The step-by-step plan for Belize

In this step you learn how you may come to live in Belize. With a Dutch passport you need no visa. But you may only stay thirty days at a time. If you want longer, you extend at Immigration, the immigration service, each time by thirty days.

Whoever wants to stay chooses one of four routes:

• The QRP. The Qualified Retirement Program of the Belize Tourism Board, the BTB. According to the BTB for whoever is 40 or older and receives at least 2,000 US dollars a month from outside Belize, from pension, annuity, AOW, investments or savings.
• Permanent residence. You apply for permanent residence once you have lived legally in Belize for at least a year. In that year you may be away for no more than fourteen days in total.
• Work. A Temporary Employment Permit, a work permit, through the Labour Department. Also for whoever starts there as self-employed.
• A Belizean partner. Whoever marries a Belizean can become a citizen after a year of marriage.

Almost everything goes in English. Every document that isn't in English you have translated.

Know too that the travel advice of NederlandWereldwijd is yellow. That means: you can go there, but there are particular security risks. How that affects your choice of where to live is in step 1.3.

Not retired yet? The QRP asks for income you already receive, but that may also come from investments or savings. Whoever wants to work in Belize looks at the work permit. With the QRP you may not work.

In this step you see what emigrating to Belize does to your tax, your AOW and your healthcare. With Belize those three differ.

Tax. The Netherlands and Belize have no tax treaty. Belize isn't in the treaty table of the Belastingdienst. Then the Netherlands may tax. So the Netherlands keeps taxing your AOW, your pension and your annuity. How that works out is in steps 3.2 and 3.3.

The AOW. Here Belize is an exception. The Netherlands and Belize concluded a treaty in 2005 on the export of benefits, which has applied since 1 April 2006. Because of it Belize is among the 36 countries where the full AOW goes. Even whoever goes alone keeps the AOW for a single person.

Healthcare. Belize isn't on the list of treaty countries for healthcare. So there's no CAK. Your Dutch basic insurance stops when you deregister. After that a policy of your own is your healthcare. See step 3.1.

Your AOW build-up stops. The treaty arranges the payment, not the build-up. Whoever lives in Belize and doesn't work in the Netherlands is usually no longer insured. Each year until your AOW age then costs 2 percent of your later AOW. You can insure yourself voluntarily with the SVB. The application has to be in within one year.

In this step you choose where you want to live. Belize is small, but the differences between the cayes (the islands off the coast), the coast and the interior are large. Whoever knows the country from holidays doesn't know it yet.

Read the travel advice of NederlandWereldwijd first. The colour code is yellow. This is in it:

• Serious crime. Armed gangs are active. Especially in the remote forested areas on the border with Guatemala and in the southern neighbourhoods of Belize City.
• The border region. The villages on the border with Guatemala have hardly any phone or internet coverage.
• Tropical storms. They occur mainly between June and November.
• Healthcare is limited. Whoever ends up in hospital sometimes has to be transferred to another country.

So for each place, look at three things:

• Healthcare. Ask where the nearest hospital is, and whether your policy covers transport to another country.
• The storm. Ask how the house is built, and where you go if a storm comes.
• The desks. You arrange your extensions and your residence application at an Immigration office. Among other places there are offices in Belmopan, Belize City, Corozal, Orange Walk, San Pedro, Big Creek and Punta Gorda.

Live for a few weeks in the place you choose, in the season in which you'll really be there. With a Dutch passport you may stay thirty days, and you can extend that stay.

In this step you see what the move will cost you. The application differs greatly per route:

• The QRP costs 150 dollars for the application, 1,000 dollars for you and 750 for each family member, and 200 dollars per card. Each year the renewal comes on top.
• Permanent residence costs 6,000 Belize dollars for a Dutch national, half for a child. Before that you pay 200 Belize dollars every thirty days for a year for your extension.
• A work permit costs up to 3,000 Belize dollars a year.

The Belize dollar is fixed at two per US dollar. The money is further in three items:

• The health policy that replaces the CAK, and that comes back every year.
• The move across the ocean. Without the QRP you pay import duties on your household goods.
• The car. It may come along, but without the QRP you pay about two thirds of the value in duties and tax on an ordinary passenger car.

In this conversation you decide together whether Belize fits, and when. You set down what each of you needs to say yes.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you leave behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Agree on three evenings, a week apart:

• Evening 1, why. What do we hope to find in Belize? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What has to be in place for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to go back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4.

Two things come with Belize that you have to look at together on those evenings:

• The first year. If you choose permanent residence, you may be away for no more than fourteen days in total in the year before your application. A funeral or a birth in the Netherlands can break that year. With the QRP you're freer: you have to be there for at least thirty consecutive days each year.
• The distance and the healthcare. Family in the Netherlands you no longer see in passing. And healthcare in Belize is limited. Agree what you'll do if one of you becomes seriously ill.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers for your residence, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Whoever lives in Belize and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually no longer builds up AOW, the Dutch state pension. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. You can insure yourself voluntarily with the SVB. You have one year for that, counted from the moment you're no longer insured. Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on large expenses.

Married, registered or living together? In Belize that matters. With the QRP your partner counts as a dependent. With permanent residence only a legal spouse may be on the same application; a partner you live with submits an application of their own. Check at your route further on in your plan what applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four. Tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed routines, such as the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school. Tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, such as their room.
• Teenagers. Involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs the most. Agree how they keep in touch and when they'll see their friends again.

How school works in Belize, and which permit a child needs, is in the article about school with this step.

Who learns the language, and when? At the desks, the bank and the doctor everything is in English. Whoever speaks English can join in right away. Agree who still needs to brush up their English, and plan that before you leave.

Choose the day you want to leave. The plan counts back from that date: when the papers from the Netherlands have to be in, when you submit your application and when you deregister.

Count three clocks. Your stay as a visitor ends after thirty days each time. For the QRP a certificate of conduct is at most six months old, a medical examination at most three months. And whoever wants permanent residence counts a year from the stamp in his passport.