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I'm not an immigration/tax lawyer and could be completely wrong but if you're from EU/US/UK/AUS etc I'm fairly sure you can work in another one of those countri

I'm not an immigration/tax lawyer and could be completely wrong but if you're from EU/US/UK/AUS etc I'm fairly sure you can work in another one of those countries for up to 90 days (and sometimes upto 183) without paying tax there or getting a work visa - as long as you're still resident and being paid in your home country under the Visa Waiver program. I've worked in NY offices and got paid in UK (admittedly a while ago and for less than 90 days) - but can't see why working in an Airbnb would be different. Has anyone experience of this recently?

pvtmert 5y ago
This only works if you are holder of passport of the origin country. As a third world country national, I cannot legally work anywhere except the country I got my work visa. PS: Even if company is multinational corporation.
- frederikvs 5y ago
  Tangent, but it turns out terms like "third world" are no longer accurate. If memory serves, this is explained in the book Factfulness. A highly recommended read, by the way. A few decades ago, there was a group of wealthy countries, a group of poor countries, and a large gap between them. Back then it made sense to see them as 2 separate groups, first world and third. Right now however, they're no longer separate groups - there's a continuous spectrum. A growing number of countries have been crawling out of poverty. Some countries are rich, some are poor, and some are in between. They're no longer separate groups. (This of course does not mean that there isn't a poverty problem in the world. Just that "third world" no longer accurately describes the situation.)
  - strangeattractr 5y ago
    Weren't the terms used to connote alliance with the US (first world) or the USSR (second world) and third world meant non-aligned?
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      so, the poster is wrong on the specifics but correct on the general idea that the term third world no longer makes much sense.
    - frederikvs 5y ago
      I stand corrected, thank you! To clarify, I misremembered Factfulness. The book actually talks about "developed" versus "developing". In my memory I jumbled that up with "third world".
  - helge9210 5y ago
    First world -- NATO member states Second world -- Warsaw Pact member states Third world -- all other states
    - b112 5y ago
      Some dude coined these terms, and they caught on for a while during the cold war. Third world typically being of little interest to first and second, and often poor. So eventually "third world" came to just mean "poor countries". After all, there has now been as much time, post WWII, without the cold war, as there was with one!
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - midasuni 5y ago
      Which would make Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Japan etc third world. That’s not how the term is used.
  - jdenning 5y ago
    I think you're wrong about this -- as I understood it, the term is a relic of the cold war. "First World" nations were aligned with the US, "Second World" were communist or communist-aligned, and "Third World" were not associated with either. After the collapse of the USSR "Third World" became primarily associated with impoverished nations.
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
      And Trump was trying to convert the US into a "second world" nation.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  No one’s gonna know if you are a tourist in Japan for 90 d and you work there remotely. Literally no one. No one will know.
  - umutseven92 5y ago
    The next time you try to enter or leave Japan after staying for 90 days, they would ask you how you are able to stay 3 months without working. If you cannot show significant savings, then you would get deported and banned for 10 years. Happens all the time.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Say that you're using PTO?
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        Lie to immigration? People in this thread are insane. Going to get yourselves banned from counties.
        notch656a 5y ago
        I've been to many nations including for months and including illegally overstaying. No one gave one fuck to ask whether I was working not. The only people that have ever grilled me like this is my own country, the USA, where returning as a citizen the last time I entered I was forcibly taken to a hospital to be anally probed (with even a warrant, although after 16 hours they could not find a doctor to execute it) based on a wild and false accusation they thought I was a drug smuggler. Only the USA and a few other insane nations are dumb enough to pull these kind of stunts. Somewhere like Brazil/Paraguay/Mexico/Philippines/Iraq no one is gonna ask you if you worked remotely while on your way out. No one. Half the time they don't even bother to ask what you're doing while entering, they just stamp your passport and you're on your way. Japan may be different, but there is no way they're gonna deport you on your way out.
