Rolando Rosas 3:59
Exactly. And you know, for around that much your company can have backup wireless internet, because who wants to have the lifeline of their business go down. And in these times when weather is crazy, when events around the world are affecting internet connectivity, you need the lifeline of your company to keep running. That’s why circuitloops.com can give you an instant quote on backup internet on fast fiber Internet so that you never get cut off when you need to communicate with patients and client and best yet, John, you know, one of the things that circuitloops.com does is they provide a personalized proposal in less than 60 seconds in industry first, so why wait around for a human why wait in line for a rep or why wait around for a rep that may take a week and is out in Vegas, enjoying the sunshine circuitloops.com for your instant proposal online and when you need it before we bring John out. Let me tell you Little bit about John, on this episode of What The Teck? John has a company called Work From Anywhere. John co founded Work From Anywhere and is passionate about helping people make work from anywhere a reality. He has been a remote worker traveling to multiple countries on different continents. His company work from anywhere is a platform that helps companies, employees, digital nomads with work from anywhere strategy. John makes it easy to hire internationally, as well as enabling remote work while abroad. He also removes the anxiety and potential pitfalls that arise without proper planning, like unexpected tax bill, who wants to pay the tax man more than you need to? We were going to ask him about that and more. And let’s welcome to the greenroom. John Lee. Welcome to What The Teck?
John Lee 6:03
Good to be here. Thank you very much for having me.
Rolando Rosas 6:06
Yes, we have a whole lot that we want to talk to you about. Because, you know, there’s a lot of folks now with the work from anywhere like like your companies name work from anywhere that want to, you know, rebalance their lives or want more out of it, they, they want to maybe afford more of what they have, and going to places that are more affordable. But before we get to all of the nuggets that you’re going to drop on us today, I want to ask you, let’s go straight away to because this is also a tech show over what technology are you geeking out on right now?
John Lee 6:43
Oh, that’s a good question that I there’s so many aspects of, of technology that are very, very exciting. I mean, clearly, you know, artificial intelligence, some of the things that are going on there. I’m watching like, what fantastic stuff that Peter levels is doing. He is the co founder of its founder of nomad list and some of the things he’s doing with interior AI and AI avatars. And so that’s quite exciting. I think from let’s say, my own industry, looking at the power of artificial intelligence and how you can basically digitalize tax legislation. You know, employment laws, create algorithms out of them to help companies assess the risks. And also looking at for example, companies like for example, the employees a record like deal and how technology can make it easier to onboard and hire people to then looking at how, you know, countries are digitalising. You know, the tax authorities are digitalising, but also looking at digital nomad visas, remote work visas, these exciting tools that are coming out that as countries are recognized the potential of a digitalized economy, they’re changing who they’re trying to attract to different countries. And honestly, what does that mean for the shift of human capital around the world of people and empowering us as individuals, and our you know, our families to bring ourselves in, traveled on an adventure all around the world. So, you know, at the end of that intersection of technology and what it means and empowering individuals and our freedoms to explore the world. For me, that’s really exciting.
Dave Kelly 8:01
That’s it’s so complex. You know, I always thought it was relatively simple, you know, you could go to another country, you can stay for six months, make sure you come back to the States, and everything, everything should be good. But you know, what are some of the, you know, what’s like the biggest challenge that an individual needs to overcome when you know, relocating to another country and working abroad?
John Lee 8:23
Well, you may have been a digital nomad for a good number of years as a family. I mean, my eldest daughter, Rosa, she’s our three kids, Rosa six, and she’s been to 25 countries. So I mean, that will give you a census and she’s lived in, you know, she’s lived in the Netherlands. She was born in the Netherlands, he, we then lived in Thailand, we then spent some time in Ireland, we moved to Portugal, and that’s in the space of a couple of short years, and then use those as base to travel around. I think, when I was doing a pre pandemic, there was not that many digital nomad families or a bit of an exotic creatures, whereas now there’s so many more just digitalized remote workers in general. I’m going to give you some statistics here, American Airlines pre pandemic said that about 20 to 25% of travel was mixed between business and leisure. In their most recent investor update in a quarterly update, they said it’s between 50 and 55%. So most of travel is now mixed. Now the main purpose of it is still the same. It’s still mainly business or maybe leisure, but people are tagging on a couple of days of business or tagging on a couple of hours of leisure. What does that mean for the future of work that most travelers now mix? Like? How did that come on upon us from left field? So, you know, when you get into that, that brings with it a whole bunch of complexities? And I think for me, that’s shifting the future of work, and really has accelerated like 10 years. And while you know, we’re seeing a little bit, you know, the the kind of digitalization might have maybe slowed down just a little bit and recently, so it’s definitely not slowed down is the fact that we’re not going back to the way it was for how we work and how we run our lives. So that kind of pandemic shift that that kind of pause that we got to reflect on the core priorities in life. That’s something that’s not transitory that is not going back For me, that leads to a whole other implications for future work. But I think that’s what conversations like this get really exciting.
