UKC

Hi everyone,

I've recently come to realise that my wellbeing is highly dependent on my access to sunlight, nature and climbing - and am contemplating ways of maximising these via some lifestyle changes.

As a remote worker (software engineer) I theoretically have a lot of freedom, and would appreciate some advice from other tech people on how to escape from Brexit Island. The problem is as follows:

* Optimise: access to sunlight and sport climbing in Europe, especially in winter

* Constraints: 90 day Schengen limit, full time remote work, initial capital of around £20k (plus some savings locked into a lifetime ISA), need a stable daily working environment. Don't want to rely on the charity of others or depend on other people to get by.

* Useful: fluent Spanish, very few ties to the UK, no mortgage

One solution that comes to mind would be to buy a big van and work out of that for periods of a few months away. Have any tech sector people made that work, and if so, what other conditions needed to be satisfied? I imagine access to the internet, somewhere to wash, toilets if possible etc would be very helpful. I imagine the next stage of luxury would be to know an angelic benefactor with some land who would allow a medium-term doss in exchange for some rent.

Thanks in advance from a yearning millennial.

https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/spain-digital-nomad-visa/

Hi Chris,

I had a great winter one year working remote from Calpe having rented the cheapest off season holiday apartment I could find (it was cheaper in 2019 to actually email the Spanish estate agents instead of airbnb for 1-2 month stays but that may have changed). I think it was about £700 for 6 weeks.

A bit less committing than a big van and has the benefits of WiFi and shower included, plus you can scope the area and parking spots to go full van person the next year if it seems like a place you like.

We're doing ~4 months per year away at the moment. Renting places to stay to ensure good wifi.

A van would add significant hassle IMO if working full time as it's more faff with showers, washing, shopping, etc and if you're working you want your non-work time to be climbing not faff. If you were only working a couple of days per week I think it wouldn't be so bad. The big advantage of a van would be the ability to move with the weather, this is particularly true as airbnb often gets cheaper for >1 month stay but also usually pushes you into a no-refund policy on cancellations for those long stays making it more risky (i.e., with airbnb it costs a lot to maintain flexibility). 

The Spanish digital nomad visa could be a good shout. I've only looked at it briefly, but as I understand it your company would need to be on board with running your pay through the Spanish tax system which they may or may not object to. It introduces various other pros/cons too - e.g. I think you can use it to work towards Spanish residency, you'd be accruing social security in Spain but not the UK etc. So it may be very suitable or totally unsuitable depending on long-term plans/ideas

It sounds like what you would really like to do is emigrate to somewhere, maybe Spain? Is the van idea a half-way house to dip your toe in and see how you like living in a foreign country for multiple months? There are ways to get EU citizenship and you might want to look into, obviously the first is to check you don't have an Irish parent/grandparent.

If you are constrained by the 90-day limit, somewhere like a Balkans/Greece split might work for you. Maybe Sept to Nov in Serbia/North Macedonia/Montenegro/Romania/Bulgaria and then Dec to Feb in Greece or Turkey... the 90 day in every 180 days limit applies separately to shengen countries and to each other individual country, so it would be very easy to stay in that part of the world as long as you liked.

If you want to stick with Spain, you could split your time between Spain and Morocco.

Buy or make you own van conversion is a whole other topic but assuming you are working out of a van, there is no reason not to have a shower and toilet in the van. For work you are going to want overkill solar pannels and a couple of lithium leisure batteries, if you are stuck somewhere with a prolonged period of grey skies and rain, you can always just find a campsite with a hookup and spend a few days there. A shower can just empty out of the bottom of the van when you are alone anywhere, a toilet is another matter, I have no experience of how readily available black water emptying facilities are. There are always places you can find an outdoor spigot to fill up with water.

In Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Bulgaria you can buy a sim card with absolutely shedloads of data (in fact, there are doubtless unlimited data options) for the half of nothing and doubtless the other countries I listed above are the same. Mobile coverage is pretty impressive all over tbh, if you are anywhere in the same valley as even a pretty small village then you'll have excellent signal. You can get aerials to fit on your van which provide a big boost and allow you to get a good signal practically anywhere that isn't actually underground.

