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Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

politico.eu

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Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#41

Post by AYBABTME »

user_named wrote: post #31
alzamos wrote: post #16

Currently living in the Algarve after moving to Lisbon with my partner for her studies years ago. I know a few non-crypto entrepreneurs who came here for the NHR (non habitual resident scheme - the scheme mentioned in the article which allowed for the 20% tax cap on foreign income). I can confirm that a lot of them were incredibly frustrated with the bureaucracy they encountered, not just when dealing with the govern…

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.

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 your teenage, your national IDs as a newborn, etc. Then you move elsewhere and you need to create all these things from scratch and discover them also.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#43

Post by fy20 »

user_named wrote: post #31
alzamos wrote: post #16

Currently living in the Algarve after moving to Lisbon with my partner for her studies years ago. I know a few non-crypto entrepreneurs who came here for the NHR (non habitual resident scheme - the scheme mentioned in the article which allowed for the 20% tax cap on foreign income). I can confirm that a lot of them were incredibly frustrated with the bureaucracy they encountered, not just when dealing with the govern…

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.

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.

For example we wanted to get internet in the apartment we were renting. The local ISP (Orange) said that we needed a Spanish bank account, we said that we had a European account so could make an IBAN transfer, but apparently that wasn't an option. So we went to the bank and they said my wife needed a letter from the police. So we went there, and after showing all her university documents and waiting there for half a day, she got that. By that time the bank was closed, so we went back the next day, and after another few hours she had a bank account. We made a transfer of a few hundred euros from our other European account at home, then once it arrived a few days later, went back to the ISP. They took our details and the first payment, and then we figured everything was fine.

A month later the first bill came and we tried to pay but it was declined, tried to log into online banking and that was blocked too. 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. So we went to visit the ISP with the intention of paying in store, but they said it wasn't an option. We explained the situation and said there was nothing they could do, we could only pay with a Spanish bank account. In the end we had to get a friend to make the ISP payment for us, every month while we were living there.

Compare this to where we live now. You simply make payments to an IBAN bank account, so it can come from anywhere in Europe. If you need a local bank account, you can easily do so in any bank (I opened an account before I was officially living there, i.e. without any local ID, just my passport) or use something like Revolut. If you need to get a local phone number, you just go to the supermarket and buy a prepaid SIM for €1 - no ID needed.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#44

Post by 8ytecoder »

user_named wrote: post #31
alzamos wrote: post #16

Currently living in the Algarve after moving to Lisbon with my partner for her studies years ago. I know a few non-crypto entrepreneurs who came here for the NHR (non habitual resident scheme - the scheme mentioned in the article which allowed for the 20% tax cap on foreign income). I can confirm that a lot of them were incredibly frustrated with the bureaucracy they encountered, not just when dealing with the govern…

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.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#45

Post by Beltalowda »

user_named wrote: post #31
alzamos wrote: post #16

Currently living in the Algarve after moving to Lisbon with my partner for her studies years ago. I know a few non-crypto entrepreneurs who came here for the NHR (non habitual resident scheme - the scheme mentioned in the article which allowed for the 20% tax cap on foreign income). I can confirm that a lot of them were incredibly frustrated with the bureaucracy they encountered, not just when dealing with the govern…

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.

I moved back to my native Netherlands after several years abroad and encountered significant problems with the bureaucracy, more so than in any foreign country I've lived. I don't think it's an expat problem, rather it's a "if you fall slightly outside of the happy path then you can expect to run in to a lot of trouble"-problem. It's just that expats are a group of people that fairly frequently tend to fall outside of the happy path.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#46

Post by [deleted] »

PaywallBuster wrote: post #37

Portugal is heavily bureaucratic and centralized in Lisbon Fire/reduce public servants and spread them away from Lisbon, there, solved! sources: "highest increase in jobs can be seen in central administration" https://www.portugalresident.com/number-of-public-sector-wor... https://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=19963&langId=e... 76% centralized government https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publicatio…

[deleted]

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#48

Post by DoingIsLearning »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #9
thefounder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the citizens want to make an extra buck renting their property?

Simple, tax their short term Airbnb rental side hustle until they have second thoughts about this and maybe then they rent it instead to a long term tenant who actually needs it like a local student or worker.

The main aspect of Airbnb being attractive in Portugal is that rental laws are very biased to tenants. It is quite literally almost impossible to evict. Also in general civil court cases are backlogged for years.

Airbnb will probably feel like neo-liberal haven for these landlords.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#49

Post by nmfisher »

user_named wrote: post #31
alzamos wrote: post #16

Currently living in the Algarve after moving to Lisbon with my partner for her studies years ago. I know a few non-crypto entrepreneurs who came here for the NHR (non habitual resident scheme - the scheme mentioned in the article which allowed for the 20% tax cap on foreign income). I can confirm that a lot of them were incredibly frustrated with the bureaucracy they encountered, not just when dealing with the govern…

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.

Except when you're an expat in a country that actually knows what it's doing, like Singapore. Bureaucracy here is A+, and is the yardstick we should measure every country against.

Re: Portugal’s digital nomad bubble

#50

Post by weberer »

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.

Expats are usually on temporary visas and don't apply for citizenship.
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