Rolando Rosas 10:06
Well, you know, John, you said something, we’re not going back. And you know that right now. And I’m sure this is the case in all various European countries, where companies are struggling with the whole hybrid work thing. They want to bring employees and some that just say, you know, we got to come back to Office, and you’re underscoring what I’m seeing when I talk to other colleagues, other entrepreneurs, you know, they recognize that we’re not where we were 24 months ago, people’s lives are not where the whole world is not where we were. So why should we go back to January 2020? When we’re not there anymore. And people in, we have a friend of ours that recently moved to Portugal. And, you know, he made the leap him in his his two kids and his wife moved to Portugal. I’ve run across a couple other folks that are heading to Portugal, or a few country, other countries as well, because they want to improve their standard of living. What where would you say amongst all of those digital countries, you know, you’ve got Portugal, Panama, Thailand. In you’ve got a few others Mexico, even that’s closer to us? Where, where’s the puck going to? Where’s the rest of the stars right now that people are exiting or expats are going to and why do you think that is?
John Lee 11:27
Well, I’m actually I’m quite happy to share with you in the audience for decision making framework that we did when we were doing this. What I did was this is back in last November, we are the place you’re renting in Ireland, the landlord said that they wanted to move back in. And so we were quite happy in Ireland at the time. But then, you know, we said, well, we looked at potentially renting a place in Ireland, we said you know what, let’s turn this as an opportunity as a family to look at every single country in the world and pick a country to move to so this is what we did. We basically put together every country
Rolando Rosas 11:56
Spreadsheet. And for those folks that are watching us on video. Let me ask you, John, is this a is this the public spreadsheet?
John Lee 12:04
Yeah, it is. I share I share it with anyone that asks I’m happy to share with your audience but what you have in here you’ve got the Nomad list ranking, the best place to raise kids high risk country crime rate by country average temperature, healthcare ranking COVID rankings cost of living index,
Rolando Rosas 12:19
you said COVID ranking too you. So for those COVID conscious folks that want to know how well the country does you’ve got that ranked in there.
John Lee 12:27
Yeah, exactly. And so why did we choose Portugal was one of the shortlisted countries. Why did we shortlisted it was high, it was on the best places consistently and Best Place to from a workers great place to raise kids. It wasn’t a high risk country. You know, average temperature was pretty solid healthcare rankings were were great COVID rankings are good cost of living was it was pretty nice mean much cheaper than for example, the likes of freedom with us. And it has a whole bunch of other tax factors which are important as well to bake into it as well. So I think we got we got when we did that we then zoned in on a shortlist of countries and Korea, for example, Croatia was another great place and looked at the different Airbnbs right there. And then, you know, more or less came to a conclusion like this is the country that we wanted, we looked at Portugal, literally, we did that within a couple of days of getting the news that the matter when he moved back in.
Rolando Rosas 13:14
And so you’re in Portugal right now, right? That’s you’re
John Lee 13:17
exactly, exactly. I’m in Portugal now at the moment. And so I’m going to I’m going to share this, I’m going to share this, this this tool with you and I can any the audience are more than welcome.
Rolando Rosas 13:25
So we’ll leave that for those folks that are following us on the on different platforms, we will share the links in the description or, or the Lincoln bio, so you can get to this wonderful matrix that John’s created. Man, I got to check that out. Because, you know, who wouldn’t want to spend time? And you know, we’ve even think about it like, you know, what, would it be nice if we could be somewhere warmer, especially for you know, we get from January, right up until middle of April. It’s like wintry and why not spend four to five months somewhere where it’s warmer.
John Lee 14:02
Joint Think about that for a second for also kids as well what it does for your kids. And I notice a lot of people are not parents out there as well. But for us as parents, like I’m already saying like our kids are starting to speak Portuguese, we’ve only been here seven months. And they’re speaking they’re learning Portuguese every day, the agility that gives you the cultural intelligence that feeds through to your later developmental, emotional intelligence. Those are, you know, I think when you look at work pre pandemic, you can only go to a place of vacation for a week or two, I would never do remote work, you know, you can actually potentially sue because they’re going to place for a month or two, you might only take a week or two as official vacation but build in a couple of weeks of actually deeply going into destination and what that means you can go much deeper, you know, interculturally and with the local discover the place, you could potentially try and learn the language a little bit. So, you know, that gives you a completely different experience of a place than you have from before. And the beauty of that is you can go deeper on a place to actually maybe consider even moving there as well. If you do want to, again, remote work. It’s a lot more possible than it was before.
Dave Kelly 14:59
John And I, one of the things that I love about what you’re doing so wfa.team, that’s your website, and this document that you were sharing with us here. And I saw it in Rolando Zeis, just a moment ago, he’s fantasizing about the possibilities. And you’re opening up the eyes, you know, to other places that a lot of people may not have even considered, or they, they’ve seen it on a list, but they don’t necessarily know what it’s about or where it is on a map. When I was on wfa.team and
Rolando Rosas 15:34
our audience that’s watching along online with us, they can see what that looks like
Dave Kelly 15:38
this, you know, you mentioned like, you know, some Airbnb listings, you know, when people are booking a trip for their family, you’re looking forward to that future experience and in the in what it could be. So you know, what, what you’ve put together here is, it’s just grabbing that emotion of, hey, I live somewhere, it’s freezing cold, I need to change my mental health could use it, my kids could use it, you know, so if you were to take someone like myself, so I live in, so I’m in the Northeast, and you I know that you have family up here. So you know, the summers are beautiful, but the winters are long and the winters are cold. So if I wanted to, you know, I’m working for a US based company, but I have the opportunity to go somewhere else for three or four months. You know, how would you advise me to start with my search?
