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Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

politico.eu

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Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#131

Post by TomSwirly »

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…

> and went to the real estate agencies and found they had siestas, still, in barcelona,

I'm not seeing your issue here. This has been well-known for a century, so don't show up during the siesta time.

"I want to live in a foreign country, but they need to change to be like my home country!"

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#132

Post by bwb »

cfn wrote: post #97
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…

If you live in Portugal for longer than 6 months every 12 months you are considered a resident and taxed accordingly. I suppose you could go in and out every few months to escape that.

Just to note, it is a little bit more complicated, as there are other aspects of a tax residency test as well. IE, if it is your "home" as dictated by some other rules it can be a tax residency even with less time spent there.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#133

Post by Beltalowda »

csomar wrote: post #51
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.

There is bureaucracy and then there is bureaucracy. Here is an example: Malaysia and Indonesia. Each country has its own bureaucratic nightmares but you can make useful comparisons. Malaysia: Easy to get a phone number. Easy to get an internet hotspot to get data. Reliable internet. Internet is fully open (no censorship). Indonesia: Hard to get a phone number. Confusing choices and prices with Whatsapp/FB mingled in…

> Heavy censorship (not even Reddit works!) so have to get a VPN to do any meaningful browsing.

This depends on your ISP I believe; Telkom blocks Reddit, but I believe others do allow it. You don't need a VPN to bypass it, DNS-over-HTTPS will do as well.

In general things in Indonesia seem to be ... complicated. Just buying something at the local Indomaret sometimes seemed to involve typing an entire essay on a computer.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#134

Post by bwb »

louison11 wrote: post #78
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.

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…

To note, this isn't always true.

My family moved to Portugal in late 2020. Covid played havoc as they had to find ways to digitalize many things their offices were doing. It took my wife 9 months to get her DL exchanged and me 11 months.

During that time, you are not driving illegally; you are driving from your foreign license. As long as you have the paper with the exchange info and a picture, you will be fine.

It also helps if you hire a relocation expert who knows the system. We paid ~$1,500 to a Portuguese American lady who helped us with everything. She handled setting up all our health care, apartment negotiation and contract review, set up all our utilities and phones, all our residency paperwork, DL exchange, bank account, and more. I highly recommend her and any group like her. They know how to work the system. My mom does similar back in the USA for newly arrived expats for companies.

Covid was a real shock to office-heavy organizations; it has been a mad scramble to change culture, paperwork, operations, etc. I think they are doing decent and hopefully, in 5 years, it is night-and-day difference.

I've lived in Egypt as well... the bureaucracy there worked really well (before revolution). I just had to go to a giant building and spend half a day there, done. Sure I had to taxi to a DSL place to pay, but that was pretty easy as well.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#135

Post by rcarmo »

diceduckmonk wrote: post #101
rcarmo wrote: post #91

The article is way overblown and borderline clueless. First off, the Luddites demonstrating before the Web Summit had a political backing, they’re not a grassroots movement. That demonstration happened for the cameras (and to further a small party’s ambitions to the limelight). Second, there is indeed backlash against the golden visa program, but the most meaningful bits are due to visas being granted to people who d…

Thanks for the super insightful post. Could you expand on what brokerage means in this context.

Legal mediation in which both parties agree to an outcome. Typically used for debts, property disputes, etc.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#136

Post by louison11 »

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.

It's not really the delays that make Portugal different, arguably most countries have long delays, it's the lack of reliability, transparency, and responsiveness.

I don't know Sweden. But we're a family of expats with multiple citizenships, so I deal with bureaucracy in 4 countries on 3 continents. Most countries have streamlined procedures, provide tracking numbers, addresses to send things in, phone lines... So it's long, but you know what's going on and what to do.

Here, even lawyers don't even know what to do. For a similar situation to get my partner a visa from within the country, we simply couldn't speak to anyone. Even the lawyer told us "well, you might have to wait a year or two to see if they re-open their ability to take new appointments." We eventually were able to get through after hustling like crazy, me driving to many different city halls to speak to officials there. Someone eventually knew a colleague there, and got us an appointment for 6 months later in a city 3 hours drive away. We showed up, it was a butcher. Their Google Maps pin was not even in the right place. Cherry on the cake. After getting turn-by-turn instructions from the butcher (who apparently does that 10 times a day), we eventually found their office.

Idk, never been to Sweden but I don't think you can compete with that :-D

Now I get it, they're vastly understaffed, Portugal is a small country. They're doing what they can.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#137

Post by louison11 »

bwb wrote: post #134
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…

To note, this isn't always true. My family moved to Portugal in late 2020. Covid played havoc as they had to find ways to digitalize many things their offices were doing. It took my wife 9 months to get her DL exchanged and me 11 months. During that time, you are not driving illegally; you are driving from your foreign license. As long as you have the paper with the exchange info and a picture, you will be fine. It a…

Hey neighbor! So glad it was faster for you. My experience is that these things vary greatly based on where you apply, and pure luck. I know people in the Algarve who have been waiting for 3 years. And people who applied in Lisbon and got it like you within 1 year.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#138

Post by traveler01 »

As a portuguese it blows my mind that "digital nomads" are choosing the country to live in. Surely the country has great weather, food and you get an hefty tax discount that the natives can only dream about (20% of income tax is wayyy lower than a living wage in this country pays). But if you investigated a bit more you would see that the emigration rates of the country are going through the roof.

It should be a huge red flag that one "nice" country has more than 20% of it's population living abroad: https://poligrafo.sapo.pt/fact-check/cotrim-de-figueiredo-po... (you might want to use Google Translate on this one).

I also saw some comments blaming the tourism for this "bubble" bursting. The portuguese can't complain about tourism since it's a huge part of our PIB.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#139

Post by fakedang »

deanCommie wrote: post #75
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.…

This is a fairly long story but only one part of this seems like genuine "bureaucracy": > We went back to the bank (BBVA) and they said our account had been closed due to suspicious activity (the only transaction we made was the initial payment for the internet) and there was nothing they could do. That's an absolute nightmare (though I don't understand how you weren't notified, or what the recourse typically is for…

In the UAE, I downloaded an app, submitted my docs and my details, and got my card the next day (I went to a bank branch - not the branch of my account but just a random branch to get it printed on the spot, even though they offered home delivery, because I wanted to see the process).

In the UK, I visited a nearby Lloyd's branch and got my account open and my stuff in under an hour.

In India and Switzerland, the bank sent a representative to my place, where they did everything from a handheld device, including verification. Done in an hour and got my card by mail in 1-2 days.

The stuff you mentioned in your summary are excuses and not valid ones at all.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#140

Post by MaxPengwing »

Beltalowda wrote: post #80
smueller1234 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it, 100%. Anything non standard and you get the long forms instead! By the way, I've lived in a few European countries and researched many others. The Netherlands was by far the easiest/most efficient in terms of bureaucracy.

> Anything non standard and you get the long forms instead! If only. Instead you run in to catch-22s and simply get a shrug and "it's not possible". The big downside of being the "easiest/most efficient" is that it deals with exceptions poorly; once you fall outside of the "efficient" workflow you're screwed. Lots of people run in to problems with this and people literally become homeless because of this. Ironically,…

This is exactly why I a native Swede had to leave Sweden for Ireland. Im now back in Sweden and jesus christ the bureaucracy is insanely streamlined and optimised for the upper middle class happy path people. Everyone else is looked upon with confusion and disgust.
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