Moving to Spain, National Ins, NHS

[Twospaniels]

Daughter is thinking of moving to Spain. I confess I don’t know all the ins and outs.

She is self employed and contracts with an American company. She can do her work from anywhere in Europe or USA pretty much.

However my thought is about National Insurance contributions in the UK. Should she continue to make contributions? I just wonder about whether she’ll come home in the future and need to access the NHS and also get her full state pension (she’s 28 now and single)

I lived in Spain for two years and still accessed the NHS fine. It's up to your daughter if she wants to make voluntary NI payments. I didn't and have a few gaps in my record now but have plenty of years left to make up for it. Depends on how long she intends to move there for and if she can afford to pay NI on her Spain salary. Also, she doesn't need to decide now. She has so many years where you can fill in any gaps later on.

NHS entitlement is based on residency criteria not NI contributions.Brexit means any reciprocal pension arrangements etc will be phased out. If the company is us based she may be liable for tax there and/or wherever she is living.

If she plans to live in Spain more than 90 days (I think) she will have to go for residency here in Spain.
Also she will need a NIE number if she plans to rent or buy property.
She will need private medical insurance. As she will only get emergency care free I think.
There is also tax to consider.

If she is a UK National she will have to apply for a visa. She has no freedom of movement in the EU any more.

Has she looked into this?

It’s an absolute nightmare for remote workers. She can’t go on the non-lucrative visa and work, even if it’s not for a Spanish company, they changed the rules with Brexit - so her company will need to sort out tax requirements, and there’s a weird requirement for a tax base there. It’s an absolute nightmare.

Otherwise she can only do 90 days in Spain, and then she’d need to leave the EU.

Thanks everyone. It is just something she is considering, so she hasn’t done a whole lot of homework on it yet.
Some useful information here thanks.

It might not be that easy. It's almost impossible to work remotely for American companies in several EU countries because it opens the company to tax liabilities. She'll also need to pay the equivalent of NI and taxes in Spain in order to get health insurance there which will be a requirement of the visa.

Unless she’s a US citizen she can’t “just go to the US and work”. She’s need to go through a full visa application process first - and one that gives employment authorization.

But that wasn’t the question…

NHS access has nothing to do with NI. It’s based on residency. So, someone who lives in the UK but doesn’t work (thus doesn’t pay NI) has as much access to the NHS as someone who works and pays NI on every pay check.

NI contributions are for benefits (such as JSA) and pensions. I left the UK before I had made enough contributions to receive a full state pension when I finally reach pension age. I was given a quote by the DWP as to how much I would need to pay to top up my contributions and calculated that in my case it wasn’t worth it.

NHS is based on residency, if we find out someone is out of the UK for more than 3m we remove them from our GP list

Agree with a lot of the above - a heck of a lot of caution is needed.

The initial problem here might well be the plan to work in Spain at all since freedom of movement for Brits for work purposes has gone.

For info employees Social Charges (“NI” in Brit speak) on income are normally levied in the country of employment/where the employee is based..It’s more complex for those self employed but I know some European countries (e.g. France) are very hot on checking on the exact status of individuals in that situation so I’d recommend professional advice.

Entitlement to NHS treatment, UK GP, etc is based on residency, not NI contributions…

Ultimately being resident in country A whilst working in country B and doing so legitimately with regard to tax, social charges and healthcare in both countries can be done but as somebody upthread said it can be a nightmare, involve a lot of paperwork and is not something to be done on a whim.

Should read being “resident in country A whilst working in or for an employer in country B…”