John Lee 16:33
It’s a good question. So the first thing is to look at what your situation is for you know, where you work? Are you your own boss, are you like, let’s say a contractor or freelancer, for example, where you’ve got a lot more decision making freedom. What Where do you work for employees that come from?
Dave Kelly 16:47
Let’s say, I, I am I work for an organization that is, uh, it’s based here in the US?
John Lee 16:53
Great, so Okay, so the first thing is, is the first place you got to start is, why can why does it suddenly password allow me to go like, you want to go to North Korea for six months? Or nine months? I’m sorry, it ain’t gonna happen. You’re not gonna get in? There was no, John. Ooh, exactly. I’m sorry, especially with the rockets going on overhead. versus where can you go to from an obligation immigration perspective, but what is very exciting now at the moment, is you have these things. And they were actually shown by Rolando to screen these things or digital nomad visas, that basically are these visas, the specific visas targeting remote workers that didn’t exist, you know, two, three years ago, whereas now there’s like 50 countries that are offering these, some of them are badly designed, and that they’re not very attractive, but some of them are actually fantastic. Some of them cover you for income tax, some of them are very accessible. Some of them are well designed, promoted, or give you some real numbers behind us. So you take for example, our beta store, a beta welcome stump, they basically during COVID, last older cruise passenger tourism revenue, you know, obviously, there was no travel. So what they did is they actually started opening up and creating these digital visas called the Barbados welcome stop, in a little over a year, they generated over $100 million of tourism revenue for the local economy. That’s incredible. So not quite as much as the cruise passengers, but not far off it, but it’s
Rolando Rosas 18:11
for them, right? I mean, they probably wouldn’t have had
John Lee 18:14
And if you think of it from a destination perspective, you know, rather than having, you know, cruise passengers and stag, and hen parties coming in that don’t spend very much cause a lot of friction, disruption, you know, remote workers who tend to maybe spend more, they’ll cause less friction than wanting to be trying to learn the language, possibly, you know, there’s a lot more benefits to destinations, but then turn it around for what does it mean for us as individuals? Well, for us as individuals, it means that you have these countries that are pretty much giving you as good as like a business visa to be able to work there. As long as you’re not working for a local employer, you can go and spend time there, and you spend, you know, a very reasonable amount on the visa. And it gives us security in a lot of cases to your employer to be able to explore this. Now, I think, of course, you have to make sure you can qualify this from an immigration perspective. But these kinds of things are really, really, really exciting. And what’s also exciting is if you want to go a step further, let’s say you really want to go to a country, that you say I want to go and spend the next year or two there, you have these new innovations called employers of record that rather than your company having to go open a legal entity in, let’s say, the Netherlands, you can actually and they can actually put you in an employer of record that has a legal entity that kind of loan it to your company to allow you to base yourself in that legal entity for that year to very compliantly they’ll take care of the income taxes, so security, the employment law piece of it. And so these innovations that didn’t really exist, you know, three, four or five years ago 20 Great day are certainly weren’t widely known. All of a sudden, you know, tools like digital nomad vases, employees of record, are opening up the horizon of what actually is possible. You still have to do your research, you have to see what fits what’s the right tool in the right place. But the bottom line is they’re fundamentally changing things. And so when we look at pre pandemic companies, how running within a 30 kilometer radius. Now they’re recognizing there’s this magnificent global talent pool. But likewise, there’s so many options for people like us to go and spend some time in and without creating a whole heap of headaches of compliance risks if you do it the right way.
