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Liberation Travel Hacks 03/2025
Do you live outside your EU country most of the year and still pay taxes (have a job, trade) or have health insurance there?
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You probably don’t have to, and you can save a lot of money.
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Suppose you don’t live in your EU country most of the time and don’t have a center of life interests there (you can cancel your permanent residency). In that case, it usually doesn’t make sense to have permanent residency and all the obligations that go with it (such as conscription or paying your health contributions).
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You can live somewhere else most of the time (where you pay your taxes and health insurance), but you certainly don’t have to pay it in your EU country. Or you’re lucky if you’re a digital nomad like me and don’t live anywhere most of the time – in which case you may or may not have to pay for global health insurance, which is much better than your compulsory health insurance – it’s worldwide and can reimburse you for things your mandatory health insurance won’t reimburse you for (for example, dental care at private dentists, as long as you pay for that dental insurance). Here are the top 10 global health insurers (I have experience with three of them, and they are very positive).
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I meet EU citizens who travel a lot, but for historical reasons, they still have jobs or trade in their EU country and pay almost half of their income to their EU government!
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If you don’t live in your EU country most of the time in a year (and you don’t have a center of life interests/permanent residence there), then you can legally get rid of tax slavery.
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Either by becoming a tax slave in another country where you live most of the time – in which case you can use legal entities in that country to do business (you are still likely to save money as most countries in the world have lower taxes and levies than in the EU) or if you can afford not to live anywhere for more than half of the year (beware, for example, you can live in Switzerland for a maximum of 1-2 months a year to avoid becoming their tax resident) and you can afford to be a digital nomad. The ideal country for your tax residency is probably Paraguay, where you don’t have to live most of the time to get one.
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In this case, your total tax burden as a digital nomad can be 0% of any global income outside of Paraguay + optional global health insurance costs.
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If you have the EU or any non-US customers, the best way to bill them for your services as a digital nomad is through your US LLC disregarded company that you may own as a Paraguayan tax resident. What are the advantages of this? I will describe it below. The US has signed a double taxation treaty with all European countries (except Hungary), so any European company can use your invoice from your US LLC disregarded company as an expense without facing withholding taxes. If you own a US LLC disregarded company as a non-US citizen and do not do business in the US, you have no US tax obligations (only the obligation to fill out forms 5472 and 1120 once a year, which the agency that set up the company will be happy to do for you). Your tax obligations shift to the tax residence of the business owner, which in your case means Paraguay. And since Paraguay has territorial taxation, any foreign income you earn as a Paraguayan tax resident (including dividends/profits from your foreign companies) is not only not taxable but not even declared (the tax office in Paraguay doesn’t even have a form for this).
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If you are crypto-friendly, you don’t even need a bank account!
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Customers can pay you directly in crypto or through Archway service, and they can pay you in fiat (usually by SEPA transfer), and you automatically receive the money in stablecoins.
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If you have US customers, you can use a Gibraltar company instead of a US LLC company, which has territorial taxation and zero tax on income outside Gibraltar. And, of course, if you own and operate it as a purely Paraguayan tax resident, you won’t be subject to any taxes on dividends/income from that company that you pay out as an individual either.
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So, if you don’t live in your EU country most of the time, you can probably cancel your permanent residence. In that case, you may get rid of your conscription (as a man) and the obligation to pay health contributions (which you can pay in the country where you live most of the time, to an international health insurance company, or not pay).
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You can do business in the EU through a US LLC or other offshore company. If you have tax residency exclusively in Paraguay (meaning you won’t live anywhere else most of the time / have a center of life interests), you don’t have to pay any taxes either.
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I did a simple calculation a long time ago—I calculated the total amount of taxes and levies I would have to pay with my income in Slovakia. I figured out that it is significantly cheaper and more profitable for me not to live in Slovakia. It is more profitable for me to pay for nonstop flights and hotel accommodation instead of paying taxes and levies than to live in one place, be a tax slave, and pay taxes.
