Any Americans have an expat-savvy tax person to recommend?

Hi everybody. I live and work in Germany and want to go to Canary Islands for 6 months to work from there. I'm going to keep my current job, just change the "home" in the home office part of things. Are there any tax issues I have to be aware of? I was reading about becoming a residence after 183 days, thus having to pay taxes there plus my employer having to register there. Does anybody know how it works exactly? Thanks a lot!

I'm in need of a tax advisor who understands "our" typical situation. I'm all good on being legal on taxes at this point, but as I'm doing more investing and there's more compliance and KYC and such, it's getting more complicated to deal with this topic. Not living in my country of citizenship, company in another country, resident in yet another country, banking in a different country ... you know how it is, a pile of red flags.

Would be great to find a good tax advisor to sort things in a way that makes my situation as "explainable" and easily dealt with as possible. Any leads?

I'm a dual citizen of America and France with my resident based in the America. Can I travel to the EU using my French passport?

Anyone with knowledge regarding complications of not being a tax resident anywhere in the world? I’m aware that primary health care, bank account opening and incorperation can be problematic but are there other practical or legal factors I should be aware of?

And what about paying myself salary from a self-owned OECD company? I would like to know if I risk potentieal issues with the tax authorities in the jurisdiction of the company, especially regarding withholding tax.

Appreciate your input!

Hello everyone! I’m new here and probably this is a very newbie question, but it doesn’t leave my head.

How do you, nomads, pay your taxes? I mean, if you’re constantly traveling, how are you going to pay taxes for a certain country if you are going to stay there a short period of time?
Or do you return to your “original country” and then pay them?

By the way, this forum has very nice cool formatting features!

I am a New Zealander looking to travel for a couple of years in different countries. For this purpose I would ideally like to shift my company to a lower tax territory where I will live part time, as I am currently taxed at roughly 33% in New Zealand, however it’s closer to 40% when I add in all the hidden taxes.

With a move I won’t be living in NZ so I’ll no longer be obliged to pay any tax after 320 days.

I ideally would wish to be a tax resident of the country I incorporate in. What country is easiest to do this through? A large chunk of my business relies on PayPal which requires your bank account to be from the same country your company is registered. Thus I can’t do anything such as BVI or small islands.

Tbh my best bet looks to be Dubai Free Zones at this point and I can do some travel in europe from there.

Hi everybody,

for those who read us in the past, we made some changes to our plan for this winter.
We decided for several reasons to postpone our trip to SEA, and decided to leave for a month in Costa Rica instead. We’ll still be travelling with our 2 kids and will need to work a little as well.

This is our itinerary for the month.

For those who’ve been there, how long do you think we should stay at each place?
We were planning roughly:

• 1 week in Tamarindo/Nosara
• 2-3 nights in Monteverde
• 2-3 night closer to the Arenal volcano
• 2-3 night in Quepos
• Uvita for undetermined period of time

Do you think there’s a place (among the ones we cited or else) we should consider to stay a little longer?

Thanks

Magali and Guillaume

Hi, I’m new here.
I am moving out forever.
So I am going to move to another country my residence.
But, in the new country I don’t plan to spend more than 90 days a year for sure, at least it’s not the plan for the first years.

But I want to be sure that my tax residence is in my new country, even if I spend less than 90 days a year.
I want to be sure I won’t be reclaimed by my original country or any other country that I might end up spending less than 180 days, but more than the less than 90 I expect to spend in my new country(looks like it’s going to be Portugal).

Hope that was understandable.

Does anyone know where I can get information about this kind related to nomadism?

Thanks

How does lima’s new municipal taxi app TaxiMML compare to uber?

Hi all,

I am moving to Amsterdam in January and looking for advice regarding legal status.

I work for a small French company. They agreed to let me move to Amsterdam as a remote worker starting January.

However, they have no business entity and no employee in the Netherlands, so we have no idea how to set up the whole thing legally speaking. Should I remain an employee of the French entity, should I charge them as a consultant/contractor?

