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Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

money.yahoo.com

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Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#121

Post by edanm »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #79

AFAIK, U.S. imposes income tax on all of its citizens, even those who reside in other countries. IIRC it applies to all earnings above $110k(?). There's also the notoriously difficult hassle of complying with FATCA's [0] reporting requirements. I would imagine that sours the value proposition quite a bit, at least for U.S. citizens. [0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-...

(not a lawyer or accountant, but know a bit about this)

That depends on the country. Some (I imagine most?) countries have deals with each other when it comes to taxation, to avoid double taxation.

So if you're earning a salary in, say, Israel, then you only have to pay US taxes on money that hasn't already been income-taxed in Israel. Therefore, whether you're paying more taxes than locals depends on whether the tax rate in the country is higher or lower than in the US. If it's higher, then you end up not having to pay anything extra.

That said, these things get tricky and there are lots of individual wrinkles. E.g. freelancers typically have to pay taxes either way here, afaik. Then again, those taxes aren't doing nothing - they're paying for you to have a US social safety net of some sort.

Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#122

Post by nogabebop23 »

buran77 wrote: post #117
dominotw wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> funded mainly by income taxes rather than consumption taxes. Why would you not pay income taxes in barbados though?

Many countries have laws so that if you are a resident there you also pay taxes there. They may also have agreements with other countries in order to avoid double taxation. But I'm fairly certain that barring any weird legal setup living in a country for a year means you pay the income taxes (at least) in that particular country.

I don't think you would pay tax in this scenario, as essentially this is just a longer-term tourist visa. You won't be allowed to get a job locally and are expected to work remote. There's no way they could track (and tax) this; it's really no different than doing some work on your 2-week Mexico vacation. Also Americans pay tax based on citizenship too.

Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#123

Post by dominotw »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #122
buran77 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries have laws so that if you are a resident there you also pay taxes there. They may also have agreements with other countries in order to avoid double taxation. But I'm fairly certain that barring any weird legal setup living in a country for a year means you pay the income taxes (at least) in that particular country.

I don't think you would pay tax in this scenario, as essentially this is just a longer-term tourist visa. You won't be allowed to get a job locally and are expected to work remote. There's no way they could track (and tax) this; it's really no different than doing some work on your 2-week Mexico vacation. Also Americans pay tax based on citizenship too.

> it's really no different than doing some work on your 2-week Mexico vacation.

Does 1 yr make a difference? Or would it still be considered "vacation".

Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#124

Post by dominotw »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #114
dominotw wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no requirement that a US company can only employ US residents to the best of my knowledge. I understand this, obviously. You seemed to have implied that you would still be paid 'cushy us salary' in ireland, thats what i am talking about. does your current employer still pay you US salary if you live in ireland? I would love to work for such an employer, i want to move back to my home country and still keep…

> does your current employer still pay you US salary if you live in ireland? Yes, but this varies by company, and is predicated on the assumption that the move wouldn’t interfere with my job performance. E.g., I would still work my normal US hours because my job requires some amount of communication with my team.

Most employers, HR and payroll aren't willing to deal with taxes, labor laws ect across different countries.

I am really surprised that some employers are willing to go such great lengths.

Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#125

Post by dominotw »

jsjohnst wrote: post #109
dominotw wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really shocked by this. I had no idea there are employers who doesn't adjust your salary from US salary if you move to an entirely different country. all the examples i know of like gitlab, mozilla ect adjust it to local country comp. anyone know if such an employer actually exists in US?

> anyone know if such an employer actually exists in US? Yes. I’ve personally seen it happen multiple times at different employers, each with unique factors. There are way to many factors at play here to make broad assumptions that no employer does it... - first and foremost, Covid changed everything when it comes to remote salary norms - Duration of move (some employers would be more lenient for 6-12mo vs permanent…

> There are way to many factors at play here to make broad assumptions that no employer does it...

Yes you can make broad assumptions that almost no hr, payroll, legal dept of any company is setup to deal with taxes, labor laws ect across hundreds of different countries.

Yes exceptions exist.

> - it’s important enough to mention again, Covid changed everything.

