Working from St. Kitts & Nevis as a United States resident

At a glance

Rule coverage

What the rules say about St. Kitts & Nevis

The rules below are the ones most likely to shape a stay in St. Kitts & Nevis, in plain words and with the source behind each one. Your own report tells you which of them apply to you.

1. Significant issuePermanent residency and citizenship

   Buying this citizenship is a voluntary act that costs most Dutch nationals their Dutch nationality

   Article 15, first paragraph, under (a) of the Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap states that an adult loses Dutch nationality by voluntarily acquiring another nationality. Citizenship by Substantial Investment in Saint Kitts and Nevis is registered as a citizen under section 3(5) of the Citizenship Act on your own application, it is a textbook voluntary acquisition. This is the single most consequential fact in this entire corridor and it is almost never disclosed by CBI marketing aimed at Dutch buyers, whose agents earn a commission on the sale rather than a duty of care to your nationality. Losing Dutch nationality this way is automatic, it happens by operation of law the moment the new citizenship is granted, no separate Dutch government decision is needed to trigger it.

2. Significant issueTax residency

   Neither the citizenship nor a Saint Kitts and Nevis tax certificate ends Dutch tax residence by itself

   Dutch tax residence is decided on facts and circumstances, permanent home, centre of vital interests, family and economic ties, and it has nothing to do with which passport is held or bought. Someone who acquires Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship but keeps actually living, working and maintaining their centre of life in the Netherlands remains a Dutch tax resident and stays fully taxable on worldwide income exactly as before. Ending Dutch tax residence requires genuinely moving and breaking those ties, at which point the Belastingdienst treats the person as a foreign taxpayer for Dutch-source income only, from the date the ties were actually broken, not from the date a passport or a foreign tax certificate was obtained.

3. Significant issueMoving your company

   The old Nevis company zero-tax promise expired on 30 June 2021, read directly from the Ordinance that created it

   Section 136 of the Nevis Business Corporation Ordinance did exempt a corporation not carrying on business in Saint Kitts and Nevis from all corporate, income, withholding, stamp and asset tax on foreign-source income and assets, but only for corporations incorporated on or before 31 December 2018. Section 136(5), inserted by Ordinance 6 of 2018 and amended by Ordinance 6 of 2019, states plainly that the exemption itself shall cease to take effect on the earlier of 30 June 2021, or the date the corporation acquires, holds, owns or deals with any new assets or engages in any new business activity that would give rise to assessable income in the absence of the exemption. In plain terms, the old Nevis company pays zero tax on foreign income pitch, still repeated by plenty of marketing, describes a regime that legally stopped operating years ago, for any corporation, no matter when it was formed.

4. Needs checkingPersonal income tax

   No personal income tax at all, though local wages still carry a separate levy

   Saint Kitts and Nevis charges no personal income tax, on residents or non-residents, local or foreign-source income. The Inland Revenue Department's own published list of administered taxes covers corporate income tax, property tax and VAT, with no personal income tax return anywhere in it, consistent with the near-universal reporting that this is a genuine structural zero rather than a series of narrow exemptions. There is also no bilateral tax treaty with the Netherlands, but because there is no Saint Kitts and Nevis personal tax to begin with, that gap barely matters here, all the real exposure sits on the home-country side. One qualification the headline hides: section 3(3) of the Income Tax Act, Cap 20.22, is what actually takes individuals out of the income tax charge, and it does not cover everything. The Housing and Social Development Levy Act, Cap 20.21, taxes local employment income on a progressive schedule from 0 to 12 percent on the employee side plus 3 percent on the employer side, above roughly EC$18,720 a year. So foreign-source income genuinely arrives untaxed, but taking a job with a local employer here is not tax-free.

5. Needs checkingImmigration and visa

   Visa-free tourist entry still applies, but an eTA has been required in advance since 26 May 2025

   EU nationals including Dutch nationals get up to ninety days of visa-free tourist entry to Saint Kitts and Nevis, but since 26 May 2025 an Electronic Travel Authorisation, an eTA, must be obtained before travel, single-entry, US$17, valid for the ninety-day stay. This is not the same as simply showing up with no formalities, it is a pre-travel authorisation requirement that plenty of older guides and blog posts will not mention since it is recent. Members of the OECS and same-day cruise passengers are exempt from the eTA requirement.

6. Needs checkingRight to work

   Working quietly for a foreign employer on tourist status is common but has no explicit legal blessing

   Visa-free and eTA tourist entry is granted for tourism, and nothing found in the sources reviewed creates an explicit carve-out authorising remote work for a foreign employer while on that status. In practice this is very widely done and Saint Kitts and Nevis is not known to actively police it for short stays, but no dedicated remote-work or digital-nomad visa product for Saint Kitts and Nevis was confirmed in this research round, unlike some neighbouring islands, including Antigua and Barbuda, that have built one. What is clearly not covered is taking up local employment or serving the local market, that needs a work permit.

Tax treaty between United States and St. Kitts & Nevis