The step-by-step plan for Brazil

Since the migration law of 2017 Brazil doesn't work with a handful of visa types but with one concept: the autorização de residência, the residence permit, which you can get on a list of grounds — work, study, investment, family reunion, and "other cases defined in a regulation", which is where the pension and remote work fall. The decree lists the grounds; the Conselho Nacional de Imigração fills in the thresholds and the documents per ground with a resolução normativa.

Two things are the same in every route. You can apply for the permit in advance as a VITEM visa at the consulate, or you enter as a tourist and apply for it in Brazil — article 124 of the decree lets a visitor's status be converted. And after the grant you have to be registered with the Polícia Federal: the law makes the registro compulsory for every holder of a temporary visa or a residence permit, and that is where the card comes from, the CRNM, with the number everything hangs on.

One treaty yes, two no — and each has a consequence.

Tax. The Netherlands and Brazil have had a tax treaty since 1990, and it splits your income in four. Your AOW stays taxed only in the Netherlands (article 18(3)). Your government pension too (article 19(2)), unless you become Brazilian. Your annuity is taxed only in Brazil. And your occupational pension sits in between: up to 5,000 dollars a year only in Brazil, above that the Netherlands may tax as well and Brazil credits what the Netherlands withheld (article 18(1) and article 23(5)).

The AOW itself. The social security treaty signed in Brasília in 2002 never entered into force — wetten.overheid.nl says so literally — and Brazil isn't among the 36 countries to which the full AOW is exported. So the AOW goes along up to the married rate: for a couple nothing changes, whoever goes alone falls back from seventy to fifty percent of the minimum wage.

Healthcare. Brazil isn't on the CAK list: your basic insurance ends on deregistration and there is no S1. What takes its place is the SUS, the state system that is open to everyone in Brazil, and beside it the plano de saúde almost every Dutch person takes out.

Your AOW accrual stops — that is something else than the payment. As soon as you're no longer insured in the Netherlands you build up nothing more, and every year until your AOW age costs 2% of your later AOW. Voluntary continued insurance with the SVB is possible, for ten years at most, but the application has to be in within one year of your insurance ending. If you already receive AOW, this no longer applies.

Brazil is a country of 27 states on a continent: the south with Florianópolis and Curitiba has four seasons and European winters, the north-east around Fortaleza, Natal and João Pessoa has the climate of the brochure, and São Paulo and Rio are the cities where the hospitals, the schools and the work are. Whoever comes on a pension usually picks the coast of the north-east or the south; whoever works ends up in one of the two big cities.

Count in what doesn't stand out on holiday. The distance between regions is that between European countries, safety differs more per neighbourhood than per city, and Portuguese is the language everywhere — at the counter and at the doctor's too. And the state decides more than you're used to: the driving licence, the school, the transfer tax and the notary are arranged per state or municipality.

On the application side Brazil is cheap: the Polícia Federal's fees are tens of euros, the visa at the consulate a few hundred, and the money sits in the apostilles and the sworn translations. After that come the plano de saúde that returns every month, the move across the ocean — tax-free for what you already owned — and the car, which you sell here, because Brazil doesn't admit used cars.

With Brazil this conversation has a sum and a language. The sum: whoever goes alone gives up twenty percentage points of AOW, and whoever is older pays a plano de saúde whose premium rises with age. The language: without Portuguese you stay dependent on others, at the bank, at the doctor's and at school — there is no language requirement for residence, but the country sets it itself every day.

And discuss the distance and the pace. Eleven to fourteen hours of flying, four to five hours of time difference, and a government that does a lot digitally but wants a sworn translation and a stamp with every step.

From here everything counts back. The tightest clock of this journey is the ninety days: as a tourist you may be there at most ninety per hundred and eighty, and whoever comes with a visa has to be registered within ninety days of arrival. The longest is the apostille-and-translation chain of your documents, which has to be settled before the application.