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Comment by Fbnkigffb66tfbj | Hacker News Reader

I haven't seen any "digital nomad visas" that make much sense for a typical nomadic remote worker. Why go through all the bureaucracy when I can just quietly work while on 30-90 day visa-free (or cheap and easy visa-on-arrival) tourist entry stamps?

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Going for a 30-90 days to a country usually means you rent a short term overpriced Airbnb. With longer visa you can get a normal one-year lease, for most likely the same price.

Still cheaper than going through gov. bureaucracy and having a higher tax exposure. In many other places, you can still rent long-termish and still visa-run regularly.

Staying a year often makes your tax resident which is exactly the kind of headache nomads moving around are trying to avoid.

For example if you own any stocks and become tax resident, then leave and break tax residency, you may often owe an "exit tax" on your unrealized stock gains.

Even stocks in your retirement accounts like IRA may not be treated as tax advantaged by another country.

It's illegal, and also in Korea it's extremely annoying, as many online or daily services work with an Alien Registration Card, which you don't have with a simple tourist visa.

Because that’s typically illegal?

As long as your source of income is entirely outside the country, which it typically is, then in most cases you're fine. You're essentially just like a travelling investor. It's earning income from within the country that you can't do legally without a visa.

That's not true, and it's often not well known, but your own physical location is also a factor, not only your source of income. Most countries would never detect this anyways, but you shouldn't think that it's legal at all.

Well then I guess the lawyers I hired in country were all lying to me? As long as I didn't overstay my visa, didn't stay more than the required time for physical presence test tax liability (typically 180 days), and didn't work for firms inside the country, I was legit.

Please let me know if I was given bad legal advice, because I don't want to get thrown in jail in the future.

If they told you the legal advice they were giving you for a specific country was valid in all countries, and that all countries treated this income the same way, then yes, they lied to you.

This is not correct if you are doing actual work in the country. What's happening is, many of these countries are low income ones; and this kind of work is far removed from their economies. So they are turning a blind eye to it.

I don't know how the whole digital nomad model works, but I'm guessing that it's kind of a hassle to have to spend money every 30-90 days to cross out of the country and back in. Plus, some countries have policies to counteract this "infinite visa glitch" and can punish people for doing this.

Most digital nomads I know (including myself) do not go back to the same country at the end of their 30-90 days though. They hop to another country or do a stop at home for a while to do anything they may need to at home before heading somewhere else.

I regularly stay somewhere for 90ish days, then go home for a while to do anything I need to back home days and then somewhere else.

This is also why a digital nomad visa for a year or more doesn't make much sense. I know very few true digital nomads who even have a desire to stay the same place for more than a few months. At that point you're not a digital nomad anymore.

I'm curious - since the individual stops are so relatively short, how do you manage to stay on top of it all? How do you consistently find short-term housing every 30-90 days at a reasonable price?

This model sounds pretty appealing to me as something to consider doing in the future, but I'm not sure on just how much hassle this would introduce.

> at a reasonable price

this is the crux; what is reasonable for a tech worker can be a whole paycheck for someone in the community they are moving to

> how much hassle this would introduce

this is controversial; you are no doubt injecting capital into the local economy, but what are the ultimate consequences?

nyc has a saying: no such thing as a free lunch (the economics always balance out in the end, even if you can't see the scales working)

I usually plan it out way in advance. Usually I have accomodations booked at the least 6 months out for the next trip.

Example: right now I'm somewhere in the middle of a 90 day stay. We also were somewhere else just before for the holidays for ~30 days, but mostly for vacation. I plan to go back home at the end of March for ~2 months or so to get things straightened out there before then heading out for another 4-5 months afterwards. I've already booked that trip. Usually just as one trip is starting I book the next one for 6 months later.

I travel with my wife so we either book private rooms in a hostel or AirBnB's, though we've been trending away from this.

To be fair, we're both software devs so our salaries together make living basically anywhere "reasonable" depending on how you look at it. We know we're paying a premium but since we can afford it we don't really look at it as unreasonable. Most places we stay come out to ~$2000 USD per month for AirBnB's, and much less for most hostels.

I also keep a cheap studio apartment back in the US for when I'm back for a while, so I don't have to plan where to stay when I'm back. But I know many digital nomads who just use their parents places or another close family member.

Though this is just my experience, many digital nomads I know don't have things planned out as far as we do. And literally just plan things on a whim less than a month out.

> just quietly work while on 30-90 day visa-free (...) tourist entry

dude.

Generally restrictions are against working for a local company, since that would be a workaround of getting the right visa for you.

I think most tourist entries are ok with working for a company abroad, especially if some jobs might require to step-in while on vacation.

There should be footnotes in forms that tourist visa works for business trips. It's often ok in that sense, not as in throwing in the straw hat and Hawaiian shirt to trash can just past the border control is ok or not

I'd rather ignore it since tourist visas are short. The alternative is to add rules to stress some people out, and have others willingly ignore them as it gets you into the idiotic space of having a rule that's not really enforced or worse, not even enforceable in a reasonable way.

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