Half a year on Zanzibar while staying registered in the Netherlands

What continues in the Netherlands?

As long as you live in the Netherlands, you are insured for the AOW and build up 2 percent every year. The SVB, which pays the AOW, judges where you live by your circumstances: your house, your partner, where you spend most of the year. Your registration counts, but it is no proof.

Your Dutch health insurance continues too: for trips shorter than a year you stay insured under the Dutch rules, according to the Dutch government. You are reimbursed what the treatment would cost in the Netherlands. Transport back to the Netherlands is not in the basic insurance, and by no means every travel insurance covers half a year in a row. So read your policy.

If you work three months or longer in a row only on Zanzibar, for an employer there or as a self-employed person, you are not insured for the national insurance schemes during that period (section 12 of the Decree on extending and restricting the group of insured persons for national insurance 1999). You then build up no AOW. This does not apply if you work for an employer who lives or is established in the Netherlands.

Do you become taxable in Tanzania?

Probably yes. The Tanzanian Income Tax Act also applies on Zanzibar. Under section 86 you are a resident at 183 days or more in a calendar year. It can also happen with fewer days: if you spend more than 122 days on average in Tanzania three years in a row, or if you have a permanent home there and are present during that year.

A resident pays tax in Tanzania on his income from the whole world. For newcomers there is one favourable rule: anyone who has been a resident for two years or less in total during his life only pays on income from Tanzania (section 6, subsection 2). How the TRA counts those two years is not in any TRA explanation. After that, your Dutch pension counts as well. You may then credit Dutch tax on that income, up to the average Tanzanian rate on that income (section 98).

Meanwhile, the Netherlands usually still sees you as a resident, because your house, your registration and your insurance are here. Expect to file a tax return in both countries, and have an adviser who knows both systems calculate the cost in advance.

The Zanzibar tax authority, the ZRA, levies no income tax. If you rent out your house on Zanzibar to tourists while you are away, you do pay a 15 percent hotel levy on the rent.

And if you work on Zanzibar?

Then you need a work permit from the Zanzibar Labour Commissioner, and then a Class B-1. Tanzania always taxes that salary; for an employee who is not a resident, the employer withholds 15 percent according to the TRA. The Netherlands then exempts the salary (sections 8 and 9 of the Decree for the avoidance of double taxation 2001). For work of less than 30 days in a row, only if you show that you paid tax in Tanzania.

In Vertrekklaar this is phase 2 of 5 of the journey: the same steps, but for your situation — in your order, tickable, and with the deadlines watched. See the whole journey to Zanzibar or look inside the open plan first.