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Make a similar calculation. You might be shocked!
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And you’ll see a big chunk of the world in addition to saving money!
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Pavol Lupták, 4.3.2025, Panama City
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Slovakia
The Slovak Financial Administration will automatically obtain information on cryptoassets from 1 January 2026. For those of you who care about protecting your digital privacy, this means:
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1. Use decentralized crypto exchanges.
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2. If you can't, exchange in a non-CRS, non-reporting country.
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3. If you can't, eliminate your tax residency in the EU tax hell.
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Kyrgyzstan and Cambodia are countries where you can open a non-CRS bank account without residency. In Paraguay, you can open a non-CRS bank account if you have Paraguayan residency. In Georgian CRS banks, you can use your tax residency in Paraguay.
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One of the reasons most crypto traders don't pay taxes is not because they have a problem with the amount of taxes (although the Slovak 40% is a massacre) but because they have a problem accounting for it (see the illustrative video). I'm no sophisticated crypto trader, but:
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- I use decentralized crypto loans in which I pay some interest (which varies over time), which should be my cost, but I use staked and wrapped ETH (wstETH) as collateral, which generates some profit from the stake (which is a tax event)
- I'm running some futures (hedging some shitcoin) that get liquidated once in a while (which is a tax event)
- I have different coins on different crypto services (I don't even know what they are anymore), which are all at various interest rates, which are constantly changing from time to time (which is also a tax event)
- I get various cashback in various tokens for buying flights, accommodation, and goods, which I usually still convert into Bitcoin (which is a tax event)
- I pay for a lot of things with Lightning, but I use Monero for that through various swaps (which is a tax event)
- I pay with Bitcoin in Slovakia for services/goods, which is a tax event - if you pay 2 euros for a coffee, then according to the current Slovak legislation, you should find out the amount of Bitcoin you just used in the past, find out its current price, and pay the profit tax and 15% health taxes on the difference (and we're talking about every coffee you buy for 2 euros in Slovakia:-)
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If I had tax residency in Slovakia, not only would I not be able to calculate the necessary tax I have to pay on my crypto, but I don't think I could find any accountant who could calculate in a reasonable amount of time what total tax I have to pay on everything.
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A few days ago, I got a call from a desperate customer, a professional crypto trader, who wants to pay taxes, but with the volume of his trades, he cannot calculate how much. So he tried to use three different software programs to calculate his crypto taxes - he imported statements from hundreds of thousands of his trades from the exchange. Each software returned a vastly different result, so he has no idea how much tax he should pay. And no knowledgeable person can give him a 100% correct answer.
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Most people who actively use crypto in Slovakia don't know it, which means that, in the end, everyone is breaking the law.
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The only way to avoid breaking the law and being a model citizen (like me :-) is to avoid having tax residency in Slovakia or any other tax hell.
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Unfortunately, I can't recommend any miracle tax calculation software.
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The European bureaucrats have generated another new use case for our Paraguayan/Panamanian/Uruguayan residency:
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Slovak seniors are starting to contact us, and the state looks set to make getting a Slovak driving license much more challenging—threatening them with new "skills" tests. This will likely affect the whole EU.
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Of course, you can drive in EU countries with your Latin American cedula (national ID).
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And European cops will not ban Latin American tourists from driving in the EU on their fully valid driver's licenses.
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Of course, you must be a temporary or permanent resident of that Latin American country. The easiest way to get a driving license is in Paraguay for both a car and a heavy motorbike, with a five-year validity period.
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If you are driving in Germany, you will need an official translation of your Paraguayan driving license - this can be arranged for €50.
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Before you start defending this new legislation, look at how many fatalities are caused statistically by pensioners and how the whole world has managed to function so far without this EU legislation (including the EU).
