Costa Rica signs law to attract digital nomads

I&#x27;m sure others who&#x27;ve spent more time in Costa Rica can provide more color, but I found it a very interesting place. There&#x27;s generally an &quot;enlightened&quot; government in place with relatively low corruption.<p>The government has prioritized important things like clean drinking water, food safety standards, power, and internet (sometimes at the tradeoff of roads). There&#x27;s a national emphasis on preserving the natural ecology of the country, and there&#x27;s no military. The budget for which goes into social programs, education, and health care.<p>You can go from the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean in a few hours, which is great. But be warned the coastal areas are both incredibly hot <i>and</i> humid. Fortunately, much of the country is at altitude and not nearly as hot thanks to numerous volcanoes which <i>also</i> feature a hot springs culture in certain areas. Because of the rain forests there&#x27;s an impossible number of flora and fauna (and of course rain). All of this combines to make the country quite beautiful with some of the freshest tropical fruits you&#x27;ll ever eat.<p>The population is generally well educated, Intel used to have a chip fab there for a time and HP, Dell, Bayer, Bosch, IBM and more operate there. It&#x27;s a heavily services oriented economy. Housing is affordable and the people are generally friendly enough. Food can be relatively basic, but is very filling and generally cheap.<p>It&#x27;s also fair to point out the downsides. Transportation around can be...rugged and the cities can be bogged down with traffic. The Capital city, San José...I didn&#x27;t care much for...at least near the city center. It&#x27;s also a very small country with a very small population (~4 million). This can be constraining for some outsiders.<p>Overall though, I found it a fascinating and beautiful country and really did enjoy my time there. I would definitely go back given the chance. I also had a friend who lived there for several years and ran an consulting business to companies in the U.S. The timezone turned out to be rather advantageous and he was able to easy support U.S. East and West coast companies.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Costa_Rica" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Costa_Rica</a>

&gt; They will also be exempted from local income taxes, will be able to open local bank accounts and can drive in Costa Rica using their country’s license, among other benefits.<p>With this kind of visas I&#x27;ve always been curious: Unless you&#x27;re US or Eritrea citizen, does this mean you don&#x27;t have to pay any income tax at all, given you loose your home country&#x27;s tax residentship in 183 days after leaving?

We have been collecting digital nomad visas at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;travel.stackexchange.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;158462&#x2F;4188" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;travel.stackexchange.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;158462&#x2F;4188</a> there are a lot post-covid.

Something I have wondered about for a long time is how many &quot;digital nomads&quot; there really are in the world? Are we talking hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?<p>It seems to me that maybe the lifestyle is hyped online way beyond its actual likely prevalence.<p>For taxonomic purposes I define a digital nomad as somebody who travels for an extended period of time and actively makes a living online while doing so. I would exclude independently wealthy people and tourists. There have always been rich travelers.

To those of you look to take advantage of this, I would strongly recommend getting a high-rise &#x2F; 4 wheeler. THey are probably twice as expensive as the low-ride sedans but you won&#x27;t hate yourself while driving it. The infrastructure &#x2F; roads were terrible especially around tourist destinations.<p>Data point: Visited Costa rica around 2012<p>As a side note, is there good schooling in Costa rica? Asking for a toddler. Cheers

This law as described would exclude most of the digital nomads I&#x27;ve met, because it requires &quot;Proof of a stable monthly salary, fixed income or a average monthly income, during the last year.&quot; Most digital nomads I&#x27;ve met do contract work rather than working for a fixed salary. Most of the people I know who work for a fixed salary, even on programming and sysadmin jobs where they can WfH frequently, aren&#x27;t free to just move to wherever they want to move to; they have to be able to go to the office at least a few times a month. Or did before the pandemic, anyway; maybe that will change.

There doesn&#x27;t seem to be an age limit on this which is interesting. Someone posted a worker visa website the other day and some of them had age limits like applicant has to be &lt; 35 yo.

&gt; “Tourists who stay for longer periods of time redistribute their money in the value chains generated by tourism,” Segura said.<p>Well that&#x27;s not true. All this will do is further commoditize the housing market and price locals out of the very neighborhoods they grew up in. Digital nomadism aims to turn the whole of the global south into a company town for the benefit of the owners of Intellectual Property in the global north (plus the politicians who helped create these horrific Intellectual Property systems and laws), as well as the privileged knowledge laborers who work for them.<p>In other words; without access to the firewalled and &#x27;IP protected&#x27; networks of scientific knowledge (the sum total of all human progress) the global south is perpetually blocked from growing, and has become a plaything of the global north elite, to be used and abused and plundered at will.

We have a similar law in Croatia for a while; not sure how many digital nomads are currently working from Croatia.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;croatianomad.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;croatianomad.com&#x2F;</a>

I’m going to send this to my brother, he has been thinking of doing telemedicine and touring the US in an RV, maybe this is even better. Is the internet in Costa Rica as good as the article says?

Any decent real estate sites and recommended areas for people curious about what the living situations and pricing are like?

Does anyone know if Colombia has this type of digital nomad visa?

Be aware drug trafficking is part of the culture there.

This looks to me like the first step to generally get rid of income taxes (taxing people for working instead of for using the resources of the country).

How is Internet in Costa Rica?

Visiting this website made my iPhone get very hot.

Interestingly enough, also has no covid restrictions [NO test, NO quarantine, NO vaccine]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.travelinglifestyle.net&#x2F;countries-without-covid-travel-restrictions-no-test-no-quarantine&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.travelinglifestyle.net&#x2F;countries-without-covid-t...</a><p>Would be great to see more remote friendly + no covid restriction places esp as other countries double down.

I’m surprised that this excludes digital nomads from local income taxes. You’d think tax revenue would be a big incentive for them to attract people, and most countries have anti double taxation laws.

Pura Vida!<p>Just kidding, I really did not like Costa Rica. The exchange rate ( The colon is worth more than the dollar, really ??? ), the people were rude, power goes out a lot and internet was spotty at best ( on the Atlantic side ).