What is the best voice service in Europe?

Hello,
I’m preparing to travel again to Europe, but this time I want to bring our bikes. 2 road bikes. I’ll be traveling from USA to the Milan or Rome airport.

I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts, experience and tips on traveling with a bike. I plan on being fairly stationary with our location and staying in one spot for 2-3 months, then (hopefully train) to another spot for 3 months, etc. So it’s the initial international flight I’m most concerned about. But realistically, I think a regional flight will be inevitable with the bikes, too.

I know a bike box will be huge and we will have to break down the bike, thankfully our bikes are fairly light weight. I’m expecting it to be a huge pain…but I think the reward of having a good bike to roam around with will be invaluable. Especially since we will be staying in rural areas and don’t want to rent a car.

General range of cost?

Anyone bring their bike and glad they did? …Wish they didn’t?..

Thanks!

I vaguely remember hearing about such a service before, but I’m drawing a blank on the name. Basically I left my tablet on a connecting flight in Europe, right before my main flight to Thailand. They have my tablet and are willing to ship it out for me, but people have warned me there’s a big risk of it getting “lost in the mail” if I ship something expensive like that to Thailand.

I’m wondering if there’s a service or community, where I can find a nomad who’s in Europe/heading to Thailand soon, so I can have it shipped to them in Europe and pay them to ferry it down here for me? I met someone in Budapest a ways back who had built something for this type of use-case, but I can’t remember the name of it. Any help would be appreciated!

What’s the best place?
For residency I’m looking at Portugal and they have the NHR (non habitual resident) program which would exempt dividends from foreign income.
So all I’m really looking for is the best place to actually start the company.
Biggest factors are of course low taxes and ease of setting up the company plus a business bank account that enables me to receive payments through Stripe.

What I found so far:
Hong Kong
Corporate tax rate of 16.5% (8.25% for the first HK$2 million)
⊕/⊖ offshore income from outside HK is exempt from taxation but it’s not clear whether this can be done in the first year and prorated or if it’s only through filing the offshore exemption claim. This might take two years and requires not income from HK at all. More info on that would be great
⊖ seems very difficult to get a business bank account
⊖ necessary services and fees are roughly around €2000 / year
⊖ accounting requirements seem to be very strict
⊕ Doesn’t require local partner
⊕ Agencies available that seem to handle most of the work

Singapore
Corporate tax rate of 17% (0% on the first S$100k, 8.5% up to S$300k)
⊖ requires a local director. What are the implications of this?

Malta
Corporate tax rate of 35%
There is the “full imputation system” but I don’t really understand it.
"In most cases, the tax refund to the shareholder is 6/7 of the tax paid by the company on profits distributed as dividends. The tax refund rate may be different in the following cases: " This would result in an effective corporate tax of around 5%.
⊖ European customers would have to pay VAT and I’d have to deal with that

Cyprus
Corporate tax rate of 12.5% and there seem to be ways to lower this
⊖ European customers would have to pay VAT and I’d have to deal with that
⊖ requires staying in Cyprus for 2 months / year

I find it surprising how much research this requires and how much “it depends” information is out there when I’d assume that there are probably thousands of digital nomads who probably have very similar requirements.

Hi there!

I’m looking for international sim card services. I looked for other posts, and I know there are other alternatives, but I’m interested to have an international sim-card with only data plan, just to be used while I get a local one.

Alternatives:

• Go Sim - http://www.gosim.com/data-sim-card.html
• World Sim - https://www.worldsim.com/top-up#data-bundle
• Travel Sim - https://travelsim.com/data-roaming-packages/
• Telestial - http://www.telestial.com/international-sim-card

¿Any experience using any of these services?
thnx!

Hi all

What do you guys use for receiving both sms & calls on a European phone number?

I’d like to have a phone number that does not change for at least 1 or 2 years.

I did my homework & found this thread but it’s only about US services so I don’t think it’s relevant: What’s a good US call and SMS forwarding service?
Also, I looked into Google Hangout but it doesn’t support European phone numbers.

Hello the community,

I am thinking about opening a business bank account in another country outside of France.
I live in Paris and I work as a freelancer. The taxes on my salary are very expensive (around 85%). I would like to know if there are better options for bank accounts within Europe.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Regards,

J

Hi all,

What do you guys use for call and sms forwarding?

Currently I have a Skype US number that forwards to my local phone number. However, it can’t receive SMS’es so that’s a huge dealbreaker.