There are local climbing scenes anywhere that there is a big city and local crags tend to be sprinkled within a radius of about 1.5hrs of the city, so you can get sunny climbing in a _lot_ of places. Generally the poorer a country, the smaller the local climbing scene obviously.

When it comes to finding places to park up, a bit of a look at google maps and small roads usually throws up obvious possiblities that are not near anybody's house or farm and quiet. If you are worried about local people's reactions to a longer stay, you can always find 3 or 4 spots and spend a week at each in rotation.

It's easy-enough to do but you will have to accept that a) If this is your work and you're doing a long-term trip, you are probably going to need to sink a fair wad into getting your van and b) You will have to endure the learning process of things going wrong with the van/conversion (try it out in the UK for a month first!) and getting used to finding facilities and fitting in where you are travelling to.

Of course you could eschew the van altogether and just rent an appartment for 3 months during the Autumn/Winter, places like Podgorica and Athens have places you can book on airbnb for £500-£600 a month and not have to go through the polava of dealing with a rental company and signing a contract and so on.

Lots of good thoughts and info in your post but you make a specific claim on the 90 day Schengen rule:

“…the 90 day in every 180 days limit applies separately to shengen countries and to each other individual country, so it would be very easy to stay in that part of the world as long as you liked.”

I’m pretty confident that this (assuming we are talking UK passport) is unfortunately not true.

Compare with: https://www.gov.uk/travel-to-eu-schengen-area

Which specifically states it doesn’t matter which/how many countries within Schengen. 90 days within 180 total.

(Interestingly for some other passports (e.g. NZ), I have heard that it actually may be true because the 90 day visa free agreements were at least initially bilateral with individual countries, but I’m not sure if this is still true or broadly understood by border officials, and I’ve never tested it.)

Also worth considering that apart from the 90 day limit, there is also the question of the purpose of visit - you can travel in Schengen without a visa on a UK passport for tourism and certain other reasons, but for longer term remote work and effectively residing there then I suspect that would become an issue when it came time to leave/re enter or if police/border control ended up looking into it for some reason.

Thanks so much for the thoughtful and helpful replies:

RE the digital nomad visa, it's definitely my first choice and I've already requested it from my employer. They're a huge multinational based in Germany where the working culture is pretty old-school, so I'm considering other options to hedge my bets. It's otherwise a really good job so I'd like to stick with it for a few years. while I get started in the industry.

Barrows, I agree about the van faff, but had assumed that without a residence permit it would very hard to find a place. I'd love to hear more about the process of finding rentals as a short-term person - this would be a really great option for me actually.

Thanks again, I felt a bit silly for asking such a specific question but it's nice to know that others are on a similar wavelength

Any chance they’d sponsor you to work in Germany? Right to live around Munich or the Bavarian alps might not be so bad as a starting point? Couple that with a van and roaming trips to Austrian mountains and beyond?

would agree with abarro about the hassle and increased expenses of living in a van and working, when living in a van you tend to spend more on food(stuff rots without fridges), you spend more on fuel you will inevitably want to spend some money each month on campsites, you have an increased risk of being robbed, you will spend more on internet and data it will take a long long time before you get the money back that you invested in the van, as others have said spanish air bnb prices are half of what you will pay in the u.k.

If you want to look into becoming a Spanish digital nomads, their are several big Facebook groups dedicated to digital nomads discussing the practicalities of getting that visa.

My advice is go for it, anyone who works remotely and speaks fluent Spanish would be mad to spend the whole year in the U.K. 

I don't know if I conveyed my meaning correctly. What I meant was, you can do 90 days in Greece, then 90 days in Bulgaria, then 90 days in Greece again, and so on. Or you can do 90 in Serbia then 90 in Romania then Serbia again. Basically consider the entire Shengen area to be 1 country for the purposes of this exercise.

