Passport Index – How much power does your passport have? (opens in new tab)

Once you factor in the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and Foreign Tax Credit, it is the filing requirement that is onerous, not the taxation.

The first $100,000 of income can be excluded. On income above that, the US demands the difference if the taxes in the foreign country are less than US taxes. I think you acknowledge all this quite well when you call it inconvenient, but I think people don't need to be horribly outraged about it (I think the policy likely does close a path of tax avoidance that would be well used, but I'm pretty ambivalent about whether it is reasonable).

> Additionally, holding an EU passport allows one to work, study, etc. in any EU country, rather than simply visit it.

I don't think you even need a passport, just a proof of nationality (e.g. a national ID card from your country of origin, that's usually free or much cheaper than a passport)

If you think of the US as a more federated version of the EU, you don't even need a passport to relocate within the US.

> For example, the United States is the only major country in the world that taxes non-resident citizens on their worldwide income, which makes it one of the most inconvenient passports to hold.

Soooo if your US passport expires you no longer have this tax?

I would have thought it was based on US citizenship not travelling on a US passport.

I believe China also taxes on worldwide income, albeit until recently more in theory than practice.

Passport goodwill is also another metric that's often overlooked. Would you rather have to apply for a visa to enter a few obscure countries on the planet, or regularly have to deal with scorn from border guards because your country bombed theirs within living memory?

As an aside you're misinformed about what Schengen is. Having a passport from a country in Schengen has nothing to do with being able to move to a different Schengen country per-se. You're thinking of the European Economic Area. Schengen is a passport-control free zone, whereas the EEA guarantees your freedom of movement between any EEA countries, regardless of whether or not you have to show your passport on arrival.

China, Russia, India, Indonesia (With VOA) also require visas for Americans, often with retaliatory fees for the visa (they charge us what we charge them). I was surprised that I need a visa to go to austrailia, out of all places, though at least we can do it online...

> The number of countries that you can enter without a visa might not be the best metric.

I will lol, and assume you have no Arab friends, specifically Lebanese.

The Lebanese passport, as my numerous Lebanese friends joke about, is usually ranked in the top ten worst worldwide "top 10" comedy lists. But seriously, it is on par with this metric for Somalia and other failed African states. You try going with the employed ones on business outside of the UAE, and you will see how much fun this metric can be for you.

> Additionally, there are several countries that have special (higher) visa fees for processing US passports.

That's true, but a lot of it is because they mirror how much the US charges their citizens. So a US tourist visa is $160 for 1 to 10 years (and between 1 and multiple stays up to six months).

So if US citizens think it is "unfair" that they have to pay more to apply for visas abroad, then ask your own government to reduce visa application fees.

Brazil has been less and less of a hugely important country over the past few years than it was a decade ago. China gobbling up commodities brought Brazil back on to the world stage. Now that commodities like oil and steel have crashed and are predicted to go sideways for a decade or more, Brazil seems relegated to irrelevance for a while. That is, unless you run a Target or Walmart in south Florida.

I personally found looking at the visual design of the passport covers to be much more interesting than the 'power ranking'.

It would be interesting to know what each passport image depicts or represents. I really like Sweden's passport cover. Maybe it's partly because the passport image isn't centred that makes it a bit less stuffy and official.

Others I liked: UK, Malta, Mauritius - all old-fashioned but still quite nice. In fact, all of the passports look old-fashioned with their historic emblems (although El Salvador has an outline of the country, rather than an emblem). The Swiss one is the only one that looks modern in this regard.

I thought the same thing, didn't even have to click on it to know that was swiss. The Vatican passport is pretty nice too, with only the gold emblem on black.

Serious question: why is it unsurprising ?

How is that more meaningful, unless you value every square kilometer of Siberia, for instance?

Or you could argue that having access to all of the seas without a passport means that the per-km2 value of a passport is actually relatively small? :)

from another post in this thread: http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/rank/passport/

lists both land area and population rankings, also inverse rankings based on who can enter the country: http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/rank/border/

Maybe the power rank should be self-referencial. More higher power-rank country you can visit higher your power-rank.

As an Irish citizen I was wondering which countries our British counterparts could get to that we couldn't :)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Visa_req...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Visa_req...

    compare -metric AE -fuzz 5% Visa_requirements_for_British_citizens.png Visa_requirements_for_Irish_citizens.png comparison.png

http://i.imgur.com/QdCdb8r.png

This website claims its 168 countries: http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/passport/United%20States

US State Department Site.

visa restrictions into the US and EU exist to protect their own population, as voted and decided upon by their democratic systems.

the world is a bit more complicated than your comment implies.

Or indeed the countries that flat out ban you from visiting them if you travel on certain passports, which is going to be much more of a problem for Israelis than, say, Brazilians, even if this index indicates other countries are less strict on visa terms for Israelis than Brazilians.

It's really an exception if you can work/study at another country without a visa/residence permit. A more relevant question is whether you can make a business trip, or act as a journalist, without a visa. For instance, ESTA for a tourist in the USA is an easy thing, but if the same person wants to come for a few weeks and work as a journalist, e.g. make interviews, then the visa process is very very different. The USA does not offer that much freedom for foreign press, really.

A zone of visa-free exceptions has been created in the Schengen area, but even there you'll need to apply for a work permit for longer stints (and the host country is obliged to give it to citizens of other Schengen countries, with some exceptions).

At least some of the info there is stale or incorrect (just judging by metrics for only one country I'm familiar with).

This seems a bit nonsensical: http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/border/Palestine

I just downloaded the pdf (yay mailinator).

It lists the US as a number 1 country there (with 174 visa free countries), I guess they omit it on the free list to gather email addresses.

I would think that a Passport Power Index would include more than just where you can go visa-free. Things like availability of embassies and consular services would also factor in. Is your government going to intervene if you get into trouble abroad? If so, how effective are they at doing so? Can you buy property outside your own country? If so, how many countries allow it and are there any restrictions?

I think your link takes a very narrow definition into its rankings. I'm not sure how broad the index in the story is, but it seems to take into account more than just visa requirements.

there's always wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Visa_requirements

As someone who meanders around the Gulf, I think you are expensive for tourists and you are just trying to reel us in.

Which country are you from? For me( a Zimbabwean) i rely on these:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Zimbabwean_citizens
  http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/passport/Zimbabwe

Additionally, it would be helpful if you could select your passports, and then it would suggest on a per-country which passport to use for entry, based on visa restrictions, costs, etc. There are a number of websites that offer the information listed in the post, but nothing that provides the details I just described.

No. But thanks for asking, always happy to help!

Other things not taken into account:

* Passport weight index (how hefty is your passport? is it any good as a baton? Page count and binding are important here)

* Passport prettiness index (how dull or interesting are the blank pages in your passport)?

* Passport value index (what's the black market price for each country's passport?)

* etc etc

1/10 site woefully incomplete.

They are pulling data from IATA, which offers an information site:

http://www.iatatravelcentre.com/

It isn't really very convenient for the use you propose (it returns info based on one passport-destination pair at a time).

Something is wrong with the site. I'm fairly certain that when I first viewed the US and UK it said 174 (only fairly certain because I am prone to flipping digits and the second time it said 147). Now it doesn't show any number for the US.

Edit: and now it does show 147 again. If I remember correctly, other entries also lost ~30 from their totals.

It's not one country. Differences between France and South Korea include - not exclusively - Russia, Mongolia, and Namibia.[0][1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_French_c... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_South_Ko...

That has nothing to do with having a passport.