6 ms·
Why not get Dubai Golden Visa for 5-10 years instead, get 0% taxes and the ability to live wherever you want (Dubai doesn't enforce residency duration limits to
by bitL 4y ago
Why not get Dubai Golden Visa for 5-10 years instead, get 0% taxes and the ability to live wherever you want (Dubai doesn't enforce residency duration limits to Golden Visa holders)?
- tokai 4y agoBcs Estonia is a small democratic state and UAE is a disgusting dictatorship?
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoDisgusting dictatorship? You are too polite.
- bitL 4y agoAFAIK all Baltic states have a minority with limited rights, so they are far from true democracy. It's irrelevant what they think of that minority/what is their history with that minority, they simply can't claim to be fully democratic.
- 411111111111111 4y agoI dont hail from Estonia, but if you disqualify it as a democracy... pretty much all other european nations and the USA will have to be disqualified too and for the same reasons. Its quality of life index is way higher then the USA as well, though that doesn't really say anything about its democracy. https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- krn 4y ago> AFAIK all Baltic states have a minority with limited rights, so they are far from true democracy. It would be interesting to see any reputable sources claiming that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are "far from true democracies".
- bitL 4y agoA quick question - how can a person born in a Baltic state and living there their whole life end up without citizenship? How is that democratic? Don't you see any problem there? That doesn't happen even between Romanians and Hungarians that are often at each other's throat for similar historical reasons.
- krn 4y ago> A quick question - how can a person born in a Baltic state and living there their whole life end up without citizenship? It should only be possible, if that person was born in Soviet Union (that is, before 1990), and doesn't speak the official language of the country he / she is living in.
- bitL 4y agoI understand you are used to it, but it's really bad optics from the outside. How can there be people in their 30s without a citizenship? Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language which means it's extremely difficult to learn due to a completely alien structure of the language (compared to almost all European languages). Even Finland allows both Finnish and Swedish as official languages and doesn't discriminate Finnish Swedes that they don't speak Finnish. So you have some sort of "Eastern-European" flavor of democracy that allows a portion of population be marginalized based on their language.
- elxx 4y ago> How can there be people in their 30s without a citizenship? Because they've chosen not to pursue citizenship. There's a simplified path that anyone in this situation can utilize. I don't see how giving them the choice and allowing them to live and work in the country indefinitely even if they choose no is in any way "un-democratic". And if you're suggesting that 30 years is not enough time to learn the absolute basics of a language, that is just utterly ridiculous. Not nearly as ridiculous as comparing this to the slave labor that built Dubai though.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoWho decides what's a true democracy? Athens didn't have universal suffrage, and they invented democracy (and were in many ways far more democratic than anything we have today). They had some pretty radical measures for mixing up who actually got to hold office, such as sortition, and misbehaving officials risked ostracicsm by public vote. I think this is something that is severely overlooked in contemporary democracy. It's a very small clique indeed that stands any realistic chance of holding office in most western democracies. Ultimately doesn't really matter who gets to vote if the candidates are all the same.
- Strom 4y ago> AFAIK all Baltic states have a minority with limited rights, so they are far from true democracy. Limited rights in the sense of not being able to vote for the parliament, sure. However that isn't unusual at all. In fact, I don't know of any counter example. Do you have an example of a country where non-citizens can vote for the highest form of government? As for local elections, in Estonia both Russian citizens and ethnic Russians without any citizenship are allowed to vote. That is extremely democractic.
- pipodeclown 4y agoSo not paying taxes like everybody else which pay for public services you use is morally defensible as long as you don't pay those taxes to a democratic nation as opposed to a dictatorship?
- HowardStark 4y agoThis, I have to imagine, would come down to soft power. To my knowledge, it’s /very/ rarely free to move wealth across borders. So if a country were to strongly incentivize investment a certain way all of a sudden, it would be ideal if the political leanings were aligned with yours. Perhaps that might mean investing/holding your wealth in a country where there are likely to be further breaks for renewables. Who knows. This isn’t a super thought-through response. Would be curious to see if people have ideas to add.
- ozim 4y agoI think pipodeclown is more onto: Instead of avoiding taxes and coming up with silly hacks - one should pay his fair share in his own country and try to build community and wealth around himself and his close ones. Energy/wealth spent to avoid taxes in way where you move from country to country or do some weird stuff could be spent probably on building a small business or two. I agree there are bad places to live and people have to run away from these or move because they don't earn enough in their place so they move out for more opportunity, but if it goes down to "I just want to keep more money for myself" is just not right and not moral at all.