Rolando Rosas 20:14
Wow, that is just fascinating. So I remember, you know, coming out of college thinking, I’d love to work internationally. And I remember once I, once I started working at what is now known as Altria. Boy, you know, and I worked in the international division, getting to getting one of those posts that are outside the US was very complicated, I talk to the HR talk to the upper management bosses, and they would say, you know, getting those posts, and they cite all the reasons and when they do that, and whatnot. And a lot of that, you can just cross that off. Now based on what you’re saying, from an employer perspective, it’s, it can be smoother you can, you can have employees that are US based or Canadian based or North American basin B. And in some other country without it being a big, mired, complicated, convoluted system, there’s a clear path that sort of trying to get, there’s a much more clear path to executing on that today, versus 20 years ago,
John Lee 21:18
I think what’s fascinating is there’s no like a real business case for this. So number one, if you talk it into two different types, because they’re international work, there’s two big components to it, there’s the highest money or pace where you want to structure your higher position in a different country. And there’s a workman earpiece, where I want to temporarily work in a different country for a period of time on the hire from an earpiece, you know, now rather than, let’s say being based in Silicon Valley, and only being able to hire developers within a 30 kilometer radius, you can now hire a fantastic qualified developer in India. Now, a lot of companies were doing this tech companies reduce pre pandemic anyway, right. But I think there’s much broader awareness and higher funny word, the benefits of actually really opening up, you know, your talent pool for getting higher quality talent. In some cases, it might be lower cost talent, but the most important thing is you’re just opening up the opportunities of the talent pipeline. But then for the work on your piece as well. That’s where this is also fascinating, where at least if you allow some limited amount of being able to work internationally for a couple of weeks, or months, for example, you know, they’re starting, you know, for it’s not applicable for every company, like heavily regulated banks, or manufacturing companies might not be able to do it. But you know, those companies that are very open to remote work, we’re looking at, for example, the data coming out of the likes of, for example, Spotify, a year after day, and as they’re working on your policy, attrition went down by 15%, grab a full approach to Spotify, basically, a year after they announced the launch, they’re working on your policy, their attrition went down by 15%. And secondly, their DNI went much better, significant proved. And so there’s a whole multiple of different benefits that came along with this. But one of the gets really interesting is as companies, do you actually even measured us? Do you measure, for example, when you’ve got candidates coming into the funnel? Are they not join you? Because you don’t have worked on your policy? Do you even ask the question? Like with, you know, with your own attrition, do you measure it and exit interviews or surveys? Why people are leaving? A lot of companies don’t do that. But at least if you’re armed with the data, you can now build a business case for is it right fit for you or not. But in the case of Spotify, it was massive, massive benefits and even look like Airbnb and other one statistic as well, is the month after they announced they’re working on your policy, you know, the visitors to their careers page went from I think, 400k to 800k. It doubles. So I mean, there’s really tangible business benefits of this, if you do it right.
Dave Kelly 23:43
Now work from now, like Spotify, for example, when they when they implemented their work from anywhere policy was that domestically is Spotify is a US based company.
John Lee 23:56
So I indicate this in the case of they are a US based company, they have operations all over the world. So when they announced their policy, to be fair, I think we’ve all got to be for educating people, when we say work from anywhere. It’s really actually, the companies that do this, they’ll say these are the countries that we allow for the maximum number of days, nobody does no company in the world truly allows work from wherever you want. And we go back to the example of North Korea, you know, I’m sorry, we don’t, we’ve got immigration blockers, you know, and there is no passport in the world that allows you to go to every country in the world. So you simply have an immigration limitation, which which creates a certain degree of inequality because some people go to work for money or more countries and others, but that’s just the nature of our passports and yes, but then you’ve also got tax under considerations as well beyond that, but essentially the point being that, yeah, from day one, they announced they’re working on their policy. They had significant business benefits coming out the back of it.
Rolando Rosas 24:52
Wow, that’s just just just tremendous. So that so you’re saying the attrition goes down, which ultimately is Is padding the bottom line, you increase your margins when attrition goes down. But from an
John Lee 25:05
attempt to get better, you also have to get better quality talent coming to it. Because you have now people that are like, this is really important to your eyes flashed when you saw that overview and you started imagining different countries you’d like to live in. Same for candidates applying, they’re like, oh, where could I actually work from?
Rolando Rosas 25:20
Yeah. Well, that’s interesting can mention that. So now, if you’re put myself back to, you know, coming right out of college, if you can tell people, you know what, we have the flexibility at just throwing your name Microsoft, because they also have offices around the world, we have the ability, and then they do have a remote work policy. I believe it’s hybrid, and I believe if you want to work from anywhere, you have to check with your management, your upline manager in order to get that approved. But imagine the the the recruiting, recruiting not just the pool, but even the people that that that can say, oh, yeah, I can Can I work from Barbados? Oh, wonderful. That’s terrific. And I would imagine, long term because this has really been prior to the pandemic, there were big companies like Procter and Gamble. We did that at Altria, they had worked from home that is just that’s the way you worked, but it became much wider after the pandemic, I would imagine this. I will call this this global test case, right? What impact after 23456 years, it can have on the work culture. And you could probably speak to that, as well as the bottom line. Because if you’re talking to selling this to still entrenched, resistant to management, at some companies, you know, financial companies have their own regulatory thing. But a lot of companies aren’t in that industry. But what does it mean to my company? The bottom line, the customers that we serve, as, are the management in the culture, is it going to fall apart? Because now I have 20% or 30% of my workforce, living abroad or elsewhere, not in where my headquarters are located?