- krzyk 5y ago
  Laws are still written for those doing manual labor. What's the difference if I do some work in the evening at home or during my holiday in e.g. Greece? The only added cost in given country is energy. Problems start to appear if I get sick, but that should be on myself - and in most cases (for EU citizen) it is most appropriate to return home to cure/hospitalize (unless it is something needing immediate help).
  - CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
    There are also other issues. What with labor laws? Should you follow the laws from the country from where you work or where the company is located? Companies would just get a post box in the country with the weakest labour laws. The simplest solution stays that the laws where you physically are apply.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      This already happens, that’s why every company is incorporated in Delaware.
te_chris 5y ago
As far as I know this is incorrect. In most countries working is entirely different to touristing and ‘doing business’ (i.e. selling). Just ask musicians - they have to get performance work visas for every country. As far as their tax authorities are concerned, yeah, you normally have 90 days or so where they don’t care about your income, but immigration? Almost never. Most digital nomads just get away with it because it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things that customs and immigration authorities have to care about - witness the Thai visa tours etc.
- JWlrCk9PkipFTDq 5y ago
  I don't think is true for the Schengen zone/Schengen adjacent countries. I'm a musician and have toured Western Europe a couple of times (and know a lot of others who have). Apart from the UK noone I know ever gets working visas, and this is never a problem crossing borders honestly saying to immigration that we're there on tour in a van full of music equipment and merchandise.
  - hocuspocus 5y ago
    Schengen has nothing to do with freedom of movement for workers.
  - bkor 5y ago
    > we're there on tour in a van full of music equipment and merchandise There are separate arrangements for touring groups. However, if you're not from the EU then good luck. You'll notice that there are huge complications after brexit. That said, likely nobody will check, care or notice.
    - JWlrCk9PkipFTDq 5y ago
      Sorry should have clarified, I'm not from the EU. This is on an Australian passport on the visa waiver program, and American friends have had the same experience (including some biggish bands who tour Europe a couple of times a year). Maybe it's a "noone cares" thing, but this includes some American friends who were caught with weed in their tour van at the Norwegian border and still didn't have any visa issues (and somehow still managed to get into the country!)
joshvm 5y ago
You can visit for 90 days but what you're allowed to do is restricted to tourism and "temporary business". The US substantial presence test is actually something like 31 days in the current year, and ~180 calculated as a weighted sum of presence over all visits in the preceeding few years. That's just to determine if you should pay tax, and note that vacations to the US contribute. Whether you can legally work in the US is another matter. I had to get a a J1 visa for a two week stay in the US because I was being paid remotely by a US organisation. So in this case I was working but paying taxes elsewhere. Most Europeans have access to things like cross border permits e.g. Switzerland/Germany and within the EU freedom of movement means it doesn't really matter much. You just register with the City Hall or wherever in your target country. It comes down to how honest you are. Lots of digital nomads illegally claim they're on holiday, and who's checking? I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to pay a fee for a temporary work permit though.
- oxfordmale 5y ago
  90 days is the number agreed upon by company lawyers. Company lawyers do not have a sense of adventure, so this is a relatively watertight figure for most countries in the world and not dependent on your honesty.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    I'm not sure when this 90-day rule was written, but I imagine it was written in a time before now with high-performance laptops, video conferencing, common jet travel, and people wanting to work 30 days here, 90 days there, 120 days over there, etc. This should be revisited. Also I think this is a good example of the need to have expiration dates on new laws and regulations. This should be something that expires and has to be changed to reflect how people live today.
    - JusticeJuice 5y ago
      90 days is the standard tourist visa length for most countries, so it would be to match that.
