Comment by garyclarke27 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by garyclarke27 | Hacker News Reader

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Yes Portugal is a good choice now, I moved here 1 year ago from UK because of various factors, Brexit, tax, quality of life etc also because I believe it will be a great location to recruit IT talent to. I live in Cascais which is a bit expensive, (still much cheaper than San Francisco of course) but has wonderful quality of life for family, Capital city amenities next to beach. Great infrastructure, motorways, ultra fast cheap fibre to home, good IB school for kids, quality cheap fresh food, esp fish and veg. Retail items are expensive, high VAT, no Amazon (yet rumers will come soon) Services cheap, private medical cover including dental, for family of 4 unbelievably cheap, less than 200 Euro pm, i paid nearly that much for just dental in UK, the free public healthcare and schools are also apparently good. Property prices going up v fast, many Brazilians moving here to avoid crime and Scandinavians to avoid Tax. Dividends are Tax free from the UK for 10 years, 20% on local income. EU passport if you spend 500k on property - 1 or more units, inc home or investment - is booming as a result - they collect lots of VAT so is good strategy for Portugal considering it was like Greece 4 years ago. 1 downside is insane price of large or fast cars, so lots of dangerous small old cars, also they are totally inept drivers for some strange reason, you see accidents nearly every journey, feels 100 times more often than UK, though stats show only 10 times worse, similar to US apparently - apart from that feels like a very safe country, locals are v friendly and welcoming and most speak English. Oh and I forgot to mention nearly 300 days sunshine pa vs 120 in Wales is so nice, hard to feel down in Estoril with Azure sky and ocean, sea is a bit chilly but stops it getting to hot.

> private medical cover including dental, for family of 4 unbelievably cheap, less than 200 Euro pm, i paid nearly that much for just dental in UK

Almsot 200 EUR a month on dental seems outrageously expensive.

Getting a simple figure on the prices is difficult but it seems like the going-rate is appox £16-21 pm (lets say 20-30 EUR): https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/dental-insurance...

The amount I have to decalre to the tax man for the "benefit in kind" value my health insurance through work (which is private health & dental for me, my spouse, and all dependants - includes private GP appointments, physio etc etc) is about £1600 for the entire year, or £~135/month or ~155EUR/month. I apprecaite that is just from my P11D form [1], but there are some other sources that are in the same ballpark: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/cheap-health-ins...

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P11D

PMI is a scam in the uk you ending up losing on tax and if you have a medical problem it has ZERO value.

You would be better off saying ok put the benefit into my pension instead.

Just in the past couple of months I had a private GP appointment (£65), a MRI (£800), followed up by 2 consultant visits (£170 each) and 6 physio (£35 a go). About £1400 of treatment all for free.

I might have been able to get the same treatment on the NHS (this was for a running injury, so not a life-critical illness), but the doctors, MRI, and two consultants visits were done on consecutive days - i.e. within a working week I went from "ow my knee hurts" on a Monday morning to having seen a doctor, a consultant, getting an MRI, and then seeing the consultant again who prescribed a course of physiothearapy by Thursday afternoon (the physio was also booked the same day).

With the NHS it probably would have taken two or three days to call at precisely 08:30:00 to get an appointment before they book out, then I'd be waiting minimum two weeks before I even went to that first GP appointment, and I am sure their response would have been "stop running and see if it gets better in 3 months - come back if it hasn't. NEXT." (based on experience)

Seems like a good deal to me.

Depends on how much a year your losing in tax and how often you need it might be cheaper to self insure, much more so if your a higher rate taxpayer.

I certainly got no value from BUPA when I had major transplant operation - just a £500 tax bill.

Your company had a good deal, cheaper of course in corporate plan, but I suspect your dental cover is very limited. Most dentists in UK now will only accept patients on Denplan, is very comprehensive but is very expensive cost me £160 pm for whole family.

> no Amazon

Really? I live in a developing country middle of the Pacific Ocean and I regularly buy from Amazon with no issues. How come Portugal doesn't have Amazon?

I think that has to mean no Amazon Prime or similar?

I buy things from Amazon.de to Finland very often - often no extra cost for shipping and good prices. Also EUR prices without extra taxes for me.

So while Finland does not have "Amazon" (amazon.fi is a redirect to amazon.de) - I can still buy things from there very easily.

No local amazon. You can buy electronics from Amazon Spain and books from Amazon UK. They'll arrive in about a week. No idea what will be the new solution for books in english after brexit, though, since customs here are horrible.

[Off-the-record] Amazon is opening a distribution centre in Portugal "very soon". Portugal was not seen as a "priority" for Amazon because there are much bigger markets to "conquer". But since Google announced their intention: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-portugal/google-to... Amazon has "re-prioritised" Portugal ...

Meanwhile as others have said, we get our deliveries from UK amazon here in less than a week. It's not "Prime" or "Same Day Delivery", sure, but we can be patient for a few days and it just means we don't buy crap on impulse.

Amazon Spain delivers in 3 days.

No distribution centre in Portugal, so no Prime free delivery. Also many items don’t ship here, in UK we used to literally get at least 1 delivery per day (courtesy of my good wife bless her) now only twice a week mainly from German site, which is much better than Spanish Amazon and has English option (unlike Spain) delivery costs soon mount up though.

> Dividends are Tax free from the UK for 10 years, 20% on local income. EU passport if you spend 500k on property.

Our government is learning from China and Cuba: we have 2 systems, one for locals (ultra-socialist) and another for foreigners (ultra-liberal).

"Dividends are Tax free from the UK for 10 years" - can you share any more info on this?

Search for Portugal non-habitual residence scheme

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