Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

politico.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 184 posts

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#121

Post by Gud »

ankushb wrote: post #111
AYBABTME wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Expats don't remember the bureaucracy they had to deal with in their own countries, because they did it: - over the years - step by step - with the help of their parents or simply their parents took care of most things when they were young/born/growing up. Then they arrive in a new country and realize what it's like to administratively become a functional resident. You probably got your first bank account in…

Clearly you haven't been to the efficient country like Singapore, Switzerland.

Seconded. I moved from Sweden to Switzerland (Aargau) and I was in awe of how little nonsense there’s been.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#122

Post by binaryapparatus »

Two+ years in Algarve, with registered activity and paying all the taxes here. Having foreign income all my taxes fall within sweet NHR regime. Can't say anything bad about bureaucracy, with proper lawyer help it is slow-ish but very decent process.

Lease prices are driven by taxes and tourism, short term (AL) accommodation is taxed at 6%, long term lease contracts go from 30% (for 1+ year contracts) down to 10% (for 10+ years contracts). Obviously landlords are pushed into short term accommodation which creates lack of long term offers. Matter of getting taxes more fair over long/short term categories would fix the market immediately.

Quality of life and nice people are above anything else so I wouldn't change a thing from this current setup.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#123

Post by ornornor »

ankushb wrote: post #111
AYBABTME wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Expats don't remember the bureaucracy they had to deal with in their own countries, because they did it: - over the years - step by step - with the help of their parents or simply their parents took care of most things when they were young/born/growing up. Then they arrive in a new country and realize what it's like to administratively become a functional resident. You probably got your first bank account in…

Clearly you haven't been to the efficient country like Singapore, Switzerland.

Swiss bureaucracy is expensive but it’s swift, easy, and very cordial. I’ve never lived anywhere that was so good on paperwork. Exchange my non EEU drivers license? A week flat and about 100.-. Getting a residence permit? 100.- approx and less than two weeks. Questions about your tax return or filing? An email to the cantonal tax office and you’ll get an (encrypted answer) within a few days.

That’s only about the government though, private companies are hilariously terrible at customer service or paperwork especially compared to US/Canada.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#124

Post by ls15 »

user_named wrote: post #105
louison11 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Portugal is different. To give you perspective: it takes 2-3 years to exchange a foreign driver license (most foreigners I know drive illegally by now), a lot of administrations frequently “lose” applications and ask you to do it again when they have too much backlog (this cost me hundreds of dollars in back and forth, certified documents etc in the past). It’s also very common for administrations to have no one…

Takes 18 months to get permission for your foreign spouse to move to Sweden. It then takes 12-18 months to get into the social system - you register quickly, but for the bureaucracy to actually add you into the system takes that long. So no, you're wrong. Portugal is not different.

Public offices love to slap fines for being late on people. I think people should be entitled to the same fees if the offices are late.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#125

Post by blitzar »

8ytecoder wrote: post #44
user_named wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expats complain about bureaucracy everywhere. A German expat in Sweden will complain about Swedish bureaucracy. A Swedish expat in Germany will complain about German bureaucracy. It does not mean anything. Expats complain about everything.

Slightly off topic but I see this often enough and I’m curious to know, when do you call someone moving to another to work an expat instead of an immigrant.

immigrant is a person legally or illegally coming over here and stealing all our jobs and taking all our benefits and not even working or speaking the language.

expat is a person moving to another country and getting paid a high salary.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#126

Post by mmarq »

8ytecoder wrote: post #44
user_named wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expats complain about bureaucracy everywhere. A German expat in Sweden will complain about Swedish bureaucracy. A Swedish expat in Germany will complain about German bureaucracy. It does not mean anything. Expats complain about everything.

Slightly off topic but I see this often enough and I’m curious to know, when do you call someone moving to another to work an expat instead of an immigrant.