akvadrako 5y ago
This is not correct. There is probably a special deal between the UK and USA, but there isn't anything similar for Americans working in most EU countries, and the rules are per country.
trash3 5y ago
My understanding is, for an American in a EU country, is they can go and work remotely there for the 90 days as long as they are not conducting business in said country. This means face to face business meetings with clients. When you log in remotely to your job based in the USA and not interacting with people directly during the tourist stay, you're in the clear... I think?
- bkor 5y ago
  > My understanding is, for an American in a EU country, is they can go and work remotely there for the 90 days as long as they are not conducting business in said country. That's not legal. To work in the EU you need a work visa. Though they ignore the business trips. What's legal and what's checked are different things. E.g. new foreign colleagues need to get a tax id in The Netherlands before they do any work. Doesn't matter if they came from the US.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I (from US) can't speak to the actual laws. But with respect to "what's checked," I've been asked the purpose of my visit at immigration in countless countries around the world and I'm always completely open about attending conferences and meeting with customers and no one over decades has batted an eye. (Of course in the handful of countries I did explicitly need business visas--like China--I got one.) Of course, there are a lot of unenforced laws on the books, but I'm a little skeptical that the millions and millions of people who travel cross-border on business trips every year are all mostly breaking immigration laws. To be fair, my experiences are all on relatively short trips--a few weeks at most and usually less. Perhaps there would be more issues if I were staying 90 days and was open about workationing the whole time.
    - el-salvador 5y ago
      > I'm always completely open about attending conferences and meeting with customers and no one over decades has batted an eye. Attending conferences is usually ok, but it's a complicated topic because it depends on the traveller's passport, the visited country and how strict rules are enforced. As a foreign national, for example a U.S. B1 visa allows attending conferences and close business deals. But it doesn't explicitly allow working remotely for a non-US company.
umutseven92 5y ago
Nope, unless your country has a special arrangement with the country you are visiting, you cannot work with a tourist visa, at all. Does not matter if the company is local or not. No work visa = no work.
- oxfordmale 5y ago
  This is a legal loophole for digital nomads. If I am connected to my work via a VPN, I am technically still working in the country of employment. I am not producing any commercial output in the country I am staying that I or my employer benefits from beneficially. I am 100% confident this has been reviewed by well paid lawyers at AirBnb who have zero sense of adventure, and that this is all water tight.
  - bkor 5y ago
    > I am 100% confident this has been reviewed by well paid lawyers at AirBnb who have zero sense of adventure, and that this is all water tight. I hope you're being sarcastic here, no?
  - JCharante 5y ago
    absolutely not that gets people in trouble if you get attention from the cops (source: been in south east asia for a while)
  - maxlamb 5y ago
    I believe that’s not what government laws says (for any country). Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but pretty much all countries/states consider you working there if you are physically present there. Your VPN or where your “commercial output” is, is not considered a factor at all by governments.
    - oxfordmale 5y ago
      Most countries only care if you are taking a job that a local could have done. That is clearly not the case if you work remotely. If anything you are increasing local jobs by paying for your accomodation and food. Once again this has been reviewed by laywers at different companies who have deemed this risk to be acceptable. There might be countries that will arrest you if you read your corporate mail while on holidays, however, these generally not on the green list of safe countries to travel too.
hocuspocus 5y ago
In the EU and FoM countries you're still supposed to pay social contributions where you work. There are many complex rules for people who are regularly on the road (like truck drivers, artists on tour) and dispatched workers, but as the average tech worker you can definitely get your employer in trouble if you work more than 20% outside the country of employment. That's why cross-border commuters can't work from home more than one day of the week, technically.
- bitschubser_ 5y ago
