What changes financially when you move to Zanzibar?
Tick where your income comes from. You then see which rules Zanzibar and the Netherlands apply to your situation: which country may tax you, which schemes exist and how you get insured. With the source, so you can check it yourself.
This applies to everyone who moves. Tick above what applies to you, and the rest will appear.
Which country may tax
Which part of your income may your new country of residence tax?
From 183 days in a year you're a resident of Tanzania
Tanzanian income tax also applies on Zanzibar, and the TRA, the Tanzanian tax authority, collects it. You're a resident if you're in Tanzania for 183 days or more in a calendar year, or if you have a permanent home there and are there during that year.
There's a third way: whoever is in Tanzania in a year and in the two years before for periods averaging more than 122 days a year is also a resident. Your own or year-round rented house on Zanzibar can therefore already make you a resident. A resident is taxed on income from everywhere, a non-resident only on income from Tanzania. The ZRA, the Zanzibar tax authority, levies no income tax on individuals.
- resident
- 183 days or more in a calendar year
- or
- permanent home and present in the year
With a season on Zanzibar you can be a resident of both countries
If you stay registered in the Netherlands and spend six to seven months on Zanzibar every year, you're a resident for Tanzania, and usually for the Netherlands too. Without a treaty nobody decides which country comes first.
Where you live, the Belastingdienst judges by the circumstances: your registration, your house, your family and your insurance. Whoever keeps all of that in the Netherlands, as a rule stays taxed here on income from everywhere. Tanzania looks at the number of days. The Netherlands doesn't credit Tanzanian tax on your Dutch pension or AOW. Have this calculated before your first season.
Where this comes from: Article 4 of the General State Taxes Act (residence by the circumstances), section 86(1) of the Tanzanian Income Tax Act (183 days) and the Decree for the avoidance of double taxation 2001, which only exempts foreign income and doesn't mention a Dutch pension.
Read the whole storySpecial regimes
Is there a favourable regime, and do you qualify?
In your first two years as a resident Tanzania only taxes income from Tanzania
Whoever has been a resident of Tanzania for two years or less in total in his whole life is only taxed on income from Tanzania. Your Dutch pension then falls outside it.
The rule is literally in the law. How the TRA counts those two years, we didn't find in a TRA explanation. So don't count on it to the day, and check with a Tanzanian tax adviser. After that the ordinary rule applies: a resident is taxed on income from everywhere.
- period
- two years or less in total
Health insurance
How do you get insured, and what do you pay for it?
A Zanzibar health scheme may count foreigners after six months
The bill for the Zanzibar Health Services Fund also names foreigners who live on Zanzibar for more than six months. Whether they already have to join, the minister decides later.
The bill starts with employees. Other groups only follow when the minister announces it in the Gazette, the official journal. We didn't find the adopted law or any such announcement. Ask on arrival whether you have to join, and what you then pay.
Where this comes from: The Zanzibar Health Services Fund bill, Zanzibar Government Gazette of 18 November 2022, section 2(1)(c) and 2(3). The adopted law of 2023 has not been read.
Read the whole storyWhat the Netherlands doesn't let go of
Which Dutch obligation travels with you?
Your AOW accrual stops when you leave, repair is possible within one year
Whoever goes to live outside the Netherlands is usually no longer insured for the AOW and the Anw. Every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW.
This is about accrual, not about payment. What you built up until you left stays. If you leave before your AOW age, every year until that age costs 2 percent. With voluntary insurance at the SVB you close the gap. You have one year for that from the moment you're no longer insured. That applies to each partner in a couple separately.
- reduction per uninsured year
- 2% of your AOW
- register for voluntary insurance
- within 1 year
Your Dutch basic insurance ends on deregistration
Your basic insurance stops on the day you deregister. Your new policy only starts once the insurer has accepted you.
Without the CAK there's no safety net. If you put off the insurance question until after the move, an insurer can refuse you or exclude things. So arrange your cover first, and only then take steps you can't undo. Make sure there's not a single day between the end date in the Netherlands and your first insured day.
Where this comes from: The treaty country list for healthcare (no CAK route) and article 2 of the Health Insurance Act: the obligation to insure follows the Wlz insurance, which usually stops on emigration.
Read the whole storyFor inheritance and gifts the Netherlands keeps counting you for ten years
The Successiewet, the inheritance and gift tax law, acts as if an emigrated Dutch national still lives in the Netherlands for ten years. That applies on death and on a gift.
If you die within ten years of leaving, your heirs pay Dutch inheritance tax, as if you still lived here. What you give in those years, for example to your children, falls under Dutch gift tax. So review your will and your gift plans before you leave. For a gift in the first year after you leave this even applies to everyone who lived in the Netherlands, also without Dutch nationality.
- residence fiction
- 10 years
This is not tax advice
These are the rules that apply to your situation. What they add up to is not shown here. With Zanzibar it all turns on two treaties that don't exist: no tax treaty and no social security treaty with Tanzania. Without a treaty the Netherlands keeps its tax on your AOW, your occupational pension, a government pension and your annuity. Tanzania, which also runs income tax on Zanzibar, taxes a resident after his first two years on income from everywhere, and then credits foreign tax up to a limit. Whoever goes alone gets the AOW for married people. And instead of the CAK you need your own policy. Which combination you have determines your net monthly income. Take this list to a tax adviser who knows both countries.
Still deciding between countries? Put the rules of two or three countries side by side
Then actually doing it
Knowing which rules apply is the first half. The second is applying them in time: in the right order, without missing a deadline, and with your documents at hand.
Every step on one list, free
Not ready to start yet? Then you get the departure checklist for Zanzibar: every step in order, to print and tick off. With it, five mails in a week and a half about the pitfalls and the real costs. If the rules for Zanzibar change, you'll hear about it. After that we ask once where your plans stand, and now and then we send one thing that fits your moment. No newsletter, and you can switch it off at any time.