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On another point, I wonder how it worked from a visa perspective. My understanding is working for your day job from another country can be tolerated, but it's

On another point, I wonder how it worked from a visa perspective. My understanding is working for your day job from another country can be tolerated, but it's usually outside of the law in most countries if you are on a regular tourist visa. So having a business resolving around that seems careless, as your customers might be subject to jail time and deportation. Think about it, it makes sense that this is not allowed, it will be way too easy to evade immigration laws if that was allowed on a massive scale.

isostatic 8y ago
“Digital nomads”, like many modern “disruptive” industry’s, tend to ignore pesky things like laws Being found to be breaching your visa conditions, especially in a pre-meditated way, is somewhat worse than being kicked out of an Airbnb. Tread carefully.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  I'm honestly surprised more "digital nomads" don't get caught at customs/border control with the advent of government surveillance of social media and LinkedIn. CBP Agent: Purpose of stay? Nomad: Pleasure CBP Agent: types It appears you work for a remote startup. Are you currently working for them and/or do you plan on continuing to work within our country? Maybe they let you stay if you're honest? Likely you're on the next flight out and you incur the possibility of a visa blacklist. Disclaimer: Have an associate who has been blacklisted from US entry due to lying to CBP. Don't lie at border control.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    Can anybody explain how does this make any constructive sense?
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Part of it is the law hasn't caught up yet (and smart nomads can fly under the radar), the other part is there is very little benefit for allowing remote workers in your country. Maybe they contribute a bit in consuming local services and housing before moving on, but if things go wrong (ie you're stranded because some idiot's business failed without contingency plans), those benefits get wiped out. From the government's perspective, it's a razor thin margin policy endeavor. For you as a digital nomad, you think it's a great deal for them. For a government, they'll just work towards more tourism instead (which nets them greater ROI; way more tourists in the world compared to remote workers).
      - qwerty456127 8y ago
        I mean how does disallowing remote workers in your country make any sense.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        coldtea 8y ago
        A country is seen like a household. You get to allow or disallow whoever you like, based on how you want your country to be run. That's called sovereignty. It doesn't even matter if by coming in they'd made you more money, you could very well not want to get more money that way, but instead e.g. prefer your peace, cultural coherence, and lack of Starbucks.
      - mreome 8y ago
        How do the benefits to the host country get wiped out? The person is not allowed to legally work in the host country, and an appropriate visa specifically for this remote-work situation should become invalid once they were unemployed -- so they would just go, or get sent, back to their home country. The cost of the flight-home could be even part of the visa application fee!
        toomuchtodo 8y ago
    - gnopgnip 8y ago
      Remote workers are not paying local income taxes, but at some level they are benefiting from the services provided by local income taxes. Immigration policies restrict foreign workers in part to protect local workers, and tenuously you are still competing with other remote workers in the same country. Immigration policy as a whole has multiple, often conflicting goals, and digital nomads are an afterthought.
      - netsharc 8y ago
        Tourists don't pay local taxes but benefit from services like roads or police assistance, and they're welcome because they do bring income to a country when their hotel/restaurant/souvenir shop pays taxes. I think remote workers should be seen similarly.
        isostatic 8y ago
        > I think remote workers should be seen similarly. And by all means talk to your congressman about passing such laws I for one will be not paying my income tax this year, as I bring income to the country when my landlord/restaurant/cinema pays taxes.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >CBP Agent: types It appears you work for a remote startup. Are you currently working for them and/or do you plan on continuing to work within our country? Maybe they let you stay if you're honest? Likely you're on the next flight out and you incur the possibility of a visa blacklist. More likely they could not care less, and welcome the money you'll spend in the country. Those "work" restrictions are for poor immigrants that they want to discourage coming in (the kind you see on Mexican border and such) not for first worlders with mucho dinero.
    - detaro 8y ago