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I'm really surprised how many relatively sane people are endorsing modern-day slavery - conscription - state compulsory mobilisation in 2025:
The right to sacrifice any man's life for a "higher" collective goal - for the nation, for the state, for religion.
For there is no reason that gives us the right to force a man against his will to take from him the most precious thing he has - his life.
Compulsory mobilization is an immoral perversion, and as with any other slavery, there is no "higher purpose" that can justify it.
EU
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The EU is centrally planning to increase its competitiveness with the Competitiveness Compass. It is unbelievable that anyone realistically thinks that further central planning and regulation will lead to greater prosperity. The road to greater prosperity for the EU is massive deregulation, decentralization, tax cuts, and the abolition of all the 'planning institutions' that are supposed to improve competitiveness.
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The EU has joined the technology fray and unveiled its BureaucratiQ AI—it will create and regulate regulations. BureaucratiQ tirelessly analyzes all existing directives and regulations. If an area is not sufficiently controlled, it will immediately create a new directive. If there are too many regulations, it will start making rules to regulate them, starting an endless bureaucratic chain that cannot be stopped—only further regulated.
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OK, this is a joke. But European AI OpenEuroLLM is not a joke. The European taxpayer will pay for it handsomely.
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UK
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This video went viral on the British Internet. It criticizes water companies for hiking up the price they charge end customers for water after the state fines them.
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I don't think this gentleman has a good understanding of how the market or the state works.
Because of that, he has irrational socialist expectations of how it could work better (and unfortunately will not until he understands it more deeply).
No state in the world can provide cheap and good public services. That's why it uses private companies to do it, which can do it better and more affordable (because they face competition, unlike the state), and are incentivized to do something about it because of the profits.
Logically, no company (not even ours) will operate without profit (otherwise, we would have no incentive to do business at all).
Of course, if the state were to slap us with any senseless fine or tax increase, the end customer would always feel the pinch (unless it made us uncompetitive).
I see no reason why anyone in the company (employees or shareholders) should suffer the whims of the state—new taxes, fines, or regulatory costs.
I can't judge how fair the fines the water companies have received are, but I know that most state fines are meaningless (i.e., all the ones we have received). The state's bizarre penalties are mainly those that it gives to itself, and the taxpayer pays in the end.
In Slovakia, too, populist politicians win their voters by trying to tax 'greedy evil' companies - for example, with a new tax on every bank transaction. Of course, in the final analysis, all firms will pass this tax on to their customers (so that in the final analysis, consumers will always pay the higher-end prices).
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So where's the problem?
The problem is not greedy corporations, as long as they operate in a truly free market and customers can choose the services they want based on price and quality.
The problem occurs when this free market is distorted by state regulations/laws and creates a monopoly or oligopoly of corporations that are ultimately the providers of public services (e.g., water companies in the UK, private health insurers across the EU, whose services citizens are forced into under threat of the law).
Then, those companies can do whatever they want—offer low-quality services and high prices, as is the case for UK water companies and EU health insurers.
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The problem is not with insatiable water companies but with a state that takes money from British taxpayers under threat of violence under the illusion that it can provide a good, quality service in return.
Some bureaucrats will decide which of these corporations will ultimately receive taxpayers' money. Usually, it is an oligopoly of a few companies not exposed to the free market, so they have no incentive to provide good quality service at low prices—they will form a cartel.
Just like the Slovak health insurance companies, to which the state has delegated the public service of health protection. Every individual in Slovakia has to pay health levies of up to 15% (i.e., tax) of any income under threat of violence. So, the three state-appointed health insurance companies that formed the cartel are guaranteed a profit by the state. Since they do not have to compete for their clients on the free market, because, by law, every Slovak resident must be their client (and if he chooses not to be, he ends up in jail), they have no incentive to improve their services and lower their prices.
Again, the problem is not that water companies or health insurance companies make a profit; the problem is that citizens involuntarily have to be their clients and contribute to their services under threat of the law (and they don't have the option to opt-out). The result is that water companies and health insurance companies have people by the balls and have no incentive to provide cheap and good services because citizens can not be their clients if they choose.