John Lee 27:01
I think the big thing to start with is that you’ve got to look at the company culture, you know, for some companies, they’re gonna say it’s in office for us is where it’s at, or the comments gonna say it’s remote or kind of companies are gonna say, it’s, it’s hybrid. But I think coming back to the certainly the companies that are doing remote and doing it well, they’re experiencing like massive financial benefits, because they don’t have the real estate. They’ve got better, you know, attrition numbers, better access to talent, for example, the companies that are hybrid, I think they’re really trying to rethinking how they even look at the office and design, the Office experience and changes of being a place where you will work to people place for people to connect and socialize. And even then looking at, for example, meetups, or even remote companies that work fully remote, they place a big emphasis on meeting in person and having powerful moments, magical moments where they meet up in person, at least, you know, once a year, if not once a quarter, but I think it’s the companies that are in office, look, it’s absolutely fine. There’s some roles, it’s not possible to work remotely. But I think where it gets tricky is if you’re in an industry, where your competitors are basically offering remote work or work from anywhere, and you’re not, I think where it gets really tricky is in specific roles. Like if you’re looking for a software engineer, you know, short of being, you know, Elon Musk, or some godlike, you know, a tech but if somebody who’s really admired by certain cohorts of the developer community, I think it’s very hard to get access to that best to the best talent, you know. And I think, again, it depends on the company. I mean, I would never, you know, I would never tell a company what to do, they’ll know their their company culture best. But certainly what we are seeing is just the business benefit of offering flexibility. And the flexibility is more than just you know, where you work. It’s also when you work synchronous, asynchronous, it’s all about flexibility for cultivating and creating a customized, personalized work experience for you what works for you as an individual. And I think that has got to be something that works really well. For me, I take my own example, you know, I’ve got three kids below six, would I trace the ability to be here and have you know, a little one year old or a three year old, a six year old walk in and give me a hug during a workday? You know what I trade that for being in the office for an extra 30k? Year? You damn sure it would mean some people would
Rolando Rosas 29:15
know what you’re saying exactly what the statistics bear out the the surveys that have all been done, once the pandemic was in full swing. A good that’s believed that was 75% of Gen Z workers said they would not come into the office, even if they were paid more. That number dropped down to around 50 Some percent for Gen X and older, but still a 50% of the workforce. They would they would pass up that extra 2030 $40,000 a year to have exactly what you just said, I could stay at home and see my kids, or I could take care of my mom who’s older, or I could, I can live somewhere where I can afford more.
John Lee 29:58
Well, exactly, I think You’re leaking data as well, I mean, I’m also acutely worried that it’s from a place of privilege, that all of us have access to the look at the three of us here and are having this podcast like this remotely, like it is no doubt about it, it’s a real, we’re very fortunate to have access to this valuable benefit. You know, I’m thinking of people in, you know, the nurses and doctors in hospitals, or, you know, for example, the teachers that are in schools that are teaching your kids, I’m teaching all these people, you know, they building really crucial manufacturing roles in different companies that might not have access to. So I think that’s also important conversation, as well to, you know, to reflect on how lucky and fortunate we are to have this opportunity. You know,
Dave Kelly 30:36
you know, I agree with that completely. And I, you know, one of the things that, you know, it’s not, it’s not as easy as implementing a work from anywhere. Offering or, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of strategy behind working remotely. And I think outside of tax implement it outside of what we’re talking about here, with taxes and visas, there’s also having access in the willing to learn about some of the new tools. So like, we’re using tools that are, you know, there’s a lot of project managers, we have a lot of irons in the fire. So with projects moving in different tasks, you know, we’ve had to adapt new tools that we weren’t using two years ago. And that’s because we have a full strategy, not just a culture that allows us to work, you know, remotely, it’s it’s really the, you know, our leadership has taken the time to find the tools to support the team. And I’m not just talking about headsets and cameras and bandwidth. I’m talking, you know, task task management tools, and getting everyone on board with knowing exactly how those work.
John Lee 31:43
I think I think so I think when you look at the tools, like there’s so much real deliberate, time has got to put into picking out the right technical communication stack and, and figuring that and how you manage. And there’s much, much greater, more wiser people than me, such as Darren Murphy and chase Warrington, and many others who’ve written you know, wonderful content, Kate Lister, and many others that have written great content on here are some of the tools you’re looking at. I mean, one of things I am seeing that’s missing a little bit in discussion that I’m seeing, I’m very fortunate that I’m kind of I have access to a good network in the remote work worlds around the world. And I also have a great network and the kind of global mobility, compliance space in the world as well. They don’t really speak to what there isn’t a huge amount of awareness, like for example, you know, how many, how many, how many people work in a company might see one of their team members posts a wonderful picture of, oh, here’s me working for a couple of months in a beach in Bali. And how many of them are actually aware of Hold on a second, you might be triggering, they might be triggering massive immigration, employment law, you know, corporation tax issues for you as a company, are you aware of them? What about data privacy and security and your duty of care, like there’s a whole bunch of things like that, that if you’re smart, and you’re tooled up for at least assessing these kinds of risks, you can prevent a lot of big, big issues in the backend. So I kind of hate to be the bearer of bad news, sometimes these things, but you’ve got to be smart, if you do it smartly. There’s great tools available to help everyone, not just what we offer, but many other companies as well. There’s a whole suite of different solutions that can help come up with this. But I think what we’re starting to see now is that a kind of a growing awareness of watching out for these because essentially, we’re also seeing, you know, tax authorities around the world, and especially next year, we’re going to really, really clamp down into stuff. So I think the days of excuses of oh, it was a pandemic, I wasn’t able to move out of the country, they’re long gone. And so I think tooling up for that side of it is kind of on the next horizon of things to watch out for, you know,
Rolando Rosas 33:39
so you’re seeing basically, we’re moving into a new phase, where, you know, we’re moving out of the height, maybe of the pandemic, where, you know, there was a lot of leeway. And now this phase of implementation of or enforcement of some of these laws, as it relates to digital nomads or people working abroad, what would you say, in your experience in this, John, what are some what would you say are the three biggest mistakes that you see employers or people make when it comes to making this move of working abroad?