      On the other hand, there's a bunch of stories about people traveling to present something at a conference getting into trouble because that the border guard said it needs a business visa of some kind. That's maybe different kind of work, but also something one would think not that important.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Because that’s clearly business, especially if you’re being paid or sponsored. If you get a specifically tourist visa and then admit to being in the country on business there’s probably going to be an issue. If you're, say, a US citizen visas aren't required in a lot of cases and visas on arrival often don't distinguish between business and tourism.
        isostatic 8y ago
        ESTAs do differentiate between business and tourism. “WB” or “WT”.
      - xkcd-sucks 8y ago
        Well yeah border guards are human and display the full range of human behavior
    - isostatic 8y ago
      That explains why there are no immigration restrictions between the Us and UK or France and Australia or whatever. Except there are.
  - chineseGoogle 8y ago
    ...surveillance of social media and LinkedIn. Yeah, well, there’s your problem. Only the dumbest of the dumb operate a social media persona. Specifically because only the dumbest of the dumb give up control of their details, and dump them out in the open to get crawled and surveilled. It’s the low hanging fruit that will get popped for a LinkedIn (or other social) avatar. Word of mouth is the only professional channel that matters. It’s the only trustworthy channel that can be relied on in a professional context.
    - isostatic 8y ago
      “You have no online presence, that’s suspicious, step this way sir”
- m348e912 8y ago
  This is kind of a bullshit double standard. Billionaires and their family jetset around the world on a regular basis. Summers here, winters there. Maybe they have great accountants that account for the income that they accumulate during their extended stay and pay the appropriate income tax, something tells me that's not the case. I suppose I have made this a class argument, but my real point is the way has already been paved.
  - tedunangst 8y ago
    Do you owe local income tax just for being some place when stock you own pays a dividend? I'm not a billionaire, and neither have I ever paid income taxes while traveling for various accruals.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Who said it's only the "dividend"? Billionaires don't tend to their business affairs when they're abroad?
      - gamblor956 8y ago
        No. They have good lawyers who advise them not to, and they follow that advice do they can stay billionaires.
        coldtea 8y ago
        Lol. Billionaires have all kinds of offices-away-from-home, complete with secretaries, accountants, and other employees. It's just that no state would bust them on a "no business visa" issue for that, they want their money and investments.
mreome 8y ago
Many countries write their immigration laws in a way that allows immigration for people who will bring money/skills into the country. Some going so far as giving citizenship to people who invest enough in money into their economy. Tax issues aside, people working remotely for a company based in another country would be a pretty clear source of incoming money into an economy, with very little added in terms of the kind of governmental infrastructure support that would usually needed to entice companies to locate/relocate there. I'm not saying that's the way the laws are written; just that I could easily see a reason that it would makes sense to allow it.
- ghaff 8y ago
  The general advice seems to be "Don't be blatant about it" and generally keep stays under 30 days. The reality is that a lot of tech people taking a long vacation these days will have a computer with them and may well do some work. So it's really a difference of degree if you're working remotely full-time.
  - mreome 8y ago
    I fully expect the reality is that nobody is going to care about a digital nomad setting up shop for a month or two. I'm more thinking that there seems to be a good argument for some countries to create something along the lines of a "Remote Work Visa" that would clearly allow and encourage this kind of situation since (at least to me) it seems to be a win-win for everyone involved.
qwerty456127 8y ago
> it makes sense that this is not allowed, it will be way too easy to evade immigration laws if that was allowed on a massive scale. How do these immigration laws even make sense themselves? What does a country loose when a freelancer travels in, lives there and spends money received from abroad?
- hluska 8y ago
  There are a few things: 1. Sovereign countries are permitted to care about whatever they want, for whatever reason they want. They can enact any laws they wish, protect their border however they wish, and grant anyone the right to work in their country based on whatever reason they may have. When a country is not granted the right to permit (or not permit) someone from entering/working, they lose a part of their sovereignty. 2. How would a country enforce its own tax laws without a formal entry/authorization process? 3. How would a country enforce international tax treaties without a formal entry/authorization process? 4. Working abroad, without any kind of work visa, would make it incredibly easy to evade paying taxes in your own country.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    >4. Working abroad, without any kind of work visa, would make it incredibly easy to evade paying taxes in your own country. But you're working abroad for a company that's treating you as if you are living in your own country and is, presumably, depositing your paycheck into a bank in that country. The fact that I'm traveling somewhere (on business or pleasure) during a given month basically doesn't affect anything. I travel maybe 100 days a year, in part outside the US. I don't consider myself a digital nomad but the reality is that I'm outside my home country for a decent chunk of the year.
