• mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The real fun were the British immigrants( who of course called themseves ex-pats) who lived full time in Spain. Most were retirees that migrated to avoid taxes and extend their retirement funds.

    After Brexit, Spain said “okay, you have a year to file as a permanent resident/citizen and setup a tax ID, or you will require a Visa.”

    So of course, a lot of them didn’t follow the new law and were summarily ejected from Spain to Britain. This includes people who owned homes in Spain, and had no legal residences in Britan. They then needed to file for Visas to go back to Spain, and apply for citizenship the long and hard way, which is not guaranteed.

    Can you guess how many of them were saying they would never have voted for Brexit if they knew it would affect their immigration status too?

    • BubblyMango@lemmy.wtf
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      1 year ago

      Who in their right mind would vote for brexit while living outside of britain soley thanks to the EU uniformity?

      • Wirrvogel@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Who? The people who refuse to call themselves immigrants and instead invented the word expat, you know, to distinguish themselves from the people they were perfectly happy to see hurt by Brexit. Unfortunately (but rightly) the word expat was not the shield they thought it was.

    • Anekdoteles@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      The real fun were the British immigrants( who of course called themseves ex-pats) who lived full time in Spain. Most were retirees that migrated to avoid taxes and extend their retirement funds.

      Sounds like tax fraud, because if you stay for a longer time in another country and/or the main part of your life happens in that place, it is very likely that you have to pay taxes in the new home country.

            • Anekdoteles@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              No, that’s why I said, that it sounded like tax fraud. So, now that you distracted from it, back to the topic: Are you sure they pay taxes in Spain?

              • mindlight@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                As far as I know people move to Spain when they retire because the cost of living is much lower there. So they get their pension from the country they are from and the pay Spanish taxes since the line in Spain.

                So they avoid the tax in their home country which often is higher.

                It’s ok if you want to think that there is an enormous tax fraud going on, it doesn’t matter.