  The 20% rule only applies to Switzerland and the "Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen" with the neighbor countries or EU. This was the reason I quit my job in switzerland and moved back to germany (without taking a huge pay cut ;), more vacation days and only 35hour/week), now the 183day rule for social contributions and tax apply as long as I live in germany. So now I can work from portugal during winter :)
  - hocuspocus 5y ago
    Not only Switzerland, no, see Luxembourg. Most employers won't allow what you're doing. There's no EU-wide 183 day rule for social contributions. If you stay more than 3 months in a country you need to be registered as a posted worker, and there are some legal implications.
    - bitschubser_ 5y ago
      you're right, depending on the country/company there are some additional implications, in my case it helps that we have a subsidiary in most EU countries, so it can work via an "entsendung". I really hope that these things will change (social and tax wise) in the future within EU to make it easier for work setups like this.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >without taking a huge pay cut ;), more vacation days and only 35hour/week Would you mind sharing in which area) industry one can get such a good deal in Germany? All i found was 40h/week, some with overtime.
nivenkos 5y ago
> I've worked in NY offices and got paid in UK ( If you're doing ordinary work I think that violates the terms of the B-1/B-2 visa - even if under 90 days.
- midasuni 5y ago
  Like most law it’s vague and subject to whims, there’s no flow chart to give you a definite answer. If you go to meet team members in your NY office, interview some new staff, and look for a new building to move the office to, that’s all fine. If you happen to do some unrelated sysadmin work on your servers in london while you’re there, that’s probably fine too, as your primary reason to visit is quite clearly fine. If you went for a holiday for 2 weeks(on a B2 or esta) and happened to answer a phone call from work that’s fine. If you went on holiday for 2 weeks and spent 10 days working remotely that’s probably not fine. If you went on a family holiday for 4 weeks but did a few days work remotely that’s might be ok. If you did it several times a year though it probably wouldn’t be. There’s no hard and fast rule in law, and doubly so in immigration where the power to allow you in sits with the guy at the airport. https://legalservicesincorporated.com/immigration/what-activities-are-permitted-under-a-b-1-business-visitor-visa/ https://legalservicesincorporated.com/immigration/what-activ... has a good overview.
hervature 5y ago
Many others have chimed in, but this is very important to highlight. Meeting with clients, going to conference, having important meetings, these are things we consider work. However, from the eyes of the law, these are temporary things that need to be done in person for business that has already occurred. That is, if you come to a conference, meet a potential client, and then set up a sales meeting before you leave, you have conducted new business in the US and violated your B1 visa. See [1] for the actual exemptions. Technically, if you check your email while on B1, this could be construed that you are conducting unauthorized business in the US. Of course, these laws never foresaw technological progress and so the world governments look the other way because they do not know how/what to enforce. I'm going to put it here as this is what an immigration person put it to me, just ask yourself "where are my feet?" That is the country/entity you should be paying your taxes to by default unless there is an explicit reciprocity agreement that may apply to you. So, if you're traveling Europe as an American while working remotely, you are violating tax law in every single country. From the law's point of view, there is no difference than as if you had contracted out your work to someone in each one of those countries. Don't worry, no one is going to come after you for those 10 hours but just know you are intentionally (or grossly negligent) making use of the inaction of enforcement. [1] - https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-visitors-for-business/b-1-temporary-business-visitor https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
- bell-cot 5y ago
  > ...Of course, these laws never foresaw technological progress and so the world governments look the other way because they do not know how/what to enforce... Other than the current scale of activity, the law has no "never foresaw technolo..." excuse for failing to cover such things. Centuries ago, it was perfectly normal for authors, composers, painters, etc. to travel to and work in other countries - "for their health" as they worked on their next masterpiece, or for inspiration, or to give paid lectures, or to perform or conduct music, or to paint portraits of locals, or several of those things. It'd be rather interesting if a lawyer or few (who were fond of dusty tomes) did some real research on how those activities were handled back in the day, the old case law, etc.

