The step-by-step plan for Luxembourg

As a Dutch citizen you need no visa and may live in Luxembourg without a permit. But Luxembourg has two clocks most EU countries don't have. Within eight days of arrival you report to the population office of your commune, with your passport and your lease. And within three months you make the registration declaration at that same commune, after which you get the registration certificate — valid indefinitely.

Two counters, one building, two deadlines. Whoever meets them both is done with residence rights in Luxembourg.

The tax. The treaty dates from 1968 and follows the old model: a pension from past employment is taxable only in the country of residence. The treaty has no social security article, so your AOW falls under the residual article — also exclusively with the country of residence. The Netherlands lets go, provided you apply for the wage tax exemption.

Luxembourg taxes what it gets, progressively up to 42 percent, in a scale that differs per tax class and in which a couple divides the income by two. On a foreign pension Luxembourg withholds nothing: you file an annual return and pay four advance payments a year. The government pension stays Dutch.

Healthcare. Luxembourg is a treaty country. With a Dutch statutory pension you go through the CAK: an S1 form, registering with the CNS, and you get the Luxembourg social security card. Healthcare works by reimbursement: you freely choose a doctor, pay yourself and get 88 percent back — or the doctor settles directly with the fund.

Luxembourg City is an international capital on a village scale, with English as the working language in the banks and the institutions. The communes around it and the south around Esch are that country's residential areas; the north, the Ösling in the Ardennes, is rural and cheaper, but nothing in Luxembourg is cheap.

Three languages are official: Luxembourgish, French and German. The government writes in French, the newspapers in German, the neighbours speak Luxembourgish and the school teaches in all three. Whoever reads German gets far; whoever speaks French gets further. And count the housing costs honestly: renting and buying in and around the city costs more than in the Randstad, and that is the reason a third of those who work there live across the border.

The paperwork is small here: the reports at the commune, a stamp of 50 euros for the car, a driving licence you at most have registered voluntarily. The money sits in the home — the deposit, the rent, and with a purchase the 7 percent registration duties of which the tax credit takes off a part — and in life itself.

Discuss the school before you choose the place. The Luxembourg public school starts in Luxembourgish, teaches reading in German and switches to French — a triple language leap for a Dutch child. There are public international schools with English and French sections, and expensive private ones. Where those are determines where you go and live.

From here everything counts back. This journey has three clocks you start yourself: eight days after arrival for the report, three months for the registration, and six months for the car. Put all three in your diary on the day your date is fixed.