- bitL 4y agoImagine being a 20-year old in Germany and Netherlands and finding the cheapest house you can own goes for 500k. Your salary peaks at 80k after 10 years of work, half of it goes to taxes and 1/3 of that is lost on rent you are forced to pay. Your only option is a 30+ year mortgage that will send you to a rat race with no options to leave, especially when you get married. Or you spend 5 years in Dubai, working remotely for 100k+, return back home and buy a property. Then you work only as much as you need. What would be your choice?
- psyfi 4y agoWhat does this have to do with tax management?
- lm28469 4y agoSome people still hold moral above money.
- bitL 4y agoCurrent income, inflation and taxation levels in the EU can be considered immoral as well. Moreover, Estonia has issues with human rights (unless you assume Russian-speaking people are subhumans).
- lm28469 4y ago> unless you assume Russian-speaking people are subhumans what ? > Current income, inflation and taxation levels in the EU can be considered immoral as well There is no free lunch, that's how we get infrastructure, healthcare, social benefits, &c. If you think Estonia is as fucked up as the UAE we can stop discussing now, you're either completely delusional or acting in bad faith, feel free to go live there, if all you care about is money I'm sure it feels like Heaven
- bitL 4y agoRead about how 1/3 to 1/2 of population is treated in Baltic countries, then get back to preaching about how moral/democratic they are. How can people born there living there for decades end up without a citizenship? Dubai improved a lot in recent years but the stench of being built on slave labor will be there. So was UK/France/Belgium/Spain/Portugal. Show me a single moral country, I'll move there in an instant.
- lm28469 4y agoThe classic "every country did at least one bad thing sometimes in the past so stoning homosexuals to death in 2022 isn't that bad", Alright :| If you absolutely love money and have no moral at least say it, even Soros did it: "I am basically there to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do."
- estewart 4y ago
- olalonde 4y agoI don't understand what you mean by "ability to live wherever you want". Taxes are pretty much always based on residency, it doesn't matter whether you hold a Dubai Golden visa if you live outside of Dubai.
- johnwalkr 4y agoFor some reason software engineers often think they can work remotely and live wherever they want. I lived in Japan for a long time and english-speaking forums about Japan are full of people asking how to move to Japan and keep a US job, or matter-of-factly stating "I have a spouse visa and get paid to my US account so I don't have pay taxes in Japan" which is of course completely wrong.
- bitL 4y agoThey can spend 5 months in Japan, 4 months in Korea and 3 months in Hong Kong each year and be fine wrt taxation if they work remotely in the US.
- johnwalkr 4y agoFrom a US point of view maybe but it’s complicated in Japan. For starters you are not allowed to work remotely on a tourist visa waiver and work done remotely I Japan is not “foreign sourced income”, at least not for a normal situation. There’s conditions which may trigger tax residency, and finally regardless of your status, work done in Japan can cause liabilities for the US company. Also the posts I mentioned are almost universally “I assume or have assumed that I can just buy a house and work remotely from Japan”, but there a few that are looking for loopholes to be a digital nomad.
- bitL 4y agoYou are most likely correct - those who want to own a property/live there forever are out of luck and likely bend local laws. It's always best to talk to your tax advisor wrt these issues to avoid any troubles later (I did to mine before I traveled around the world working remotely).
- wodenokoto 4y agoDoesn't it cost a lot though? I see ads for Golden Visa for 10-20k AED a year
- bitL 4y agoFees were like $3k last time I checked, likely higher when using some external agency. Still peanuts compared to savings from 0% taxes (assuming high income in EU).
- aliqot 4y agoAny cashback rewards on that at participating Exxon stations?
- krn 4y agoIt might be a good choice for a digital nomad with a short-term horizon, but if you want to stay somewhere else for more than 183 days per year, you will be considered a tax resident in that country, making your Dubai Golden Visa worthless.
- bitL 4y agoEstonian e-residency doesn't solve that problem either, but conditions are worse.
- krn 4y agoMy entire point was, that the Estonian E-Residency is only worth it, if you are willing to relocate to Estonia. If you want to spend more than 183 days per year in some other country, then the Estonian E-Residency is not the right choice.