    - hluska 8y ago
      Depending on the country you go to and its particular tax treaty with your home country, the fact that you are traveling AND working (I'm not capitalizing 'and' to be an asshole, rather I'm capitalizing it because I don't want to mislead people into thinking that being a tourist can fuck up their taxes) affects just about everything. Depending on the country, the type of income, and my authorization to be in that country, the funds earned when I am physically in another country could be taxable in my home country, in their country, in both countries, or (very rarely) in neither.
hodgesrm 8y ago
Some countries seem to be fairly tolerant of this type of nomadic work and offer suitable visas to foreigners who don't compete with locals for jobs. It seems to work if you are working for a company that otherwise has no presence in the country. On the other hand if your employer has a business presence in-country that can be quite problematic for the employer because it may cause them to run afoul of local visa regulations for employees. US companies also can run into tax problems if they make payments to people resident in other countries as this may look to the IRS like aiding tax evasion. (IANAL but have some experience with this issue from the employer perspective.)
- whitepoplar 8y ago
  Which countries have nomad-friendly visas?
  - hodgesrm 8y ago
    Thailand is apparently one of them. It seems to have a bunch of nice places to live as well.
    - my_first_acct 8y ago
      Maybe. [1] [2] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/7931a5/what_you_need_to_know_about_remote_work_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/7931a5/what_y... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/8tz1hc/i_asked_on_rthailand_and_was_told_that_it_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/8tz1hc/i_aske...
    - geomark 8y ago
      There is definitely no nomad-friendly visa here in Thailand where I live. It's just pretty easy to fly under the radar because enforcement of laws of any kind is pretty lax. It gets expressed in things like how an immigration officer in one office will make a public statement that digital nomad work is fine, while at another office they raid a local coworking space looking for digital nomads. To work legally in Thailand you need a work permit which you can only get on an eligible visa. A tourist visa or visa exempt stamp, which digital nomads enter on, is ineligible. And it requires an employer to sponsor it. Even volunteering requires a work permit. As long as you keep it quiet and don't make enemies you can fly under the radar. But if someone rats you out or the police see an opportunity to make some easy money you will have a very bad time.
ghaff 8y ago
You raise an interesting point. It's one thing to be on "vacation" for a month with a computer; no one is going to know how much remote work you're doing. It's another thing to have had a company specifically set you up as a digital nomad who will be working full-time.
xg15 8y ago
Maybe this is why they were only (supposed to be) staying for a month at each destination? I imagine from the host countries' point of view, they were the same as ordinary tourists - how they manage to finance their month-long "vacation" is usually not in the interest of the host country, and in this case, they happened to finance it by working remotely during the stay. Now what happens when they exceed the maximum stay time of a tourist visa due to being stranded is a different question.
BjoernKW 8y ago
I don't think immigration laws, or more specifically the restrictions on work that come with tourist visas, were designed for this case. What these laws are intended to achieve is to prevent tax evasion and a cheap short-term foreign labour force being employed instead of locals. Digital nomadism however usually implies that you run a properly set up business in some country and also properly pay taxes for any profit you generate. Sure, the country you're currently living in probably wouldn't reject getting a share of that profit, too, but the currently accepted taxation principle is that you pay your taxes where your business transactions take place. Admittedly, in a connected, digital economy this can cause problems, some of which are exploited by international corporations in order to save taxes, but this is the current legal framework. As a digital nomad you also typically don't take away job or business opportunities from locals because your business doesn't happen in your country of residence anyway. Finally, digital nomadism probably - and pretty much like ordinary tourism - is beneficial to countries these nomads flock to as well, simply because you pay for goods and services locally, which not only supports the local economy but in most cases implies some sort of indirect taxation / VAT as well.