John Lee 34:20
The big thing I would say, I say this again, and again, and again, work is not a place work is not a place anymore, we would have heard that work is not a place that you know what taxes are. Tank work is not a place for taxes are at the end of the day, countries are still very protective of their sovereign borders. And the main way they have of raising revenue is taxes. And so even in the US on a state by state level, there’s varying degrees of strictness of how different states do this. Well, you think of California after a day in California, you better be sure you’ve made sure to rip What’s your payroll obligations correctly, is the same in many other countries as well. So, you know, some countries are particularly strict on one aspect less than others. Some are strict and everything, some are not so strict, it really depends. Some have great tools like digital visas that allow you to come in and work quite well. But I think that’s the big the big thing is understanding that and making sure everyone is educated on this. And pre pandemic, it was essentially mainly experts that were doing this. And so they were tooled up, they’d all support it all the advice they need, it was all of a sudden, now when I mentioned the numbers 55% of travelers mixed for American American Airlines. So how many people are going working remotely abroad are not even giving a thought of this? Not even thinking about this? And if you think of that, so that’s the first thing understanding that yes, work has shifted, but then complaints needs to shift with that as well. But secondly, the big lesson is that a lot of companies or a lot of countries, in particular house have struggled to catch up on this. And so the tax laws that were defined pre pandemic, were defined for a pre pandemic world, they’re the ones that largely still exist. And so they’re not used to this international network of people going in and out. And so where does that leave us? I think one of the biggest, the biggest things to look at is that if somebody is only going for a few days into a country, they’re probably not going to trigger a whole mountain of risks and issues. But I’ll tell you, if somebody’s going for over over a month, you better make sure they know what they’re doing. Because to take the US, do you want to lie in the border control that you’re there on business? You know, do you want to live your purpose and see what happens then? You know, and then when it gets interesting is that those countries have, you know, as much as the world is digitalized, guess what? So have the visa immigration authorities, so the tax authorities. So I think if I boil it all down to it, the biggest risk to watch out for, if you look at it from a big picture you’ve got the tax risks are absolutely critical. And it’s not just income tax. And you have armchair tax advisers on Twitter who might say, Oh, it’s 183 days are fine. That’s absolutely, I’m going to excuse my French called bullshit on that.
Rolando Rosas 37:06
Here comes a pro tip. So John, you’re talking about misconceptions. What’s Myth number one about the overstaying a visa or a certain number of days in some locations?
John Lee 37:21
The biggest myth is that, oh, you only have to worry about tax once you’re there six months, that is completely incorrect. People come back with 183 days. In some cases, for individual tax, that might be the case for tax residency, but actually that even various countries or countries, some countries that might be as low as 30 days, some countries, it might be three and 65 days, it depends on the country. If you break your visa, all of a sudden that can prevent your company from even hiring in that country in future for a period of time we get significant fines, that’s the visa side, on the tax piece of it. 183 days is a complete myth. In some countries, for individual tax residency, that might be the case. But even for individual tax residency, it might be 30 days, in some countries, it might be 365 days and others. But the big problem is quite for you as individual it might be 183 days the problem is for payroll tax withholding, it might be even as little as a day in some countries. So there’s a whole bunch of compliance things you need to be aware of the biggest issue, the biggest issue and the one that flies under the radar is a thing called perm establishment. Basically, what it means in layman’s terms is you’ve got your taxes an individual, and the company has their taxes, a company called corporation tax, by you deciding to work in your your villa in the south of France for a couple of weeks or months, you might actually trigger that thing called prime establishment, which might then lead to your company having to pay corporation tax in France. Now you want to start doing the numbers on that. It’s going to get very expensive very quickly if you’re doing any sales from there. So I think they’re one of the ones there’s a couple of things, three things to watch ever.
Rolando Rosas 38:53
Oh, wow. If you had to annual you have your spreadsheet with a bunch of different criteria, and people that are listening to it, you know, they’re like, oh, wow, where do I start? Where would you say just kind of generically would you say? Are the places where they’re the friendliest towards digital nomad life or remote working, let’s say for an extended period of time four to six months?
John Lee 39:24
It’s a great question. And I think the first place to start is looking at, you know, we’re on the immigration side is actually open for that individual from a password perspective. But then when you get into the countries that are interesting, I think I certainly would take a good look at the countries for example, where your company has legal entities, because now we’ve got the local expertise on the ground that can help support whatever needs to get done. That’s a big advantage. Because we already know you know, some of the laws and tax issues to worry about. That’s a certain it’s certainly a good place to start. The other places that are a good place to start is the destinations that offer Additional movies. Again, you’ve got to watch out, they’re not all great. Some of them, though, are very, very good look at places like for example, Barbados, you know, there are some destinations that have designed them, well, that can be good places for an employer to go and give an offering of a destination to somewhere to somebody. So I think then
Rolando Rosas 40:18
go from that was just a from that. So we’ve got Barbados, you got one location from the digital nomad visa side, assuming the immigration is, is worried that maybe your company has an office there, maybe they don’t. But outside of Barbados, that’s what I wanted you to identify. You’ve got Barbados, you’re saying they’ve got a wonderful program for a digital visa, digital nomad visa, where else were the two other countries that you say people are worth looking at to at least investigating?
