The step-by-step plan for Czechia

In this step you learn the one obligation you have in Czechia. Almost everything else is voluntary.

As a Dutch citizen you need no visa. You may live in Czechia without a permit. The registration certificate for EU citizens, the proof that you live there, is voluntary. You apply for it if you want it. The law obliges you to nothing.

Except one thing: the reporting duty. If you stay longer than thirty days, you report to the Foreign Police within thirty days of entry. That is a form, and it costs nothing. Yet almost everyone skips this step, precisely because the rest is voluntary.

In this step you see which country taxes your pension and your AOW, and how your healthcare is arranged.

The tax. The tax treaty dates from 1974 and has never been amended. Here that is good news. The treaty settles two things:

• A pension from past employment is taxable only in the country where you live.
• Your AOW is also taxed only in the country where you live. The treaty has no social security article, so your AOW falls under the residual article: the rule for income that isn't mentioned anywhere else.

So the Netherlands lets go. You do have to apply for the wage tax exemption. With it, the Netherlands no longer withholds tax from your pension and your AOW.

And Czechia itself? It exempts pensions up to thirty-six times the minimum wage a year. This covers regularly paid pensions from a mandatory scheme. It expressly includes a foreign mandatory scheme of the same kind. What exactly falls under that and what doesn't is the question you put to a tax adviser.

Healthcare. Czechia is a treaty country: the Netherlands has agreements with it on healthcare. With a Dutch statutory pension you go through the CAK, the body that arranges healthcare for people living abroad on a Dutch pension. This is how it works:

• You get an S1 form, the proof that the Netherlands pays for your care.
• You enrol with a Czech health insurer.
• After that you're entitled to full care.

In this step you choose which region you want to live in. The language weighs heavily in that choice.

• Prague has the international schools, the English-speaking doctors and the prices of a Western European capital.
• Brno, Olomouc and Plzeň have much of that, for a good deal less money.
• The countryside of South Bohemia, Moravia and the border regions has the peace and the low prices. There Czech is the only language at the counter.

Go and look in winter. The winters are cold and grey. In the valleys and the smaller towns, the air quality in winter is also something to watch. You don't see that on a summer visit.

In this step you see what the move is going to cost you. The good news: the paperwork is cheap here.

• The report at the Foreign Police is free.
• The registration certificate costs 200 crowns, about € 8.
• Your driving licence doesn't need exchanging.
• The car comes along without excise duty, an extra tax on import.

The money sits in the move itself and in the first months. In Prague it sits in the rent too.

In this step you decide together whether you go, and where you'll live. Discuss the language before you choose the place.

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

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Set aside three evenings, a week apart. Talk with your partner, and depending on their age with your children too:

• Evening 1, why. Why do we want this? What do we hope to find in Czechia? 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 needs 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 come back?

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

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers, 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? Someone who lives in Czechia and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually stops building up AOW. AOW is the Dutch state pension. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. From the moment you're no longer insured, you have one year to take out voluntary insurance with the SVB.

Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on big expenses.

Married, registered or living together? That can matter for your partner's right of residence, for being insured together for healthcare and for inheritance. If your partner is an EU citizen, your partner has a right of residence of their own. If your partner has a nationality from outside the EU, your partner lives in Czechia as a family member of an EU citizen. Not every EU country treats a registered partnership as a marriage. If you're neither married nor registered, the country decides case by case, on the basis of a durable relationship. Check in the step on your healthcare 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 heaviest. Agree how they'll stay in touch and when they'll see their friends again.

Outside Prague and Brno, Czech is the language of the school. For children that is a different task than for adults who work from home there. A foreign child of compulsory school age is entitled to twenty-four months of free language support.

Who learns the language, and when? Outside Prague and Brno, Czech is also the language of the GP and the neighbours. The choice comes down to this: whoever stays in the city buys convenience. Whoever goes out buys space and a language to learn. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and that's exactly the one with no colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

In this step you fix your departure date. From here everything counts back.

This journey has one thirty-day clock you have to start yourself: the report at the Foreign Police, after your own entry. Put it in your diary on the day your date is fixed.

For the car the law sets no deadline in days. If you live in Czechia, it does have to go onto Czech plates. Plan that straight after arrival.