My gf and I are both dutch citizens nomadding in Europe for 3 years now. We fell into it when we moved for a job opportunity that didn’t work out and decided to be nomadic from that point onwards.
I love this lifestyle, and really don’t want to stop but we have found ourself in a predicament. Our home country doesn’t allow us too have a mailing adress if we don’t spend 4 months of the year in the country(we spend 0 days). So we are registered nowhere. A home base elsewhere is something we can’t afford and keep living this lifestyle.
Traveling in europe is expensive and troughout the year we break about even(we know it’s not ideal but we are fine with it for now) if we had to keep a homebase year round and pay taxes we wouldn’t be able to afford living like this anymore.
The problem now is however that banks require some form of adress and recently wise started asking questions and we are scared our bank account might get frozen and leave us without money somewhere and have no access to it.
Also, the rules for digital nomads in the Netherlands are a bit iffy. It’s not 100% transparent if you need to pay taxes even tough we spend 0 days here and the last 2 years we were in contact with the tax officials and didn’t even have to file.
I’ve been scouring the internet recently and found a few things such as Estonia e residency that might help with opening bank accounts but won’t fix the residency issue and same with opening a American llc but still no adress or residency.
The cheapest option for residency it seems is bulgaria with low taxes and not too high col but like I stated in the beginning, this would crush our digital nomad life as we could not afford traveling around anymore with the added costs. And we would have to stay 183 days there and my gf doesn’t like bulgaria whatsoever.
Tldr; do we need to stop nomadding for now in order to have paperwork in order and get life sucked out off us or is there a way we can continue
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Why don’t you just provide your dutch friends/relatives address as your address for your bank accounts? Who’s possibly gonna check and how?
yeah apparently this is illegal
- You need to pay taxes. The question is where. It’s not as easy to determine as one would think. If you work for a Dutch company as an employee then you owe income tax not to the Netherlands but rather to the countries where you do the work. On the other hand if you have dividend or investment income you will likely owe income tax to the country where the investment is based. The fact that you don’t spend 183+ days in any single country during the year doesn’t mean you owe zero tax.
- The best solution is to find a bank that knows you are a non-resident and supports that. It doesn’t really matter what address they have on file for you because everything is online these days and you won’t be getting statements in the mail. Use a friend’s address if you can.
yeah but what oif youre like you know, nomagic, and dont stay in one country very long. I think theres a lot more people who live this lifestyle and the system hasnt really made a sitisfactory option for nomadic people to pay taxes. It will eventually I suspect as more people start doing this - in the meantime there seems to be lots of grey areas and little international consensus or uniformity legally or otherwise. Im just declaring my income back home - without having updated my adress - which is now basically planet earth. But they dont make paying taxes easy - and I personally want to pay taxes for ethical reasons.
You do have to register and pay taxes somewhere. Either your home country or wherever you spend 183 during a year.
It doesn’t mean that you have to pay rent and bills to maintain a place though.
Find a good accountant. Be prepared mentally to the fact that they may ask you to pay for the years that you missed with interests.
In most countries when you pay taxes and they see missing years, they will ask for proof of where you paid when unregistered.
You do have to register and pay taxes somewhere. Either your home country or wherever you spend 183 during a year.
This is false.
Very few countries tax citizens abroad making money abroad, regardless of their local tax situation. And many countries have totally different standards for when you start needing to pay taxes, primarily by having actual work authorization and making any money there.
This is absolutely false. It’s basic info and you’re literally just making stuff up to scare OP
You’re right to be worried about wise. They deleted my account recently without any explanation. Make sure you have multiple backups.
Same thing happened to me.
If you cannot maintain the lifestyle while paying taxes somewhere maybe you should stop?
This is not legal in most of Europe, but even if I go by what you’re saying in that it’s fine in the Netherlands it still raises the question of whether it’s ethical to not be paying taxes anywhere while using tax-funded stuff everywhere. And beyond that, eventually, this will fuck you somehow, it can cause issues with banking and future tax stuff.
I dont like your tone - you seem to be implying that the OP is doing something wrong. He isnt - he merely has a nomadic lifestyle - it in fact the moral bancrupsy of normal society which fails to accomodate namads that is the problem, not the OPs decision to live an alternative lifestyle. If they want nomads to pay tax then sort somethinbg out so they can do so - dont force them not to be nomads.
whether it’s ethical to not be paying taxes anywhere while using tax-funded stuff everywhere
They’re from the Netherlands. How bad the tax funded stuff is is unethical for how much taxes they take.
Lol no.
Nothing would work if everyone thought like you people.
