My gf and I are both dutch citizens nomadding in Europe for 3 years now. We fell into it when we moved for a job opportunity that didn’t work out and decided to be nomadic from that point onwards.
I love this lifestyle, and really don’t want to stop but we have found ourself in a predicament. Our home country doesn’t allow us too have a mailing adress if we don’t spend 4 months of the year in the country(we spend 0 days). So we are registered nowhere. A home base elsewhere is something we can’t afford and keep living this lifestyle.
Traveling in europe is expensive and troughout the year we break about even(we know it’s not ideal but we are fine with it for now) if we had to keep a homebase year round and pay taxes we wouldn’t be able to afford living like this anymore.
The problem now is however that banks require some form of adress and recently wise started asking questions and we are scared our bank account might get frozen and leave us without money somewhere and have no access to it.
Also, the rules for digital nomads in the Netherlands are a bit iffy. It’s not 100% transparent if you need to pay taxes even tough we spend 0 days here and the last 2 years we were in contact with the tax officials and didn’t even have to file.
I’ve been scouring the internet recently and found a few things such as Estonia e residency that might help with opening bank accounts but won’t fix the residency issue and same with opening a American llc but still no adress or residency.
The cheapest option for residency it seems is bulgaria with low taxes and not too high col but like I stated in the beginning, this would crush our digital nomad life as we could not afford traveling around anymore with the added costs. And we would have to stay 183 days there and my gf doesn’t like bulgaria whatsoever.
Tldr; do we need to stop nomadding for now in order to have paperwork in order and get life sucked out off us or is there a way we can continue
Why don’t you just provide your dutch friends/relatives address as your address for your bank accounts? Who’s possibly gonna check and how?
- You need to pay taxes. The question is where. It’s not as easy to determine as one would think. If you work for a Dutch company as an employee then you owe income tax not to the Netherlands but rather to the countries where you do the work. On the other hand if you have dividend or investment income you will likely owe income tax to the country where the investment is based. The fact that you don’t spend 183+ days in any single country during the year doesn’t mean you owe zero tax.
- The best solution is to find a bank that knows you are a non-resident and supports that. It doesn’t really matter what address they have on file for you because everything is online these days and you won’t be getting statements in the mail. Use a friend’s address if you can.
yeah but what oif youre like you know, nomagic, and dont stay in one country very long. I think theres a lot more people who live this lifestyle and the system hasnt really made a sitisfactory option for nomadic people to pay taxes. It will eventually I suspect as more people start doing this - in the meantime there seems to be lots of grey areas and little international consensus or uniformity legally or otherwise. Im just declaring my income back home - without having updated my adress - which is now basically planet earth. But they dont make paying taxes easy - and I personally want to pay taxes for ethical reasons.
You do have to register and pay taxes somewhere. Either your home country or wherever you spend 183 during a year.
It doesn’t mean that you have to pay rent and bills to maintain a place though.
Find a good accountant. Be prepared mentally to the fact that they may ask you to pay for the years that you missed with interests.
In most countries when you pay taxes and they see missing years, they will ask for proof of where you paid when unregistered.
You do have to register and pay taxes somewhere. Either your home country or wherever you spend 183 during a year.
This is false.
Very few countries tax citizens abroad making money abroad, regardless of their local tax situation. And many countries have totally different standards for when you start needing to pay taxes, primarily by having actual work authorization and making any money there.
You’re right to be worried about wise. They deleted my account recently without any explanation. Make sure you have multiple backups.
If you cannot maintain the lifestyle while paying taxes somewhere maybe you should stop?
This is not legal in most of Europe, but even if I go by what you’re saying in that it’s fine in the Netherlands it still raises the question of whether it’s ethical to not be paying taxes anywhere while using tax-funded stuff everywhere. And beyond that, eventually, this will fuck you somehow, it can cause issues with banking and future tax stuff.
I dont like your tone - you seem to be implying that the OP is doing something wrong. He isnt - he merely has a nomadic lifestyle - it in fact the moral bancrupsy of normal society which fails to accomodate namads that is the problem, not the OPs decision to live an alternative lifestyle. If they want nomads to pay tax then sort somethinbg out so they can do so - dont force them not to be nomads.
whether it’s ethical to not be paying taxes anywhere while using tax-funded stuff everywhere
They’re from the Netherlands. How bad the tax funded stuff is is unethical for how much taxes they take.
Lol no.
Nothing would work if everyone thought like you people.
Besides, I said pay taxes somewhere.
yeah its nbot that easy einstein if you are ACTUALLY a nomad whoch oyu obviously arent so not sure why youre here. There needs to be made provisions for nomads to pay taxes somewhere for them to actually pay them .I have no problem paying taxes I believe they should be paid - but there is no easy way to do this legally and be a nomad. So they make a lifestyle which has existed for a lot longer of humanities history than settled life, illegal. And you cheer them on