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And what is the solution?
The solution for Slovak health insurers is to abolish the health insurance obligation. This means that health insurers must be able to compete realistically for their clients, who can choose not to be their clients and pay cash for all health services. This market deregulation will create many new health insurance companies with better services and lower prices.
A nice comparison is Georgia, where they have entirely deregulated the health sector, abolishing compulsory health insurance. Every Georgian can choose whether or not to pay for health insurance, and Georgian health insurance companies have to compete for it realistically. As a result, there are at least 10 health insurance companies in Georgia, a country of three million people (three in Slovakia, a country of five million), and the Georgian health sector is increasing. It is beginning to offer its health services to everyone worldwide as part of medical tourism.
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I go there regularly for health tourism (I had my teeth done last month, and they gave me an appointment within an hour!)
Georgia may be a backward country compared to the UK. Still, the availability of healthcare for all people there is more significant than in the UK (a specialist is usually available next business day, something they can only dream of in the UK and most EU countries).
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And what is the solution for water companies in the UK?
First, the state should stop providing it from taxes as a public service (the lower the taxes, the more UK taxpayers should pay).
And every UK citizen should voluntarily decide which water company's service they use (I'm not saying this will be easy, especially as just one company owns water infrastructure), but it is certainly possible. Like how the whole energy sector has been deregulated (and works better), the infrastructure is often owned by just one organization.
The UK should also do the healthcare reform they did in Georgia and deregulate their socialist healthcare so that their country can become a mecca for medical tourism, similar to Georgia, where healthcare is deregulated, making it more accessible to the masses.
Finally, I agree with the video's author that we live in a corporatist state where corporations abuse power. But this is only possible because corporations abuse the bottleneck—the state's monopoly on regulation and violence—so that through the magic formula of "public services" (which they grab the majority of the electorate on), they can always have state-guaranteed businesses with no choice for citizens not to pay for their services (since everyone is forced to pay taxes under the threat of violence).
But in a truly free market (which we can only dream of in the Western world at the moment), there would be no corporatism degenerated by the state but pure capitalism, which, in my opinion, will always lead to a prosperous society (to quality and cheap services).
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Paraguay
Does that mean it's because Paraguay has higher taxes and tax rates? No.
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In Paraguay, virtually all service and product providers (restaurants and supermarkets) support QR code payments, and all Paraguayan banks' mobile apps support QR code payments. It's pretty commonly used (I don't use anything else).
This way, they bypass entirely card companies like Visa and Mastercard and don't pay fees on every transaction. Of course, you can also use cards, but a QR code makes it easier because you don't need a card, just a mobile phone.
The question of how big the lobby of the card companies in Europe must be is that this is not a banking standard like in Paraguay.
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Panama
As a Panamanian resident, I've started a mobile app and Zinli banking on the Panamanian cedula, where I can, at the best rate, send crypto from Binance P2P to a Panamanian bank account. In Panama, as in Paraguay, many services and products can be paid for with a QR code, for example, via Banco General's Yappy service. It's even supported by the InDrive app, which is probably the cheapest "ride-sharing" that works in most Latin American countries anymore, where passengers set the prices for a given ride. Drivers nearby accept it or suggest their price.
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Thailand
The Thai government wants to attract Bitcoiners to Thailand and is launching a pilot crypto project on Pukhet.
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Bitcoin, Monero, and cryptocurrencies
Monero is not only a fashion brand (I have Monero socks, a hat, glasses, a pocket square, a couple of t-shirts, and a sweater at home) but also a "statement." A statement that you care about digital privacy: this was why we used Privacy-Centric Marketing agency VOSTO EMISIO, which only accepts Monero for its services, for the complete design and logo design of Liberation Travel. And the reason why, the next time I go to the Georgian mountains, I'll be staying at this Monero-friendly hotel.