isostatic 8y ago

“Digital nomads”, like many modern “disruptive” industry’s, tend to ignore pesky things like laws Being found to be breaching your visa conditions, especially in a pre-meditated way, is somewhat worse than being kicked out of an Airbnb. Tread carefully.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
I'm honestly surprised more "digital nomads" don't get caught at customs/border control with the advent of government surveillance of social media and LinkedIn. CBP Agent: Purpose of stay? Nomad: Pleasure CBP Agent: types It appears you work for a remote startup. Are you currently working for them and/or do you plan on continuing to work within our country? Maybe they let you stay if you're honest? Likely you're on the next flight out and you incur the possibility of a visa blacklist. Disclaimer: Have an associate who has been blacklisted from US entry due to lying to CBP. Don't lie at border control.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  Can anybody explain how does this make any constructive sense?
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Part of it is the law hasn't caught up yet (and smart nomads can fly under the radar), the other part is there is very little benefit for allowing remote workers in your country. Maybe they contribute a bit in consuming local services and housing before moving on, but if things go wrong (ie you're stranded because some idiot's business failed without contingency plans), those benefits get wiped out. From the government's perspective, it's a razor thin margin policy endeavor. For you as a digital nomad, you think it's a great deal for them. For a government, they'll just work towards more tourism instead (which nets them greater ROI; way more tourists in the world compared to remote workers).
    - qwerty456127 8y ago
      I mean how does disallowing remote workers in your country make any sense.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - coldtea 8y ago
        A country is seen like a household. You get to allow or disallow whoever you like, based on how you want your country to be run. That's called sovereignty. It doesn't even matter if by coming in they'd made you more money, you could very well not want to get more money that way, but instead e.g. prefer your peace, cultural coherence, and lack of Starbucks.
    - mreome 8y ago
      How do the benefits to the host country get wiped out? The person is not allowed to legally work in the host country, and an appropriate visa specifically for this remote-work situation should become invalid once they were unemployed -- so they would just go, or get sent, back to their home country. The cost of the flight-home could be even part of the visa application fee!
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
  - gnopgnip 8y ago
    Remote workers are not paying local income taxes, but at some level they are benefiting from the services provided by local income taxes. Immigration policies restrict foreign workers in part to protect local workers, and tenuously you are still competing with other remote workers in the same country. Immigration policy as a whole has multiple, often conflicting goals, and digital nomads are an afterthought.
    - netsharc 8y ago
      Tourists don't pay local taxes but benefit from services like roads or police assistance, and they're welcome because they do bring income to a country when their hotel/restaurant/souvenir shop pays taxes. I think remote workers should be seen similarly.
      - isostatic 8y ago
        > I think remote workers should be seen similarly. And by all means talk to your congressman about passing such laws I for one will be not paying my income tax this year, as I bring income to the country when my landlord/restaurant/cinema pays taxes.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >CBP Agent: types It appears you work for a remote startup. Are you currently working for them and/or do you plan on continuing to work within our country? Maybe they let you stay if you're honest? Likely you're on the next flight out and you incur the possibility of a visa blacklist. More likely they could not care less, and welcome the money you'll spend in the country. Those "work" restrictions are for poor immigrants that they want to discourage coming in (the kind you see on Mexican border and such) not for first worlders with mucho dinero.
  - detaro 8y ago
    On the other hand, there's a bunch of stories about people traveling to present something at a conference getting into trouble because that the border guard said it needs a business visa of some kind. That's maybe different kind of work, but also something one would think not that important.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Because that’s clearly business, especially if you’re being paid or sponsored. If you get a specifically tourist visa and then admit to being in the country on business there’s probably going to be an issue. If you're, say, a US citizen visas aren't required in a lot of cases and visas on arrival often don't distinguish between business and tourism.
      - isostatic 8y ago
        ESTAs do differentiate between business and tourism. “WB” or “WT”.
    - xkcd-sucks 8y ago
      Well yeah border guards are human and display the full range of human behavior
  - isostatic 8y ago
    That explains why there are no immigration restrictions between the Us and UK or France and Australia or whatever. Except there are.
- chineseGoogle 8y ago
  ...surveillance of social media and LinkedIn. Yeah, well, there’s your problem. Only the dumbest of the dumb operate a social media persona. Specifically because only the dumbest of the dumb give up control of their details, and dump them out in the open to get crawled and surveilled. It’s the low hanging fruit that will get popped for a LinkedIn (or other social) avatar. Word of mouth is the only professional channel that matters. It’s the only trustworthy channel that can be relied on in a professional context.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    “You have no online presence, that’s suspicious, step this way sir”
m348e912 8y ago
This is kind of a bullshit double standard. Billionaires and their family jetset around the world on a regular basis. Summers here, winters there. Maybe they have great accountants that account for the income that they accumulate during their extended stay and pay the appropriate income tax, something tells me that's not the case. I suppose I have made this a class argument, but my real point is the way has already been paved.
- tedunangst 8y ago
  Do you owe local income tax just for being some place when stock you own pays a dividend? I'm not a billionaire, and neither have I ever paid income taxes while traveling for various accruals.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Who said it's only the "dividend"? Billionaires don't tend to their business affairs when they're abroad?
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      No. They have good lawyers who advise them not to, and they follow that advice do they can stay billionaires.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Lol. Billionaires have all kinds of offices-away-from-home, complete with secretaries, accountants, and other employees. It's just that no state would bust them on a "no business visa" issue for that, they want their money and investments.