Of course, I am looking for a solution that is both simple and with minimum taxes

Thank you for your help!!
Steph

PS: If you can recommend a good accountant that is competent on the topic, I an happy to pay for the service too!

Hello nomads,

Due to a recent US work visa rejection (H1B), I’m considering turning to freelancing and being a digital nomad. My former employer (US based start-up) wants me to continue rendering my services as a contractor/freelancer (so I have a confirmed major client and I’ll probably take on other minor clients on the side). From the get go I want to get my taxes right and I was hoping you seasoned nomads can assist me. Some of the key aspects of my case are:

1. I hold an Indian passport and as long as I don’t stay in India for 182 days I’m considered non-resident (No taxes on foreign income as long as services are not rendered in India, otherwise 30% tax).

2. I may have to visit the US occasionally, so having a tax-residency in a country with a US tax-treaty may be beneficial (I maybe incorrect here).

3. I’m willing not to be a perpetual traveller and put down roots in a low tax country that offers easy tax residency with low-taxes.

4. Will incorporating in a tax-friendly help my case? Or will just perpetual travel be enough to completely avoid taxes?

P.s. If any of you offer sound tax advice for a fee and are aware of international taxation laws (especially US tax laws), do let me know.

Hi, I know there are a few posts around this topic but none of them quite answer my questions.

I am British and currently a resident in the UK.
Next year I am going to become a non-resident and spend over a year traveling mostly around Europe, moving every few weeks never staying anywhere longer than a month. (My first venture into becoming a digital nomad!)

I am remote, self employed, software developer working mostly for one client based in the UK.

Where am I liable to pay taxes?
From what I have read I will not be liable to pay taxes in UK, can anyone confirm this?
If not the UK then where if I am moving every few weeks?
If possible I want to avoid starting a company as this seems unnecessarily complicated for my work setup.

Thank you in advance for any help

Here’s a question (actually a bunch of related questions) that’s been a bit of a thorn in my side lately. I’ve already combed this forum as well as several others but would love some more insight from more knowledgable people.

So, here goes…

Background: I’m a perpetual traveler and haven’t stayed in a single country longer than 6 months for around 5 years now. I’m a non-US person so no IRS worries but my country of citizenship (Korea) has a residential tax system and since I haven’t claimed residency anywhere else, it seems possible for my government to claim me as a tax citizen.

Which brings me to my first question: At what point does forming a solid business structure to cover your taxable a** become worth the hassle? $100K/year? At $200K/year? I sort of feel like most governments wouldn’t bother with this because it’s relatively “small fish” - thoughts?

And that brings me to another question: If I’m not needlessly spending time worrying and I should finally pull the trigger and set something up that makes me more “legit” - even if it requires paperwork - what’s my best option? Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Set up an offshore company - I’m leaning toward RAK Offshore since it seems to have no paperwork requirements and has no taxes - and use that to hold and re-invest the income I receive while paying myself a nominal amount every month, like $3,000, which I then file Korean (income) taxes for. This makes sense in my head since that’s roughly the amount I spend every month anyway but would this qualify as tax evasion?

Last question: for all of you who are perpetual travelers and aren’t filing tax returns with your country of citizenship/last tax residency - what are you doing in terms of investing the money you’ve saved? From what I’ve read, banks will report accounts that hold over a certain amount to the country of the account holder and online brokerage accounts seem to be the same.
Oh, and is the money accrued (without being reported tax-wise) considered black money?!

Okay, I’m done for now. Apologies for writing a book - I’m not so learned on this topic. Would appreciate any insights. Thanks in advance!

I often spend upwards of $150 per month in coffee shops, where I do much of my (remote) work (25+ hours per week). Since I don’t pay office rent, I perceive these expenses as replacing my fixed rent costs, and I tend to spend more money at coffee shops when I’m camping out for a 2- to 4-hour work session, so these expenses strike me as legitimate business expenses. Has anybody gone down this road with the IRS? Is anybody aware of any official guidance or precedence for this?