pvtmert 5y ago

This only works if you are holder of passport of the origin country. As a third world country national, I cannot legally work anywhere except the country I got my work visa. PS: Even if company is multinational corporation.

frederikvs 5y ago
Tangent, but it turns out terms like "third world" are no longer accurate. If memory serves, this is explained in the book Factfulness. A highly recommended read, by the way. A few decades ago, there was a group of wealthy countries, a group of poor countries, and a large gap between them. Back then it made sense to see them as 2 separate groups, first world and third. Right now however, they're no longer separate groups - there's a continuous spectrum. A growing number of countries have been crawling out of poverty. Some countries are rich, some are poor, and some are in between. They're no longer separate groups. (This of course does not mean that there isn't a poverty problem in the world. Just that "third world" no longer accurately describes the situation.)
- strangeattractr 5y ago
  Weren't the terms used to connote alliance with the US (first world) or the USSR (second world) and third world meant non-aligned?
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    so, the poster is wrong on the specifics but correct on the general idea that the term third world no longer makes much sense.
  - frederikvs 5y ago
    I stand corrected, thank you! To clarify, I misremembered Factfulness. The book actually talks about "developed" versus "developing". In my memory I jumbled that up with "third world".
- helge9210 5y ago
  First world -- NATO member states Second world -- Warsaw Pact member states Third world -- all other states
  - b112 5y ago
    Some dude coined these terms, and they caught on for a while during the cold war. Third world typically being of little interest to first and second, and often poor. So eventually "third world" came to just mean "poor countries". After all, there has now been as much time, post WWII, without the cold war, as there was with one!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - midasuni 5y ago
    Which would make Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Japan etc third world. That’s not how the term is used.
- jdenning 5y ago
  I think you're wrong about this -- as I understood it, the term is a relic of the cold war. "First World" nations were aligned with the US, "Second World" were communist or communist-aligned, and "Third World" were not associated with either. After the collapse of the USSR "Third World" became primarily associated with impoverished nations.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    And Trump was trying to convert the US into a "second world" nation.
renewiltord 5y ago
No one’s gonna know if you are a tourist in Japan for 90 d and you work there remotely. Literally no one. No one will know.
- umutseven92 5y ago
  The next time you try to enter or leave Japan after staying for 90 days, they would ask you how you are able to stay 3 months without working. If you cannot show significant savings, then you would get deported and banned for 10 years. Happens all the time.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Say that you're using PTO?
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      Lie to immigration? People in this thread are insane. Going to get yourselves banned from counties.
      - notch656a 5y ago
        I've been to many nations including for months and including illegally overstaying. No one gave one fuck to ask whether I was working not. The only people that have ever grilled me like this is my own country, the USA, where returning as a citizen the last time I entered I was forcibly taken to a hospital to be anally probed (with even a warrant, although after 16 hours they could not find a doctor to execute it) based on a wild and false accusation they thought I was a drug smuggler. Only the USA and a few other insane nations are dumb enough to pull these kind of stunts. Somewhere like Brazil/Paraguay/Mexico/Philippines/Iraq no one is gonna ask you if you worked remotely while on your way out. No one. Half the time they don't even bother to ask what you're doing while entering, they just stamp your passport and you're on your way. Japan may be different, but there is no way they're gonna deport you on your way out.
krzyk 5y ago
Laws are still written for those doing manual labor. What's the difference if I do some work in the evening at home or during my holiday in e.g. Greece? The only added cost in given country is energy. Problems start to appear if I get sick, but that should be on myself - and in most cases (for EU citizen) it is most appropriate to return home to cure/hospitalize (unless it is something needing immediate help).
- CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
  There are also other issues. What with labor laws? Should you follow the laws from the country from where you work or where the company is located? Companies would just get a post box in the country with the weakest labour laws. The simplest solution stays that the laws where you physically are apply.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    This already happens, that’s why every company is incorporated in Delaware.

te_chris 5y ago

As far as I know this is incorrect. In most countries working is entirely different to touristing and ‘doing business’ (i.e. selling). Just ask musicians - they have to get performance work visas for every country. As far as their tax authorities are concerned, yeah, you normally have 90 days or so where they don’t care about your income, but immigration? Almost never. Most digital nomads just get away with it because it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things that customs and immigration authorities have to care about - witness the Thai visa tours etc.

JWlrCk9PkipFTDq 5y ago
I don't think is true for the Schengen zone/Schengen adjacent countries. I'm a musician and have toured Western Europe a couple of times (and know a lot of others who have). Apart from the UK noone I know ever gets working visas, and this is never a problem crossing borders honestly saying to immigration that we're there on tour in a van full of music equipment and merchandise.
- hocuspocus 5y ago
  Schengen has nothing to do with freedom of movement for workers.
- bkor 5y ago
  > we're there on tour in a van full of music equipment and merchandise There are separate arrangements for touring groups. However, if you're not from the EU then good luck. You'll notice that there are huge complications after brexit. That said, likely nobody will check, care or notice.
  - JWlrCk9PkipFTDq 5y ago
    Sorry should have clarified, I'm not from the EU. This is on an Australian passport on the visa waiver program, and American friends have had the same experience (including some biggish bands who tour Europe a couple of times a year). Maybe it's a "noone cares" thing, but this includes some American friends who were caught with weed in their tour van at the Norwegian border and still didn't have any visa issues (and somehow still managed to get into the country!)

joshvm 5y ago

You can visit for 90 days but what you're allowed to do is restricted to tourism and "temporary business". The US substantial presence test is actually something like 31 days in the current year, and ~180 calculated as a weighted sum of presence over all visits in the preceeding few years. That's just to determine if you should pay tax, and note that vacations to the US contribute. Whether you can legally work in the US is another matter. I had to get a a J1 visa for a two week stay in the US because I was being paid remotely by a US organisation. So in this case I was working but paying taxes elsewhere. Most Europeans have access to things like cross border permits e.g. Switzerland/Germany and within the EU freedom of movement means it doesn't really matter much. You just register with the City Hall or wherever in your target country. It comes down to how honest you are. Lots of digital nomads illegally claim they're on holiday, and who's checking? I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to pay a fee for a temporary work permit though.