Besides, I said pay taxes somewhere.
yeah its nbot that easy einstein if you are ACTUALLY a nomad whoch oyu obviously arent so not sure why youre here. There needs to be made provisions for nomads to pay taxes somewhere for them to actually pay them .I have no problem paying taxes I believe they should be paid - but there is no easy way to do this legally and be a nomad. So they make a lifestyle which has existed for a lot longer of humanities history than settled life, illegal. And you cheer them on
If you want to pay taxes in Bulgaria, they will take it regardless if you spent 183 days there. Bulgaria is not going to be a problem. The problem is The Netherlands, if they do a check and decide that you have no real home base, based on your nationality they can still tax you.
I’m in the same situation, but I decided to move to Bulgaria last year.
You can’t have no tax residence, you need to be paying taxes in your home country.
Traveling in europe is expensive and troughout the year we break about even(we know it’s not ideal but we are fine with it for now) if we had to keep a homebase year round and pay taxes we wouldn’t be able to afford living like this anymore.
You will need to have a declared residency and pay tax. Otherwise you will be committing tax fraud. (No-one can live nowhere)
Tldr; do we need to stop nomadding for now in order to have paperwork in order and get life sucked out off us or is there a way we can continue
You will need to have a registered address where you pay tax.
so basically people arent allowed to be truly nomadic - and there in lies the rub, there is no moral imperative to have a permanent address - their is just prejudice and stupidity which will hopefully change, but not if we just accept the status quo and start condoning it
What do you mean by your country not allowing you to have a mailing address? Of course you can use a mailing address in any country, how could they stop you from dojng that, or how would they even know?
It’s apparently about the government person tracker, where you can’t be registered if you aren’t in NL for 4 months, and you need a specific kind of address.
yeah stfu if you dont know what your talking about which you obviously dont
Please stop saying things like that if you don`t know the situation in NL.
I think there’s a confusion about the terms, is a “mailing address” in NL an official name for the address where you’re registered?
You don’t have to stop. This article should give you some ideas: https://denationalize.me/perpetual-travel-en/legal-compliance-for-pts/
Can’t you just use Anytime Mailbox? They have two in the Netherlands.
https://www.anytimemailbox.com/l/netherlands
Ipostal1 has a Dutch location too.
Estonia, Cyprus, Portugal (nhr), Bulgaria. Your biggest issue is going to be health insurance (and I’d be curious to see what you decide because I’m right behind you!). Don’t expect that belastingdienst won’t come for you, or that it will be easy to deal with them if they do! We’re currently registered in NL and it’s a total pain; we’ve been living in Haarlem and just leaving for winters for the last 2 years, but will likely move on this August. When we go back to nomading, ditching our Dutch residency will be a first move for sure. Just remember that you won’t be able to go to Albert Heijn without cash when you do come back to visit family hahaha.
Yeah I’ve been getting information on Estonia e residency but it doesn’t seem it will hold up if the belastingdienst does decide to come after us. I won’t ever come back to the nl so that won’t be a problem haha!
Do you have a plan set up for when you leave next year or are you going the same way I did?
Traveling in europe is expensive and troughout the year we break about even(we know it’s not ideal but we are fine with it for now) if we had to keep a homebase year round and pay taxes we wouldn’t be able to afford living like this anymore.
You will need to have a declared residency and pay tax. Otherwise you will be committing tax fraud. (No-one can live nowhere)
Tldr; do we need to stop nomadding for now in order to have paperwork in order and get life sucked out off us or is there a way we can continue
You will need to have a registered address where you pay tax.
So much wrong information in this thread wtf …
There is a BIG problem with most of the responses OP got. None of them are based on the actual laws in the Netherlands.
Please stop applying what you think is “normal” to other countries.
I do not understand much the part “our country does not allow us to have a mailing address”. You probably mean setting permanent resident address (as mailing address is easy to get - you can use your family/friends/parents address to be mailed), so that you could prove your address to a bank. Actually, it is interesting. I am from Czech Republic and permanent residence is not at all connected with how long you stay there. If you are not staying for majority of year in the country (or you do not stay here at all), you are not even legally bind to pay taxes (or some of them), you do not have to pay social security/health insurance etc.
So what you mention might be some Netherland special thing. Actually, in Czechia you are obliged to get permanent residence due to law, so even homeless people can ask their municipality (or place they had permanent residence for the last time) and they just get permanent residence = address as their municipality (usually city hall address). Which of course does not mean they have right to live there. Right to live somewhere and permanent address (place of residency) are to different legal things in Czechia. I believe it will be very similar in many other countries. Did you really consult it with some lawyer in Netherlands? It might clarify things more.
It’s weird in the sense that if you are not in the country for 4 months a year that you have to unregister and you can not register on a mailing adress. It has very specific requirements and just not living here for 4 months is one of them too.
Homeless can register in nl for a mail adress but they live in nl and have to comply with certain things as giving there whereabouts like the shelters they stay at.
Health insurance is same in nl, when you deregister you lose your health care and don’t have to pay for it anymore and lose pension 2% a year you’re abroad.
I talked to multiple tax advisors troughout the year all giving conflicting answers :(