Employing myself

Hi,

As an EU citizen, living in another EU country, I will soon need to declare myself and get a residency permit. I'm currently living off my crypto assets, and the yield they generate.

To get a permit, I need to show that I have enough money to sustain myself, and at some point, I will have to create a paper trail showing that I'm self employed. Ideally, I'd prefer to avoid mentioning "crypto" in front of the immigration officer, or anyone really, as, from experience, it's between to "dealing drugs" and "human organs trafficking" in the mind of state servants (and general plebs).

I was thinking about the following:

- Creating a company in a third country, maybe an LLC in the US or an Estonian e-company.
- Transfer (loan?) some of my assets to the company
- Invoice the company as a self-employed worker for "management" of it. In order to make it look clean in case of an audit, I can use a third party service, such as deel.com to pay me the minimum to get the visa.

The goal is to keep the overall admin costs low. Not necessarily avoid taxes, as I could get a tax residency in Portugal through NHR anyway and cash out more if needed. I can too just stay under the radar and not declare myself, but, as a "semi digital nomad" with a family I'm not sure it would be durable.

I've been discussing with local lawyers, but they're clueless as always when they encounter a case a bit exotic.

Sols said:

As an EU citizen living in another EU country, it's usually enough to show having enough wealth or showing stable income. If you can get an accountant and immigration lawyer together to prepare documentation showing you have a large amount of money in crypto, with an explainable source, that might be enough. No need to employ yourself.

But it might be different in your case. Just bringing it up since you're saying you've had no success with local lawyers so far, so this might not have been considered properly.

Sure, this would probably work if you make it look legit. Maybe not Estonia because it introduces a VAT overhead, but a US LLC seems fine. It might not hold up in immigration court if all cards are on the table. But you're an EU citizen in an EU country; it's extremely rare for anyone to really question anything. And even if they do, you're still exercising your right to free movement.

Thanks for the comment. I've been discussing with tax lawyers so far, but you're right, an immigration lawyer would be probably more useful.

Regarding funds etc, I was mainly thinking of withdrawing 1 year of expenses and showing the bank account. It's a "poor" country by EU standards, so I wouldn't have to cash out a lot of money.