Hi nomads,

I and my husband are graphic designers and we work from home mainly doing services for UK. We have personal bank account in UK as we lived there for a while and we use it to receive payments and then use transferwise, but we are worried because we have no company there to declare these payments.

We are at the moment in Malta but moving to Portugal soon and we really would like to make the things right to avoid problems but also we need avoid pay lots of tax… I am researching a lot but not sure what to do. Would be very good to have a bit of advice to what way to go, where is the best country to open an offshore business for exemple?
We earn together about 25k euro year (brut).
Any advice or tip would be very welcome.

Thanks!

Hey guys.

I’m in the unfortunate situation (and true Digital Nomad’s worst nightmare) where the Canadian tax man (i.e. the CRA) has decided to come calling. And calling hard.

Any recommendations for Canadian Tax Accounts / Tax Lawyers specializing digital nomads / expats / non residents?

Here’s the deal:

I’m a digital nomad living in Thailand who has NOT lived in canada since the middle of 2011, and in that time, only been back to canada three times for a brief visit (with a total period between all those years of less than 90 days out of the 5 years).

I make an online income (affiliates, adsense, and such) of which all if it does not derive from Canada. And as stated, I don’t live there anymore and haven’t in many years. I don’t own houses, cars, or anything (I do have a personal bank account though and a DL – you need those to function mostly). I’ve only used Canada as my bank account, from which I would send money abroad to live while outside of Canada, which was the entire period of time.

Anyways, the taxman back in Canada doesn’t know this (that I’m a non resident) and of course has now come to collect. I had income tax demands sent to an address (parents’) stating I owe a very high five figure balance in income tax and owe it right away.

The whole digital nomad thing has just come to life the past years and when I left Canada in 2011/2010, no one new much about making money online, how to pay taxes when you don’t live in your home country, etc. I was doing this earlier than most (from this forum, I gather it’s common now).

I assume I’ll probably need a Canadian tax accountant and mayhaps a tax lawyer versed in…well…digital nomads. I’m going to call the CRA (Canadian Revenue Agency) and try to explain that I don’t live there and haven’t (and I can prove it), but yea. It may take more than that.

At this point, I’ve been looking how to properly structure my affairs (creating an Estonian Corp, creating an Thailand corporation) to properly handle how I should structure things in the future, but in the meantime…

Advice or a recommendation for a specific tax specialist (i’m from BC, Canada if that helps) would be awesome.

Ben

Originally, I am from the Netherlands. Since january 2016, I have been working remotely all around the world. But even though I haven’t been in the Netherlands this year, I am still paying taxes there. I’m still registered as a citizen.

I have to unregister in the Netherlands as a citizen. But if I don’t register somewhere else, or have a freelance status or company somewhere else, I would still have to pay 50%+ taxes. This is, of course, not fun at all.

So I decided to move my business elsewhere. Either get freelancer status in another country, or create a business there to send invoices from. Which brings me to my question:

What is the best country tax-wise for a Dutch freelancer?

As of now, I found two solutions:

• Have an agency set up a company in Bulgaria. It will kost 3000 euro a year, once 3300 euros and extra money if I want residency. And then of course 10% income tax on my earnings.
• Have an agency set up a company in Dubai. It will cost around 2000 euro annually and 5000 euro once. No income tax.

Wether residency in an other country is required for the Dutch tax authority to not tax your world income, seems to be a grey area. However, if I unregister in Holland and send invoices from a company in a whole other country, it should be fine.

I have little or no experience. People with know-how: would you be so kind to comment on these options?

Are there alternatives I should consider?

I don’t really like to hire an agency. I’d rather just fly to a country, fill out paperwork, incorporate there and from then on invoice from that company. If it’s too bureaucratic, I wouldn’t mind hiring a local lawyer or accountant to do it for me.

Do you know a country where there is no or a low income tax and this process is relatively easy and suitable for Dutch freelancers?

If no, how do you get around the being in one place for two years or more requirement?

I am looking for a best virtual Domicle to declare as permanent legal USA address and Legal Domicle where I can receive Virtual mail and have it mailed to my current geography. Please inform if you have recommendations or experience. Thanks!