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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- 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.
I am from Brazil and facing a similar problem. If you stay away for 1 year you are automatically a non resident. And also unable to keep bank and brokerage accounts there. My wise still works and have some other international alternatives such as Advcash and Dukascopy. One thing you can also do is perhaps opening a company for banking purposes. Like an UK LLP with your partner or an US LLC.
so after a year you become stateless ?
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.
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
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.
Why don’t you just pretend you’re living at your parent’s house in NL, pay taxes in NL, receive payments into your NL bank account, and then travel wherever you want? The tax department has no way to know your real location and as long as you’re paying taxes instead of evading them they won’t investigate.
That’s illegal and seen as fraud. I feel like I am less in a Grey area now as if I were to do this. People have been caught doing exactly this and been fined heavily.
“Fraudulently paying too much tax”. Yeah, that doesn’t sound right.
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 :(
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
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.
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.
This is absolutely false. It’s basic info and you’re literally just making stuff up to scare OP
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.
You can’t have no tax residence, you need to be paying taxes in your home country.
You don’t have to stop. This article should give you some ideas: https://denationalize.me/perpetual-travel-en/legal-compliance-for-pts/
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 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.
https://www.netherlandsworldwide.nl/tax-return-abroad/pay-income-tax
idk, the government seems pretty clear that only income from the netherlands matters for taxes…
All of our income is from outside the netherlands and out of the eu for that matter. We have tried opening bank accounts and France and Spain but have been rejected. Thanks for the link!