oxfordmale 5y ago
90 days is the number agreed upon by company lawyers. Company lawyers do not have a sense of adventure, so this is a relatively watertight figure for most countries in the world and not dependent on your honesty.
- ericmay 5y ago
  I'm not sure when this 90-day rule was written, but I imagine it was written in a time before now with high-performance laptops, video conferencing, common jet travel, and people wanting to work 30 days here, 90 days there, 120 days over there, etc. This should be revisited. Also I think this is a good example of the need to have expiration dates on new laws and regulations. This should be something that expires and has to be changed to reflect how people live today.
  - JusticeJuice 5y ago
    90 days is the standard tourist visa length for most countries, so it would be to match that.

akvadrako 5y ago

This is not correct. There is probably a special deal between the UK and USA, but there isn't anything similar for Americans working in most EU countries, and the rules are per country.

trash3 5y ago

My understanding is, for an American in a EU country, is they can go and work remotely there for the 90 days as long as they are not conducting business in said country. This means face to face business meetings with clients. When you log in remotely to your job based in the USA and not interacting with people directly during the tourist stay, you're in the clear... I think?

bkor 5y ago
> My understanding is, for an American in a EU country, is they can go and work remotely there for the 90 days as long as they are not conducting business in said country. That's not legal. To work in the EU you need a work visa. Though they ignore the business trips. What's legal and what's checked are different things. E.g. new foreign colleagues need to get a tax id in The Netherlands before they do any work. Doesn't matter if they came from the US.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I (from US) can't speak to the actual laws. But with respect to "what's checked," I've been asked the purpose of my visit at immigration in countless countries around the world and I'm always completely open about attending conferences and meeting with customers and no one over decades has batted an eye. (Of course in the handful of countries I did explicitly need business visas--like China--I got one.) Of course, there are a lot of unenforced laws on the books, but I'm a little skeptical that the millions and millions of people who travel cross-border on business trips every year are all mostly breaking immigration laws. To be fair, my experiences are all on relatively short trips--a few weeks at most and usually less. Perhaps there would be more issues if I were staying 90 days and was open about workationing the whole time.
  - el-salvador 5y ago
    > I'm always completely open about attending conferences and meeting with customers and no one over decades has batted an eye. Attending conferences is usually ok, but it's a complicated topic because it depends on the traveller's passport, the visited country and how strict rules are enforced. As a foreign national, for example a U.S. B1 visa allows attending conferences and close business deals. But it doesn't explicitly allow working remotely for a non-US company.

umutseven92 5y ago

Nope, unless your country has a special arrangement with the country you are visiting, you cannot work with a tourist visa, at all. Does not matter if the company is local or not. No work visa = no work.

oxfordmale 5y ago
This is a legal loophole for digital nomads. If I am connected to my work via a VPN, I am technically still working in the country of employment. I am not producing any commercial output in the country I am staying that I or my employer benefits from beneficially. I am 100% confident this has been reviewed by well paid lawyers at AirBnb who have zero sense of adventure, and that this is all water tight.
- bkor 5y ago
  > I am 100% confident this has been reviewed by well paid lawyers at AirBnb who have zero sense of adventure, and that this is all water tight. I hope you're being sarcastic here, no?
- JCharante 5y ago
  absolutely not that gets people in trouble if you get attention from the cops (source: been in south east asia for a while)
- maxlamb 5y ago
  I believe that’s not what government laws says (for any country). Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but pretty much all countries/states consider you working there if you are physically present there. Your VPN or where your “commercial output” is, is not considered a factor at all by governments.
  - oxfordmale 5y ago
    Most countries only care if you are taking a job that a local could have done. That is clearly not the case if you work remotely. If anything you are increasing local jobs by paying for your accomodation and food. Once again this has been reviewed by laywers at different companies who have deemed this risk to be acceptable. There might be countries that will arrest you if you read your corporate mail while on holidays, however, these generally not on the green list of safe countries to travel too.

