About Global Nomad Guide

Global Nomad Guide was founded by Anna and Jakub. Anna is a Global Mobility Lead & HR Generalist focused on International Payroll & Benefits with a background in Project Management and Accounting. Before founding the GNG, she worked for a VC-founded US-based finch, running their global payrolls, creating international benefits plans, building their Work From Anywhere policies, and managing the mobility programs (immigration, tax compliance, relocation).
Jakub is a Video Quality Controller, Producer & Marketer who’s been working on delivering video & digital campaigns for some of the biggest global brands, including Fitbit & EA. He is a QC Titan who, when it comes to Global Nomad Guide, gets his fingers into all content & marketing matters.

After spending 6 months traveling all over South-East Asia, Indonesia, and Australia in 2015 and 3 months on a road trip in the USA in 2016, we have completely fallen in love with traveling and decided to get ourselves remote jobs and work from anywhere in the world. We’ve worked remotely on & off since 2016, but both went fully remote in 2020 (yeah, the year of ‘rona’!). Since then, we’ve been slomading around Europe.
We both love the flexibility and time saving and would never go back to the office! 

We are both generally pretty particular regarding knowing what we get ourselves into and doing things the right way. So no wonder that when we started working remotely, we noticed how scattered and difficult is to find solid and reliable information on leading the location-independent lifestyle, especially when it comes to digital nomads, remote worker taxes, and immigration.
The Digital Nomad Visas pop up every month, but hardly anyone was talking about what impact applying for those visas will have on nomad tax residencies and taxes. We’ve discovered that there is a massive gap in the market in access to knowledge regarding international tax and wealth management for people who earn in 5 or in lower 6 figures.

People earning in the higher end of six or seven figures get advice from big, fancy international tax and wealth advisors. They pay the big bucks for access to experts with global experience, and thanks to that, they are able to optimize their taxes, take advantage of massive tax breaks and get advice on investment opportunities. That is not something that most remote workers can afford. They also usually don’t have enough net worth to be worth the hassle for the big international tax companies. However,  those remote workers usually have enough income that they should consider and pick their tax residencies and liabilities wisely.  
What that means so far is that most digital nomads chose to either: (1) keep paying taxes in their home country, even though they are not present there for most of the year, (2) get rid of their home tax residency if they can, and move around as a perpetual traveler.   Both of these options are tax/immigration grey areas; they are not ideal and leave remote workers open to several tax liabilities. Not to mention that working on a tourist visa in some countries is a criminal offense. Regardless, so far, a lot of people have been able to fly under the radar. This is, however, changing very quickly and is no longer something that can be ignored.

The pandemic has put a strain on governments all over the world, the public debt have skyrocketed, and what governments are doing? Most governments are either printing money (but that leads to inflation) or are trying to make sure they can collect the taxes where the taxes are due. With Digital Nomads community growing so rapidly in numbers, they are now visible more than ever before. With tourism being at a standstill due to various lockdowns and Covid restrictions, countries are trying to cash in, on remote workers and are finding new ways to bring more income into their borders. The wave of new Digital Nomad Visas is one of the most interesting ways to do so.