How we calculate the scores
Every score on a country page comes from a specific formula, not opinion. This page explains the whole formula: what goes in, how it's weighted, and what we do when data is missing.
Flag Theory
The formulation is W.G. Hill's: no country needs to be best at everything, because citizenship, tax residency, business, assets and lifestyle can sit in different jurisdictions. Flagzif scores each flag separately, and you decide how much each one matters through your profile - that's what the flag plan page does with your answers.
Percentile, not a fixed scale
Every indicator becomes a percentile from 0 to 100 across the 218 countries, not a score on an absolute scale. The difference matters: on a fixed scale, a single outlier - Monaco on GDP per capita, Qatar on income - compresses everything else into a handful of points, and comparisons between ordinary countries lose resolution. Percentile answers the question that actually matters: how many countries does this one beat on this indicator.
Why less data doesn't win by default
In testing, the Faroe Islands scored 92 on the lifestyle flag with 2 of 6 indicators measured - and favorable on both. Malaysia scored 74 with all 6 measured. The higher score didn't reflect better quality of life: it reflected the absence of unfavorable indicators. That's why the final score shrinks toward the center (50) in proportion to data coverage - with every indicator measured it passes through untouched, with half it lands halfway between the raw score and the center, and with none there is no score at all.
Weights within each flag
Not every indicator weighs the same within its own flag. In the tax residency flag, top rate and regime weigh twice as much as governance indicators, because that's what the flag claims to measure; the rest is context. In the assets flag, inflation weighs as much as rule of law, because it erodes idle capital just as well as confiscation erodes exposed capital. Each flag has its own weighting logic, documented in the project's open source code.
What the score doesn't capture
Corporate rates are standard statutory ones - they don't capture free zones, special regimes or reduced brackets, which are often exactly what matters in a real decision. Regime, top rate and the day-count rule are hand-compiled for 78 of the 218 countries, because no structured public source covers them; where they're missing, the tax residency flag falls back to governance indicators alone, with the score already shrunk to reflect the gap. No number here replaces a consultation with a qualified professional in the jurisdiction.
Where the data comes from
Passport and mobility data comes from a public visa-agreement dataset. Governance and development come from World Bank indicators. Corporate taxation comes from an international comparative survey. The full list, with license and link for each source, is on the notice page.
See the full sources