hocuspocus 5y ago

In the EU and FoM countries you're still supposed to pay social contributions where you work. There are many complex rules for people who are regularly on the road (like truck drivers, artists on tour) and dispatched workers, but as the average tech worker you can definitely get your employer in trouble if you work more than 20% outside the country of employment. That's why cross-border commuters can't work from home more than one day of the week, technically.

bitschubser_ 5y ago
The 20% rule only applies to Switzerland and the "Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen" with the neighbor countries or EU. This was the reason I quit my job in switzerland and moved back to germany (without taking a huge pay cut ;), more vacation days and only 35hour/week), now the 183day rule for social contributions and tax apply as long as I live in germany. So now I can work from portugal during winter :)
- hocuspocus 5y ago
  Not only Switzerland, no, see Luxembourg. Most employers won't allow what you're doing. There's no EU-wide 183 day rule for social contributions. If you stay more than 3 months in a country you need to be registered as a posted worker, and there are some legal implications.
  - bitschubser_ 5y ago
    you're right, depending on the country/company there are some additional implications, in my case it helps that we have a subsidiary in most EU countries, so it can work via an "entsendung". I really hope that these things will change (social and tax wise) in the future within EU to make it easier for work setups like this.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >without taking a huge pay cut ;), more vacation days and only 35hour/week Would you mind sharing in which area) industry one can get such a good deal in Germany? All i found was 40h/week, some with overtime.

nivenkos 5y ago

> I've worked in NY offices and got paid in UK ( If you're doing ordinary work I think that violates the terms of the B-1/B-2 visa - even if under 90 days.

midasuni 5y ago
Like most law it’s vague and subject to whims, there’s no flow chart to give you a definite answer. If you go to meet team members in your NY office, interview some new staff, and look for a new building to move the office to, that’s all fine. If you happen to do some unrelated sysadmin work on your servers in london while you’re there, that’s probably fine too, as your primary reason to visit is quite clearly fine. If you went for a holiday for 2 weeks(on a B2 or esta) and happened to answer a phone call from work that’s fine. If you went on holiday for 2 weeks and spent 10 days working remotely that’s probably not fine. If you went on a family holiday for 4 weeks but did a few days work remotely that’s might be ok. If you did it several times a year though it probably wouldn’t be. There’s no hard and fast rule in law, and doubly so in immigration where the power to allow you in sits with the guy at the airport. https://legalservicesincorporated.com/immigration/what-activities-are-permitted-under-a-b-1-business-visitor-visa/ https://legalservicesincorporated.com/immigration/what-activ... has a good overview.

hervature 5y ago

Many others have chimed in, but this is very important to highlight. Meeting with clients, going to conference, having important meetings, these are things we consider work. However, from the eyes of the law, these are temporary things that need to be done in person for business that has already occurred. That is, if you come to a conference, meet a potential client, and then set up a sales meeting before you leave, you have conducted new business in the US and violated your B1 visa. See [1] for the actual exemptions. Technically, if you check your email while on B1, this could be construed that you are conducting unauthorized business in the US. Of course, these laws never foresaw technological progress and so the world governments look the other way because they do not know how/what to enforce. I'm going to put it here as this is what an immigration person put it to me, just ask yourself "where are my feet?" That is the country/entity you should be paying your taxes to by default unless there is an explicit reciprocity agreement that may apply to you. So, if you're traveling Europe as an American while working remotely, you are violating tax law in every single country. From the law's point of view, there is no difference than as if you had contracted out your work to someone in each one of those countries. Don't worry, no one is going to come after you for those 10 hours but just know you are intentionally (or grossly negligent) making use of the inaction of enforcement. [1] - https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-visitors-for-business/b-1-temporary-business-visitor https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

bell-cot 5y ago
> ...Of course, these laws never foresaw technological progress and so the world governments look the other way because they do not know how/what to enforce... Other than the current scale of activity, the law has no "never foresaw technolo..." excuse for failing to cover such things. Centuries ago, it was perfectly normal for authors, composers, painters, etc. to travel to and work in other countries - "for their health" as they worked on their next masterpiece, or for inspiration, or to give paid lectures, or to perform or conduct music, or to paint portraits of locals, or several of those things. It'd be rather interesting if a lawyer or few (who were fond of dusty tomes) did some real research on how those activities were handled back in the day, the old case law, etc.