No it didn't. Do you have even a single example of an employer thats allowing ppl work longterm from whichever country they please due to covid?

Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#126

Post by MrPowers »

edanm wrote: post #121
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #79

AFAIK, U.S. imposes income tax on all of its citizens, even those who reside in other countries. IIRC it applies to all earnings above $110k(?). There's also the notoriously difficult hassle of complying with FATCA's [0] reporting requirements. I would imagine that sours the value proposition quite a bit, at least for U.S. citizens. [0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-...

(not a lawyer or accountant, but know a bit about this) That depends on the country. Some (I imagine most?) countries have deals with each other when it comes to taxation, to avoid double taxation. So if you're earning a salary in, say, Israel, then you only have to pay US taxes on money that hasn't already been income-taxed in Israel. Therefore, whether you're paying more taxes than locals depends on whether the tax…

Most countries follow territorial / residence based taxation. People that live in the country are taxed in that country. An Italian that lives in Italy pays tax to Italy. An Italian that lives in the US, pays tax to the US.

A couple of countries have worldwide / citizen taxation (i.e. the US). A US citizen that lives in Singapore will pay tax to both Singapore and the US. They pay tax to Singapore and can claim a tax credit on their US tax return. They can also claim the foreign earned income exclusion deduction.

Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#127

Post by perl4ever »

oh_sigh wrote: post #103
perl4ever wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the US has an exemption for foreign income, this seems like making overmuch of a technicality. It reminds me of the histrionics over the US not being officially metric by people from the UK.

Well that's rich, coming from people who can't even stick with one system and have a weird mix of imperial, metric, and various archaic units - which is IMHO worse than just being on imperial.

That description applies to both the US and UK, perhaps others, and it's hard to be unaware when you're connected to a global computer network. Just google "site:uk mpg".

"Put simply, all MPG does is tell you approximately how far your vehicle will travel based upon a single UK gallon, which equates to approximately 4.55 litres of fuel"

This particular thing, I'm aware of because there is perennial confusion over comparing mpg given that Imperial gallons are larger than American ones. If people just used L/100km....

Chauvinists go to ridiculous lengths to magnify small differences.

Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#128

Post by dmitrygr »

aunty_helen wrote: post #115

"Digital nomad visas" are starting to become more common as countries realise they bring in low impact wealthy online based 'tourists.' Currently, it's very possible to travel on a 3-6 month basis between countries under tourist visas and to work remotely in a somewhat illegal fashion. These nomad visas are an attempt to capture that market offering legitimacy for a fee. Unfortunately, Barbados hasn't really hit the…

Pro tip: being lucky and getting away with tax fraud is not the way you want to live in any country. You will eventually get caught.

Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#129

Post by Nasrudith »

Really this economically seems similiar to "permanent tourists" if taken to the logical extreme and extended indefinitely, their income source isn't taxed directly, they don't take local jobs, but do use local services. Healthcare is probably one of the most significant differences between transient and "permanent tourist" compared to transit costs. Not being seasonal is almost certainly an advantage unless it aligns with another industry's "off season" and the transit income is likely irrelevant to the host country.

It brings to mind a future organizational hypothetical of a "modularized citizenship" for work vs residence - unlikely as that may be given the tendency of nations to insist that their rules are the only rules and thus international laws are more like guidelines in practice.

Re: Barbados introduces plan to allow visitors to work remotely there for a year

#130

Post by szatkus »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #122
buran77 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries have laws so that if you are a resident there you also pay taxes there. They may also have agreements with other countries in order to avoid double taxation. But I'm fairly certain that barring any weird legal setup living in a country for a year means you pay the income taxes (at least) in that particular country.

I don't think you would pay tax in this scenario, as essentially this is just a longer-term tourist visa. You won't be allowed to get a job locally and are expected to work remote. There's no way they could track (and tax) this; it's really no different than doing some work on your 2-week Mexico vacation. Also Americans pay tax based on citizenship too.

I don't know about tax laws on Barbados, but usually you need to pay income tax in a country where you spend more than half of a year. Just the fact that you rent a flat for a year is enough for an revenue authority to start an investigation.
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