“The new visa will also enable more visitors to New Zealand to extend their stays,” Willis said, adding, “Those longer stays mean more income for local businesses.”
There are some catches. Officials said that digital nomads who stay for longer than 90 days could face an added tax burden. And a worker in New Zealand would likely have to keep strange hours to be in meetings with colleagues in Europe or the United States but not in Australia.
The remote work visa rules are simpler than those in many other countries. Immigration Minister Erica Stanford noted that other countries have specific visas for remote workers, while New Zealand now lets anyone on a visitor visa be a digital nomad.
New Zealand has a long history of carefully controlling immigration, and even as it tries to attract affluent remote workers for limited stays, it moved in April to tighten work visas for low-skilled workers seeking to move to and work there, including introducing an English language requirement, among others.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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