mreome 8y ago

Many countries write their immigration laws in a way that allows immigration for people who will bring money/skills into the country. Some going so far as giving citizenship to people who invest enough in money into their economy. Tax issues aside, people working remotely for a company based in another country would be a pretty clear source of incoming money into an economy, with very little added in terms of the kind of governmental infrastructure support that would usually needed to entice companies to locate/relocate there. I'm not saying that's the way the laws are written; just that I could easily see a reason that it would makes sense to allow it.

ghaff 8y ago
The general advice seems to be "Don't be blatant about it" and generally keep stays under 30 days. The reality is that a lot of tech people taking a long vacation these days will have a computer with them and may well do some work. So it's really a difference of degree if you're working remotely full-time.
- mreome 8y ago
  I fully expect the reality is that nobody is going to care about a digital nomad setting up shop for a month or two. I'm more thinking that there seems to be a good argument for some countries to create something along the lines of a "Remote Work Visa" that would clearly allow and encourage this kind of situation since (at least to me) it seems to be a win-win for everyone involved.

qwerty456127 8y ago

> it makes sense that this is not allowed, it will be way too easy to evade immigration laws if that was allowed on a massive scale. How do these immigration laws even make sense themselves? What does a country loose when a freelancer travels in, lives there and spends money received from abroad?

hluska 8y ago
There are a few things: 1. Sovereign countries are permitted to care about whatever they want, for whatever reason they want. They can enact any laws they wish, protect their border however they wish, and grant anyone the right to work in their country based on whatever reason they may have. When a country is not granted the right to permit (or not permit) someone from entering/working, they lose a part of their sovereignty. 2. How would a country enforce its own tax laws without a formal entry/authorization process? 3. How would a country enforce international tax treaties without a formal entry/authorization process? 4. Working abroad, without any kind of work visa, would make it incredibly easy to evade paying taxes in your own country.
- ghaff 8y ago
  >4. Working abroad, without any kind of work visa, would make it incredibly easy to evade paying taxes in your own country. But you're working abroad for a company that's treating you as if you are living in your own country and is, presumably, depositing your paycheck into a bank in that country. The fact that I'm traveling somewhere (on business or pleasure) during a given month basically doesn't affect anything. I travel maybe 100 days a year, in part outside the US. I don't consider myself a digital nomad but the reality is that I'm outside my home country for a decent chunk of the year.
  - hluska 8y ago
    Depending on the country you go to and its particular tax treaty with your home country, the fact that you are traveling AND working (I'm not capitalizing 'and' to be an asshole, rather I'm capitalizing it because I don't want to mislead people into thinking that being a tourist can fuck up their taxes) affects just about everything. Depending on the country, the type of income, and my authorization to be in that country, the funds earned when I am physically in another country could be taxable in my home country, in their country, in both countries, or (very rarely) in neither.

