[Beltalowda]

I moved back to my native Netherlands after several years abroad and encountered significant problems with the bureaucracy, more so than in any foreign country I've lived. I don't think it's an expat problem, rather it's a "if you fall slightly outside of the happy path then you can expect to run in to a lot of trouble"-problem. It's just that expats are a group of people that fairly frequently tend to fall outside of the happy path.

[smueller1234]

This is it, 100%. Anything non standard and you get the long forms instead!

By the way, I've lived in a few European countries and researched many others. The Netherlands was by far the easiest/most efficient in terms of bureaucracy.

[Beltalowda]

> Anything non standard and you get the long forms instead!

If only. Instead you run in to catch-22s and simply get a shrug and "it's not possible".

The big downside of being the "easiest/most efficient" is that it deals with exceptions poorly; once you fall outside of the "efficient" workflow you're screwed. Lots of people run in to problems with this and people literally become homeless because of this. Ironically, it's easier if you're actually homeless and sleeping on the street – as opposed to being homeless and having enough money to stay at hotels or are temporarily staying with friends – as there are some special exceptions for people registered at the salvation army and such.

[MaxPengwing]

This is exactly why I a native Swede had to leave Sweden for Ireland. Im now back in Sweden and jesus christ the bureaucracy is insanely streamlined and optimised for the upper middle class happy path people. Everyone else is looked upon with confusion and disgust.

[wink]

My favourite story of this is where "falling out of the happy path" included my parents being self-employed and the sheer surprise that people can have wildly differing income per month :P

[jacquesm]

This is my main reason for having a BV in the first place: to ensure that even though the business takes in very variable amounts of money my private income stream is extremely regular. It makes taxes a whole lot simpler. The only thing I still have to take care of privately are the occasional dividend payment but that's an easy thing to do.

Anybody with > 100K euros in income from consultancy (which should be most of them!) living in NL should consider doing the same thing. There is some overhead but that's easily farmed out to an administrator.

[piva00]

I'm interested to hear if you ever compared with Sweden, just for the sake of curiosity. As an immigrant here coming originally from a very bureaucratic country (Portuguese + Italian levels of dysfunctional bureaucracy, with a Latin American cherry on top) I found bureaucracy here a complete breeze. I basically only need the internet to do 90%+ of my bureaucratic needs with the odd visit to an agency's office for getting documents expedited (national ID, driver's licence, etc.).

As far as I can compare with some immigrant friends in the Netherlands I feel Swedish bureaucracy is on the same level or even less burdensome than the Dutch one.

[itwillbegoneto]

I have a Dutch neighbor who married a Turkish woman. They run a couple of successful companies, and their goal is to relocate to Rotterdam where his family is from. He wanted to incorporate a company in NL, and transfer his current business there. Because he lives abroad, despite being a Dutch citizen, he was not able to open a business bank account, so he was not able to open a company on his own. His options were to move home or get everything executed in his brother's name until he's ready to move (which he choose).

Of course, he also complains heavily about the bureaucracy here, which is equally broken but in a different way.

[nibbleshifter]

I have heard the same from some Dutch people I know, particularly around the topic of the tax office.