movingtoportugal

I promised to some readers a while back that I would post an update on our situation with regards to making our move to Portugal all official. For those who didn’t hear about the fun and games we had the threads can be found here:

Red Tape in Portugal
Portugal Red Tape Rant

I am pleased to say some progress has been made! We are now officially Portuguese residents, albeit currently only for one year as no-one at our local camara (town-hall,) seemed to be able to get their head around the fact that we live here in Portugal but make all our money in the UK via remote working.

The residency was more complicated that we had been led to believe. In the end we needed to have a form from our local village council signed by two residents of the village – an interesting job at the time when we didn’t KNOW two residents of the village. A big thank you goes out to the man in the bar and the lady in the shop!

After we had this form all we needed was passports and tenancy papers and we were good to go. I have made this sound a lot easier than it really was – it required several visits to various government buildings, including an extra two trips when we discovered that Tavira camara had managed to get our address wrong on the first residencia certificate we were given.

Our next task is getting this certificate renewed when our year is up. This involves us getting a form called a “workers S1,” from the UK (now in progress) which proves to Portugal that

Portugal Red Tape

we are still paying national insurance in the UK and therefore covered by a reciprocal arrangement. I think we may need to take a native Portuguese speaker when we come to do this part!

Health cover was next. Until we have our workers S1, we don’t fancy our chances of registering with the local health centre, so if we need a doctor we will go and pay 40 euros at the local private surgery, something a lot of people do anyway. We have also taken out private healthcare for emergencies.

Driving licences are a bit of a minefield, and one that the majority of the expats we speak to choose to ignore, but we have always been determined to be 100% official and respectful of the local laws.

As soon as you become resident in Portugal, or as soon as you no longer live at the address on your UK licence, your licence is technically invalid. It needs to be replaced with a Portuguese licence or supplemented with a piece of paper from the IMTT (Portuguese equivalent of the DVLA,) which makes it legal again.

This part of the red tape was the easiest at all. Twenty minutes at Faro IMTT resulted in the correct form being issued. It is slightly odd that despite having a photocopier onsite they insist you go to a small kiosk down the road to get the documents copied, but if it had been 100% straightforward it wouldn’t have felt right!

So, for now at least, we are completely official and with a bit of time to sort out our taxation situation, the next part of the battle. Anyone going through these processes is advised to take it slow and try to treat any tiny bit of progress as a significant step forward – you do get there eventually.

If anyone is doing any of the bits we have been successful with and would like any advice, please leave a comment and we will try to help.

Photo Credit: Kozumel

Technorati Tags: Moving abroad, moving to portugal, red tape, residencia, residency

Portuguese “red tape” and paperwork is once again the thing consuming our time and energy at the moment.

When we first moved over here several months ago, it was right at the top of our priority list to get all the paperwork in order. I am not sure quite how it moved back down the list, but I think it is something to do with the fact that by the time we had managed to get the pretend fiscal number our bank made up for us changed into a real one (don’t even ask!) and fought for several months to have internet and phone connected (which was so difficult because of the aforementioned moody fiscal number,) we didn’t have the spirit or inclination to do any more at that point.

We found some sand, buried our heads firmly in it, and without mentioning it to each other, both independently agreed not to speak of it again until we got towards a deadline.

Calculating Tax and Other Red Tape in Portugal

Now the time has come to once again start visiting a range of government buildings where people frown and shrug and shake their heads, and ask questions on expat forums where everyone gives a slightly different answer to every question because they have met with slightly different government officials who have dealt with things slightly differently.

Anyone moving to Portugal should not underestimate how time consuming and difficult it can be to plough through the red tape and legalities. We are determined that we want to stay here for good, and, as such, we intend to do everything completely legally. This makes it hard to get advice from other expats as a lot of people you meet haven’t bothered or “got around” to doing it properly, or have been given hugely conflicting advice from the experts.

Add in the complications of the fact that we both have a UK income, and the implications for tax and social security in both countries, you end up with a situation that makes even the most helpful of accountants start doing their own version of the “Portuguese shurug.”

If it weren’t for the fact we are honest people who want to do everything by the book, it would be easy for us to go and bury our heads back in that sand and forget about it for another few months, so we can see why so many of our fellow expats appear to do just that. The other day I ended up with internet browser tabs simultaneously open for the European Union, Portugal’s Financias, HM Revenue and Customs and the UK NHS – that is enough to spoil anyone’s day.

Still, after days of research, we have a clear plan and with the help of kind-hearted accountants and forum members, we are pretty sure we know what things have to be done and in what order. Now we just need to voluntarily have several stressful, crap days in order to do it all. Wish us luck!

Technorati Tags: fiscal number, portugal red tape, residency