Yes, there seems to be some confusion in the french interpretation of non lucrative visa categories. The benefit of this is that some remote work may be tacitly allowed. The complexity comes really from French taxation and social charges. Nobody can really say whether you will be chased for 9% of your income, 17% of your income, or 47%.
The problem is nobody can actually give you a clear and definitive answer, so if you do things like stay past six months, get a permanent apartment, get rid of your home elsewhere, there is a risk you could be asked to pay even several years later. It makes for a complicated situation, and for this reason I think another country with a clearly specified digital nomad program and tax regime is a much safer bet.
I can get more detailed outside of a public forum.
I am speaking of highly specific regulations in France which I have direct personal experience of. If you decide to work in retail after receiving your multi year residency, the French government has no objections to this as long as you have sufficiently integrated.
The multi-year residency requires B2 proficiency as of this year, and also allows working in France. It is of course up to french authorities as to whether it is granted, taking into account your time in the country and your level of integration.
You only need savings of about 1.5x the SMIC (minimum wage) - currently 1801.80€ monthly for 12 months and you can get a year visa. If you have enough the following year, you can renew. Do that four times and you can ask for a more or less permanent multi-year residency if you speak french by that time. So as you can see, you could probably sell a house in the US for a decent profit and invest time enough to gain French residency without needing George Clooney money.
Man this is spot on for the rural Philippines too, right down to the well details And the pathetic trickle of tap water for. Few hrs a day. At least it rains more in the Philippines I guess.
Already left and in Europe but in a bit of a grey area with residency between two countries here. Doing my best to get sorted more permanently and to stop sending my tax money to the US and instead send it to one of the two governments (whoever is willing to let us continue as a family to live).
It was stressful and expensive over the last year+ but wife and I are both in high risk categories for detention, persecution, and possible separation from our new baby in the US, so not much choice. We are liquidating assets there which is not good for our financial future but hopefully we aren't too old to rebuild stability in Europe somewhere, or failing that, the Philippines where we have much better residency privileges.
The whole thing about Americans causing housing crunches is absolutely ridiculous. The total number of Americans in Spain is something like 68k, and many of them can be assumed to live together or with Spanish spouses who would need housing themselves, so the impact on housing is a rounding error.
Another thing to remember is that a lot of these Americans in Spain are children of Spanish citizens that were born in the US to avail of US citizenship, which is not uncommon in families with the means to do it.
You are not oppressing anyone if you move to a new country and make an effort to integrate, follow their laws, and leave the country cleaner and better than you found it, or don't leave the country and begin to contribute to its tax base and social system as soon as you can do so.
It's much worse because you can choose not to watch Netflix but you don't have much choice if you are sick.
It's more like receiving a bill for songs you hear on the radio in the grocery store, on the bus, in other people's cars passing by. You didn't ask for the benefit, could not really negotiate it, but it was useful to you when you got it. You could maybe avoid it by not leaving your house.
Yes, there seems to be some confusion in the french interpretation of non lucrative visa categories. The benefit of this is that some remote work may be tacitly allowed. The complexity comes really from French taxation and social charges. Nobody can really say whether you will be chased for 9% of your income, 17% of your income, or 47%.
The problem is nobody can actually give you a clear and definitive answer, so if you do things like stay past six months, get a permanent apartment, get rid of your home elsewhere, there is a risk you could be asked to pay even several years later. It makes for a complicated situation, and for this reason I think another country with a clearly specified digital nomad program and tax regime is a much safer bet.
I can get more detailed outside of a public forum.