hodgesrm 8y ago

Some countries seem to be fairly tolerant of this type of nomadic work and offer suitable visas to foreigners who don't compete with locals for jobs. It seems to work if you are working for a company that otherwise has no presence in the country. On the other hand if your employer has a business presence in-country that can be quite problematic for the employer because it may cause them to run afoul of local visa regulations for employees. US companies also can run into tax problems if they make payments to people resident in other countries as this may look to the IRS like aiding tax evasion. (IANAL but have some experience with this issue from the employer perspective.)

whitepoplar 8y ago
Which countries have nomad-friendly visas?
- hodgesrm 8y ago
  Thailand is apparently one of them. It seems to have a bunch of nice places to live as well.
  - my_first_acct 8y ago
    Maybe. [1] [2] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/7931a5/what_you_need_to_know_about_remote_work_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/7931a5/what_y... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/8tz1hc/i_asked_on_rthailand_and_was_told_that_it_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/8tz1hc/i_aske...
  - geomark 8y ago
    There is definitely no nomad-friendly visa here in Thailand where I live. It's just pretty easy to fly under the radar because enforcement of laws of any kind is pretty lax. It gets expressed in things like how an immigration officer in one office will make a public statement that digital nomad work is fine, while at another office they raid a local coworking space looking for digital nomads. To work legally in Thailand you need a work permit which you can only get on an eligible visa. A tourist visa or visa exempt stamp, which digital nomads enter on, is ineligible. And it requires an employer to sponsor it. Even volunteering requires a work permit. As long as you keep it quiet and don't make enemies you can fly under the radar. But if someone rats you out or the police see an opportunity to make some easy money you will have a very bad time.

ghaff 8y ago

You raise an interesting point. It's one thing to be on "vacation" for a month with a computer; no one is going to know how much remote work you're doing. It's another thing to have had a company specifically set you up as a digital nomad who will be working full-time.

xg15 8y ago

Maybe this is why they were only (supposed to be) staying for a month at each destination? I imagine from the host countries' point of view, they were the same as ordinary tourists - how they manage to finance their month-long "vacation" is usually not in the interest of the host country, and in this case, they happened to finance it by working remotely during the stay. Now what happens when they exceed the maximum stay time of a tourist visa due to being stranded is a different question.

BjoernKW 8y ago

I don't think immigration laws, or more specifically the restrictions on work that come with tourist visas, were designed for this case. What these laws are intended to achieve is to prevent tax evasion and a cheap short-term foreign labour force being employed instead of locals. Digital nomadism however usually implies that you run a properly set up business in some country and also properly pay taxes for any profit you generate. Sure, the country you're currently living in probably wouldn't reject getting a share of that profit, too, but the currently accepted taxation principle is that you pay your taxes where your business transactions take place. Admittedly, in a connected, digital economy this can cause problems, some of which are exploited by international corporations in order to save taxes, but this is the current legal framework. As a digital nomad you also typically don't take away job or business opportunities from locals because your business doesn't happen in your country of residence anyway. Finally, digital nomadism probably - and pretty much like ordinary tourism - is beneficial to countries these nomads flock to as well, simply because you pay for goods and services locally, which not only supports the local economy but in most cases implies some sort of indirect taxation / VAT as well.