What a second passport does not give you

What a second passport does is genuine and narrow. What people expect it to do is broader, and the gap is where the disappointment lives.

It does not change your tax position

Tax follows residence, not nationality, in every country but one. Acquiring a passport while continuing to live where you live changes nothing at all — and where it does change something, it is because you also moved.

It does not remove your existing obligations

Filing duties, reporting on foreign accounts, military obligations and notification requirements in your existing nationality continue. In several countries acquiring another nationality creates a new obligation rather than removing one.

It does not confer the right to live anywhere new beyond that country

Visa-free access is short-stay tourist entry. It is not a right to reside, work or study, and it is granted unilaterally by destination countries that can withdraw it — as several have for particular programme passports.

It does not make you anonymous

Your place of birth is printed on it, all your nationalities are declared on every bank form, and exchange of information reports accounts against your tax residence regardless of which passport opened them.

It does not protect assets

Assets are protected by where they are held and how, not by the passport of the holder. A citizenship changes none of the law governing a property, a company or an account.

What it does

• Mobility, for holders of a restricted passport — a genuine and sometimes transformative change.
• A fallback: a right of entry and residence somewhere that nobody can revoke at a border.
• Optionality for children, who inherit it.
• Access to particular routes — a treaty investor visa, for instance, available only to nationals of certain countries.

That is a real list, and it is worth paying for where those things are needed. It is a poor purchase for someone whose actual objective was a tax position or a European life, both of which are bought with residence rather than with a document.