The English speaker divides humans into 3 categories:

- White people with the burden (see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man's_Burden )

- White people without the burden

- People of colour

When a person in the first category moves to another country, they are an expat; people from the other 2 categories are immigrants or migrants, as they prefer to say nowadays.

For instance I’d have to take a significant pay cut if I wanted to be the British prime minister but, belonging to the second category, I am an economic migrant. An American or Swedish teenager working in a Starbucks in Berlin is an expat.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#127

Post by slaw »

notch656c wrote: post #93
louison11 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Portugal is different. To give you perspective: it takes 2-3 years to exchange a foreign driver license (most foreigners I know drive illegally by now), a lot of administrations frequently “lose” applications and ask you to do it again when they have too much backlog (this cost me hundreds of dollars in back and forth, certified documents etc in the past). It’s also very common for administrations to have no one…

Most third world countries with such bad/slow bureaucracy solve those issues with bribery. I'd hate to live someplace that both has low corruption and such high bureaucratic burdens.

Could you give some examples of these countries?

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#128

Post by sho »

alzamos wrote: post #70
sho wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those that didn’t pay hefty fees to set up companies in tax havens I suppose it depends on your definition of "hefty" but a couple of thousand USD is usually sufficient, depending on jurisdiction, and obviously is expected to pay for itself many (, many, many) times over. It's not that hard and it's not just for the 1%. Especially if you're anything approaching a "digital nomad" I can't think of any reason why you…

I’ve not looked into it personally, but I’ll relay what I’ve heard from various people who have looked into this or successfully done this. In one case one person, as you say, did everything on their own and pays a couple thousand every year to keep the entity in the favourable jurisdiction. When asked if it was all above-board, they said it was one of those grey areas where they hoped the govt didn’t look too deeply…

Well, your first example is a good "what not to do". Doesn't sound like much of a "grey area" if they're living in fear of being found out. I don't understand this kind of setup - financial information is permanent and once governments get their shit together there will be no safe havens, and this will apply retroactively. People playing such games are going to feel a lot of pain some coming day, I suspect.

I have to admit I don't know anything about Portugal but with a little research it is very possible to find a territorial tax-based country to live, where one does not owe any money on overseas income, and live completely legally there as a tax resident, taxed only only your minimal local salary - if that. Now I suppose that's not for everyone but if people were moving to Portugal specifically for tax reasons then I'm surprised they didn't, you know, check it out a bit first.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#129

Post by mchaver »

hknmtt wrote: post #81
fy20 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about Portugal, but a few years ago my wife was studying in Spain on a study abroad program. She is from another EU country, and we'd visited Spain a few times, so figured it would be easy. Pretty much every step of the way we encountered so much more bureaucracy (I am an immigrant to her country) than we could even imagine. She spoke Spanish, but if she didn't it would have been a million times harder.…

When i was was apartment hunting in barcelona 7+ years ago and failed straight for weeks to get a single reply on idealista, and went to the real estate agencies and found they had siestas, still, in barcelona, i quit the country. good to visit, not to live. ps: when i wanted a bank account, the people there acted like they didn't spoke english, until it was clear they won't give me an account, then suddenly english…

Unfortunately cold emails are generally ignored. The general etiquette in Spain is that you have to establish a relationship with someone in the business before they respond to emails, and then it also depends on the individual if they like to use email or not.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#130

Post by AYBABTME »

ankushb wrote: post #111
AYBABTME wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Expats don't remember the bureaucracy they had to deal with in their own countries, because they did it: - over the years - step by step - with the help of their parents or simply their parents took care of most things when they were young/born/growing up. Then they arrive in a new country and realize what it's like to administratively become a functional resident. You probably got your first bank account in…

Clearly you haven't been to the efficient country like Singapore, Switzerland.

Off course YMMV. But that's not the rule in general.

I have recent experience with Korea which is overall quite efficient in fact, and yet it's still a struggle to figure out what I need to do, how to do it, and language barriers don't help.

Post reply on HN