John Lee 40:44
Yeah, well, certainly Portugal is very, very popular. I mean, it really is they have the single the NH or visa, whereby, for you, as a remote worker, you can come here and it gives you a number of tax benefits, if you’re gonna stay here for up to 10 years, for example, I’m we’re seeing a lot of people from the east and west coast and the likes of London, move here for that very reason. You know, I think what’s nice as well, you know, if they’re a European citizen, there’s a lot of freedom of movement, that gives you a lot of options around that piece of it. I think we’ve seen, for example, with Brexit in the UK, that’s a major hindrance. Now for the likes of people in the UK that they have a limit of the days that can spend in the Schengen area, for example, if you look outside of that, you know, we’re seeing some destinations in Southeast Asia, that are looking at, for example, digital with visas and seeing what they can do there. So anywhere with additional movies are places to take a good look at. To be fair as well, with the employees of record as well, they’re certainly worth looking at. But the problem is, is they only really make sense if you’re going to be in a country for typically more than six months. Because the because of the fees that they charge. So if it’s for like between two and maybe four months, probably not going to make a huge amount of sense, you’ll be, you know, looking probably starting with additional visas or places where you have a legal entity. I mean, I think when when you pair it all back for you as a country for us, if you look at the countries that are out there, and for you as a company, you need to kind of map out what you know, for your work for money or policy. What is the maximum days you think you’d be comfortable offering within reason? And communicating that? And also, what countries? Are you going to be open to offering, like initially, so it’s not expected, no employee is going to expect you to offer them at 220 countries from the get go? Or if they do, they’ve got the misaligned expectations. But certainly, if you can offer a couple of countries to start off with, and the beauty about it is that, you know, some people say, Oh, well, I’m worried about the risks. Well, guess what you can, you know, if you’re a big company, you can work towards it. You can, for example, in the case of the Canary Islands in Spain, they have like what’s called a ZDC tax regime, it’s a regional tax regime that you can go and set up a low tax entity basically, and allow your remote workers to, to work there. So you know, there’s lots of different smart ways you can go about exploring these. And I think the beauty better is just different countries are looking to do everything they can to attract these remote workers.
Dave Kelly 42:59
Well, that’s super interesting. You know. And, John, you you were showing some incentives? I think you I don’t know, if we were just talking about domestically here in the US, where some states will have some incentives to relocate and move there. Was there something like that, that you were showing me that was international as well, where they’re trying to attract people?
John Lee 43:20
Yeah, that’s it. So there are certainly some, some countries that are that are looking at this, and off the top of my name, it was I forget the name. But there was a website in the US that was showing all of the grants that different, you know, different, different towns are doing to attract remote workers. We’re seeing, for example, in the likes of Ireland community called Grow remote, where they’re creating this kind of remote work community all around Ireland, basically and abroad. And they’re talking about the different incentives that are available, either tax or otherwise, we’re seeing a lot of tax authorities that are offering some deductions for remote work and whatnot. I think the biggest incentive, though, is these digital visas. That’s where, you know, you don’t have local income tax in those destinations. You’ve got to watch out make sure there’s a double taxation agreement in place or whatnot. But they would be the most obvious ones, because they’re, you know, they’re ultimately looking at it themselves as destination from a business proposition that, you know, again, these remote workers can be higher earning, there might be an innovation spillover, if they stay there long enough, some of them might end up wanting to stay in certain that country. And so there’s a real business case for those countries to seriously look at it and at the same time, then simultaneously, you’ve got to watch that you don’t, you know, basically do too much of it. You’ve got to manage it from an immigration perspective, because you get some destinations that become wildly popular, that all of a sudden lead to an overspill in that destination and pushing at the local so it’s a kind of a balancing act.
Rolando Rosas 44:39
What I’ve heard that so for years now, Costa Rica has been a destination for for Canadians and Americans alike prior to the pandemic, and I know that they’re really tough on on people trying to overstay their visas they make it very hard for residency. You know, it’s been been popular again, pop Before the pandemic, and they recognize exactly what you just said, they know they’ve got a big gym on their hands, a beautiful destination that people like going to, but they’re trying to preserve, you know, the cost because a ton of expats flowing into Costa Rica, all of a sudden jacks up the price, the labor goes up cost of getting housing goes up in and that spills over to the local markets as well.
John Lee 45:24
100%, I’m going to share with you a very, very interesting company commonly called working without borders.com, okay to basically family trips to Costa Rica. And that’s one of the things that’s actually coming up. As soon as I said, we did a survey over a year and a half ago on what the biggest pain points of work for money or and for individuals and companies that was tax, but actually within individuals, if you’re a parent who has kids education, so there’s a lot of things like Costa Rica, one of things that’s going on at the moment, but you’re you’re absolutely right, we’re not. These are tricky things to try and boss.
