visa systems, tax regulations, and other bureaucratic challenges across different countries. The study aims to explore how these administrative systems impact the ability of digital nomads to live and work internationally, highlighting both the benefits and obstacles they face in maintaining a mobile lifestyle.

Data is gathered through online interviews with digital nomads, who share firsthand experiences. Key topics include visa options for remote workers, managing international tax obligations, securing healthcare and insurance in different countries, and the complexities of legal residency. Participants also discuss how these systems influence their choices of destinations, the duration of their stays, and the feasibility of continuing their nomadic way of working.

This dataset provides qualitative insights into how digital nomads interact with and adapt to global administrative frameworks. It reveals the strategies they use to comply with regulations while maintaining a high degree of mobility. This research contributes to understanding how emerging global work patterns are shaped by and, in turn, shape international bureaucratic, in particular taxing systems.

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