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
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
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.
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 don’t have to stop. This article should give you some ideas: https://denationalize.me/perpetual-travel-en/legal-compliance-for-pts/
You can’t have no tax residence, you need to be paying taxes in your home country.
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.
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
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.
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?
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?
yeah stfu if you dont know what your talking about which you obviously dont
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.
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.
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!
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 ?
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.
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?