Rolando Rosas 45:56
And what would you say, you know, you’ve, you’ve had your share of working around the world as well. And now working with clients, both on the company side, on the corporate level, as well as employees, individuals that are trying to make the move or opening up these programs for their employees, what are some of the secrets or two or three secrets or gems that you’re flying under the radar that people don’t know about when it comes to this lifestyle?
John Lee 46:22
I think the biggest thing is that everyone thinks that you have to have a program. And when you commit to this initially, you think you have to have a program that’s absolutely perfect in every way. That’s when people start this. But there’s also a recognition, you know, one of the secrets is that you don’t have to have the perfect program. And what I mean by that is that it’s it’s almost impossible to be on top of absolutely every single risk, but the most important thing, what the biggest secrets is that you’re doing, you know, any program water hires money or work Meyer, that you look at, you know, a What’s the business benefit for doing this, you measure that, and then B, you look at what is the cost of the risks associated with this, to make sure that you’re controlling those where you’re minimizing the risks, and you’re smart about for example, what risks you take on, like, give you a very practical example. You know, in some countries, you may have to file a particular form after a date. So that might be technically what is in the rules. And so what you typically might have might see happen is that a lot of companies after only having their somebody there for a day or two, you know, they might not do that particular forum, they might risk assess and say, Well, look, the administration of that is not worth it for us. But maybe after a couple of days, we’ll have a trigger or days where we will apply for that particular form. And generally speaking for it’s also looking at the different countries and, and their risk tolerance as well and how they enforce things. And so you might have, you know, like in the European Union, common regulations across all different countries, but different countries might enforce things completely differently. So maybe in country a, you know, if you don’t have this done after a day, you know, you’re screwed. Whereas in Country B does tend to, you know, give you a pretty much a fair bit of freedom up until seven days, and then you’re fine. So it’s figuring out that balance and understanding that nuance in each of them. Yeah,
Rolando Rosas 48:13
Spain, for example, what you’re saying, but they were, they’re cracking down now, where people were like, I don’t have to file that stuff. They’re not now they’re really going after people that are not in compliance,
John Lee 48:25
Massa, and it takes about it, it makes sense. There’s a lot of money on the table here. There’s a lot of money on the table here, you know, especially going into recession. Yeah, especially going into recession. And so the tax audits take place this year relate to 2021, when tax residency rules are relaxed, whereas the tax audits that take place next year will relate to this year, when you had to have gotten your act together. That’s the biggest challenge is that these countries are now recognizing they’ve lost a lot of income because it is because people have emigrating working abroad or whatnot. So clearly, clearly, they’re gonna be able to recoup it. We’ve heard for example, examples in the UK. But HMRC and other cross departmental parts of the UK Government are actually building remote work task forces to go after people for exactly this. Wow. So I think the days of just wandering into a country for a couple of weeks and saying, Yeah, who cares? No one’s going to read track. Yeah, those days are gone. Don’t get me wrong. There’s some countries where they’re not quite tooled up for it. They’re doing a lot of paper, whatnot. But I think more and more countries name especially those that have lost a lot of tax income. You want to be very, very careful.
Rolando Rosas 49:34
Fascinating, fascinating. You know, I could I could ask you another 50 questions on this, because I’m fascinated by the topic I’ve I’ve worked from time to time abroad. And it’s just interesting that now this this compliance and crackdown on an enforcement is starting to happen because of what you’re saying though. The loss of revenue. John, if people want it To get in touch with you, they want to you know, they’re intrigued by what you’re saying, and want to know more and maybe use your services. What’s the best way to get in touch with you?
John Lee 50:10
The best way is to visit our website at wfa.team, so wfa.team, or they’re more than welcome to email me directly at John@wfa.team as well, I’m more than happy to personally help. We’ve actually gotten the team Imelda keen, who actually came up with the firefighter policy in hoppin, which is the most innovative policy in the world. And she also worked in publicists, which actually has the most impressive work on your policy in the world. So we’ve got a great team behind the scenes that are more than happy to help and share their lessons, because it’s a great community that we have access to as well as people from all around the world. So for things like this, it’s all about trying to help each other right. So more than happy to help any of the listeners who are on this that are struggling with this that have any questions.
Rolando Rosas 50:57
Terrific. And do you have you have a LinkedIn profile that folks want to check out the kind of stuff that you’re doing? I for those that are following us on the video? John is on LinkedIn. You can follow Him and follow his adventures in Lisbon, Portugal.
John Lee 51:16
That’s exactly yes. I have to say it’s been a really pleasure chatting to you boy today. Thank you so much for having me on.
Dave Kelly 51:21
Listen, John, I have a new favorite website wfa.team. And I’ll tell you a Rolando. I’m glad that we have the name global and our company name because I know that your work from anywhere policy would be conducive to me finding a beach somewhere.
Rolando Rosas 51:38
If that makes you a better and happier employee. I am all for it.
Dave Kelly 51:44
Hey, listen, if you enjoyed this episode, and you want to hear more about the future of work series, please check out all of our podcasts and other related topics at Circuitloops.com. We will see you there.
Rolando Rosas 51:58
All right. See you there.
Outro 52:00
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