There’s RingCentral - but that starts at $29/month which is rather pricey.

Any suggestions? I’d just like to be able to call and text like I’m still in the US (when I’m not). Thanks in advance!

Sarah

Hi, I know there are a few posts around this topic but none of them quite answer my questions.

I am British and currently a resident in the UK.
Next year I am going to become a non-resident and spend over a year traveling mostly around Europe, moving every few weeks never staying anywhere longer than a month. (My first venture into becoming a digital nomad!)

I am remote, self employed, software developer working mostly for one client based in the UK.

Where am I liable to pay taxes?
From what I have read I will not be liable to pay taxes in UK, can anyone confirm this?
If not the UK then where if I am moving every few weeks?
If possible I want to avoid starting a company as this seems unnecessarily complicated for my work setup.

Thank you in advance for any help

Hello, I’m a nomad based in Asia, but recently incorporated in Wyoming. Does anyone use a mail forwarding service with a Wyoming street address that you would recommend?

Hi everyone,

we are a very small remote german company (3 at the moment) but we are expanding and three new colleagues will be working for us in the upcoming weeks/months. Up until now, we used Skype and my regular mobile phone line for all the intern/support and selling calls but since we will have soon other people working for support and selling too, we need to profesionalice that aspect.

In your opinion and experience, what is the best and more cost efficient VOIP / SIP service that we could use? Thanks!

A friend of mine is setting off on her first long solo trip, starting in Brazil. She will initially be backpacking but may turn to working on the road at some point.

I’d like to get her a nice gift for the trip and though I have a few ideas, I thought I’d come here for some further inspiration. What have you found yourself missing on the road, or what item or service has made your travels better/more comfortable/enjoyable ?
An example from my experience: a way to organise laundry, eg packing cubes or dry bags.

New Year 2017 is coming I’m wondering where digital nomads going to celebrate it? And whats special plan do you have?
I’m still at phase of planning for New Year and cant decide a place in Europe where to go Italy, Spain, Portugal?

Hi Guys! I’m planing to kick start my Nomad Life style in July, and I’m researching cities in Europe that can provide three things:

1. Low cost (I’m earning money in Brazilian Real, not Dollars). Especially regarding rent.
2. Some kind of Digital Nomad community and Co-working spaces.
3. Security. Low criminality.

All other characteristics (Weather, english speaking), are not as important as the ones above.
=D

Hello, I’m thinking about launching a new company in Hong Kong for an international EC business though I’m not a resident nor have any address, will not live in Hong Kong.
I’ve googled and found hundreds of incorporation service offices but don’t have any idea which one is trust worthy, and which one is rip-off or con.
Can anybody recommend a specific service or tell me how to find a good service?

Think American Blue Apron, or Moscow-based Elementaree for that matter. I’m not a big fan of food-shopping or market-haggling, you know. Yet I’m OK with cooking myself Such services would definitely make a stay easier.

Hi everyone,

I’m thinking of changing my current setup for mail/post receiving and scanning (at the moment I have some friends doing it for me), and I was wondering if anyone has any specific feedback/advice regarding UK companies. I’m currently looking at UKPostBox.

Any personal insight would be greatly appreciated!

Sara

Over the past few months I started doing javascript development work and I’m trying to build projects for my portfolio. I’m working on a productivity tool that would have a paid tier for users and I’m not sure about the best practices for setting up this up for myself in terms of tax efficiency and ways to incorporate.

Right now it’s only me who works on this and I project a modest user base in the beginning with perhaps a few hundred dollars of revenues that I would like to expand ideally. I’m looking at services like Stripe which has an option for individuals without the need for incorporation.

Meanwhile I’d like to reach to a point where I can hire some people to develop with me and run operations if there’s more steady cash flow coming in. Fundraising is also of course an option on the table. I don’t foresee a lot of potential for legal liabilities with this project but I’d like to be personally protected. I’d Hence I think incorporation is inevitable down the road.

I’m not sure if I should incorporate as early as possible, since there is some costs associated with this. But if I were to do this, with US status, I am wondering what should I be looking for to ensure that I can run this well in the long run. If any nomads have had experience with the business side of a personal start-up project I’d love to hear your opinion and experiences.

At the moment I’m scouting AirBnB for a good place to stay for september. Which houses have you been & can you recommend? I’m looking at all kinds of locations.

Thanks in advance!