I don't see any reason to think that the border guards are going to make waves for you when you are sticking to the rules. At least not any more than they normally do for everyone who is crossing the border. I don't have any direct experience of trying to do this kind of thing but my gut feeling is that there wouldn't be much point in having the stay limit of X days all carved out in black and white if you are going to arbitrarily decide to ignore those rules sometimes (well, not in SE Europe at any rate).

I was travelling on an EU passport and honestly the majority of the time the people at the border just really wanted to have an ooo and aaah over my campervan conversion.

Worth noting that arrangements like this can be difficult from a tax perspective. To be classed as a UK resident you typically need to spend more than 183 days per year in the UK (though there are some exceptions) https://www.gov.uk/tax-foreign-income/residence

I also came across this and didn't get a clear answer for nomad-type cases. It feels like a lot of this legislation (especially the digital nomad visa) isn't hugely well thought-out, and would be near-impossible to follow while strictly following every regulation.

Sounds like you may be able to relocate to Germany if your company is based there. Any reason why they wouldn't sponsor you for a work permit?

This would allow you to get German residency permit, which would allow you to travel freely within europe, and still work remotely. Long term you could ultimately apply for an EU passport. 

We're just using air BnB and other similar platforms (and sometimes booking direct for places weve already stayed so have their contact and trust them). Finding a room in a house with a local climber (as a lodger) for a season might also be possible if you have contacts in an area already too..

I know Brexit is crap, but is it causing you an *actual* problem?  If not, why not just relocate somewhere nice and scenic near climbing in the UK?  There'd be no impact on your work then, and as a bit of a bonus those places are often cheaper than the southern part of the UK (if that's where you are at present, your profile doesn't say).

Ah, I see what you mean.

So in effect you mean - up to 90 days in 1/many Schengen countries, then out of Schengen for 90, and so on.

So yes, but again the purpose of visit is also a key element to entry and may or may not become an issue over time. 

I imagine it varies by country (even within Schengen), but generally speaking short term visa free travel is 'granted' so long as you're there for a permitted purpose. E.g. tourism, visiting friends/family, potentially a short term business conference/meeting, etc.

Crucially, residing and working there tend to be excluded from what I have seen. If someone is living in their van and working remotely full time, can they really and honestly say that they are entering a country for tourism or travel? It's a grey area, even when one's employer is outside the country you're in.

I realise that in Europe with a UK passport before Brexit, it probably has never really come up. But I think after Brexit it may well do in time, if someone crosses a border and they have clearly been hopping in and out of the EU or Schengen or a neighbouring country repeatedly over 90 day periods.

Yes, it's up to the border control official at the point of entry and maybe they wouldn't care, and even if someone did continue to declare they were there for tourism then perhaps they wouldn't actually get looked at - but then again someone at the border might eventually look into it, and if they made a determination that actually you weren't there just for tourism or another permitted reason then they could potentially refuse entry etc. etc. and I could imagine that having consequences for subsequent travel, especially when stuff like the ETIAS comes online.

For contrast, and I know it's a different country, but if you enter the US on a tourist visa (or visa free again), my understanding is that you are technically not allowed to work at all, even if it's for an entirely remote employer that doesn't touch anything on US soil or tax. Of course, if you head over there for a month for a road trip and check some e-mails or do some work on a laptop, and then depart when you said you would, would you ever get caught/would anyone really care? Probably not. But if you said at the US border you were going to travel 90 days and work remotely whilst there, it wouldn't surprise me if you were refused entry, because undertaking paid work is not a permittable activity on that type of visa.

In practical terms, does this matter, especially for EU/Schengen/surrounding countries? Don't know. Perhaps not. But it might, especially now, and successive border crossings at/on the 90 day limit could be a red flag over time.

Thanks for the suggestion, but the only person I know who's been authorised to relocate has been expected to work from the Stuttgart office afterwards. I had a pretty grim experience when I visited there and have no intention of making that my day-to-day.

The clarification about the Schengen limit and intended stay is very interesting, thanks. Diving further into the legal side, does anyone know how it works for an employer to have staff using a digital nomad visa? As the first employee in this company requesting the visa, I think I'm going to have to argue my case and it would be helpful to know whether my employer has to just submit a different tax code, or whether they have to engage with the highly bureaucratic Spanish civic system.

I'm guessing that your company has a corporate presence in the UK and that you're technically employed by that UK branch/office?

If so, then I think they will need to treat you as a non-resident employee and so there are potentially tax and NI implications for them from a UK perspective. Found a couple of articles:

• https://www.gov.uk/guidance/paying-employees-working-abroad
• https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-insurance-for-workers-from-the-uk-work...

However it also appears that you are subject to tax on your income in Spain under the digital nomad visa, so some steps would need to be taken to prevent you being double taxed. Not sure what that would look like, especially with reference to the digital nomad visa specifically. I suspect you'd be obliged to declare your own income and sort out the tax personally but I don't know.

I have no expertise at all in this area, and it's getting into tricky territory.

One other area that might be worth looking into could be to go down a contracting route where you set up a limited company in the UK and then take contract roles. This would obviously be a job change and might not be the best option if you are still getting started in your career, but it would at least mean you are responsible for all of the tax wrangling yourself and wouldn't need sign off/HR approval in the same way.

Edit: https://www.mills-reeve.com/insights/publications/the-tax-risks-of-working-...

So the way it *may* work is that you could become a non-resident for UK tax, on the basis that you were out of the UK for more than 183 days of the year, and therefore your employer would tax your UK income for PAYE (and NI if still required, this point needs more research) on that basis.

I'm not sure if the the fact that you'd continue to be employed in the UK might invalidate your ability to claim you're a non-resident though, even if you're out of the country for the majority of the year. More research needed on that too.

From there you would I guess separately settle your tax obligations with Spain using a self-assessment/personal tax return, although I don't know for sure if that's how it works.

Further to this, all things considered it seems that the least complicated (and perhaps even easiest to sell) step would be seeing if they would permit a relocation to Germany to somewhere other than Stuttgart. I know you are skeptical of the chances of that, but I don't think any of the other options look straightforward.

A few points you may need to think about re. your employer:

• Do you use your employer's laptop and/or phone?
• What is their position re.support if one or both of them get bricked? Would their support model work if you're not in the UK?
• What would they think of their devices living in a van at greater risk of being nicked?
• What about the sim card in their phone? Would they want the cost of it roaming from Spain on a semi-permanent basis?
• Are you accessing any employer/client data that has to stay in UK or EEA? Serbia, Croatia & Macedonia aren't in EEA!
• Do they have policies that'll stop you getting into Microsoft 365, etc. from outside UK or EEA?

I don't want to appear negative, but you should be sure of all this stuff before you make the jump. If their Information Security bods kick up a stink once you've made the move (they'll probably be the last to be told of your plans and the first to kick-off once you're in Spain), your employer may demand you move back to UK. 

Thanks a lot for all this amazing knowledge! Those linked gov pages are particularly helpful. My understanding RE dual taxation is that the UK has a dual tax agreement set up with EU countries where you're only taxed once.

By the way, I haven't mentioned until now that my employer also has a corporate presence in France, Italy and Sweden. Perhaps I could ask them to allow a relocation to one of those branches? It feels like a long shot though.

These are all helpful points to clarify. I think I'd have to formally assume responsibility for some of the scenarios you mentioned, especially tech support. Although I don't really have any at the moment and most of my setup is in a German office anyway...

Yes, but I think (and again I don't know this for sure) you would need to get your company to agree to treat you as a non-resident for UK tax purposes and then treat your salary differently. I don't know exactly what those implications are or how complicated it gets.

If you have other options of EU centres to relocate to, especially Italy or France for sun/climbing purposes, then I think that would be well worth looking into depending on where those centres are.

I think the ideal goal in your circumstances would be to be permitted to work 100% remotely (so you're not stuck in a big city) with a residence permit in either Italy, France, or southern Germany.

Failing all that, stay in the UK and move to Cornwall if you're not there already.