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Last year at Monerotopia in Mexico City, I learned that somewhere at the end of the world, in the north of Argentina, in the province of Formosa, there is a small town called Ibarreta that accepts Monero. I found it unbelievable that such a thing could exist, so after watching Douglas Tuman's documentary, I went straight there on my last visit to Asunción.
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The Monero Moon is one of the few crypto-anarchist newsletters that contains all the latest news about Monero (XMR), and I recommend following it.
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I don't tend to promote any collections in my newsletters. But Petroit is from our crypto tribe—a Czech Bitcoiner who has a severe brain tumor and needs your help. Since I don't legally pay taxes and compulsory contributions, I find it all the more important to be in solidarity and support the people who need it. I have supported Petroit's treatment—please do so, too.
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Privacy
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I do not understand the emerging resentment against American corporations taking on the rotten European state structures. EU states want maximum control over the population, especially their communications and payments (eID, CBDC).
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Yes, Apple is a company fighting for the privacy of its users (and I say this as a 100% Android user who has never used any Apple product). Of course, as an Apple user, you have to trust him completely, and if you don't, I recommend not using an iPhone at all and switching to a Google Pixel phone with GrapheneOS.
And the UK (or EU) government wants to remove your privacy.
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I find it utterly bizarre that people are switching from platforms that don't censor by default (like X.com) to those that do (like Facebook or Instagram) because of their hatred of Elon Musk. Of course, you can argue that Elon Musk blocked someone on X.com because they disgusted him. But it doesn't happen there in a blanket and systematic way like on Facebook or Instagram. I get about 10 posts deleted yearly by those platforms that they deem inappropriate, sometimes even banned from my account, which has never happened to me on X.com. Fortunately, even Mark Zuckerberg has now understood that censorship via "fact-checking" is not the way to go and has switched to "community notes," so I assume this will improve. I mean, censorship isn't cool in America.
And EU states constantly usurping blanket control of communications over their populations, fighting "hybrid threats," making this American approach hard to handle.
The most unfree countries in the Western bloc are France, Germany, and, unfortunately, the UK - a country that has historically always cherished freedom of speech and business. In these countries, there are regular police raids on social network users for their statuses. From France, you won't even be able to connect to uncensored video platforms like Rumble, which refuses to censor videos.
No, none of this is happening in the US.
People consider Musk a fascist and boycott Starlink, which is the only ISP in Slovakia that doesn't censor anything (like unlicensed online gambling, which, by law, every Slovak ISP has to censor).
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I confess that I don't rule out Musk's "burnout" from high politics and power - if he hasn't burned out by now.
People use the censored OpenAI ChatGPT instead of Musk's Grok, which is better. Grok doesn't censor and doesn't have stupid comments like ChatGPT. Even Grok displays information about both Musk and Trump spreading lies, which I think is a good sign of being objective. On a side note, I'm canceling my subscription to ChatGPT and switching to Grok because I dislike censorship and political correctness.
Which is what is happening right now:
Because of emotions, people reject more freedom and privacy and the technology and companies that allow them to do so.
And in turn, they voluntarily choose more control and less privacy - the state and state money.
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DarkFI has released the first alpha version of its P2P communication application, which is built on the DarkChat IRC protocol and specifically for anonymous communication.
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Meet Obscura VPN—a VPN that can't log your activity and bypasses internet censorship. Unfortunately, for now, it is only available on Mac OS.
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Travel Hacks
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If you travel a lot and want to pay crypto for airline tickets or accommodation, you must know or need to know Travala.com. Based on our friends' recommendations, with Juraj Bednár, we decided on the Travala.com AVA Smart Platinum Program. We bought 2500 AVA tokens for about 1600 USDT (on Binance on PY cedula) and got their Platinum Program.
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Benefits of the Platinum Program:
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- 5% discount on all bookings on the Travala platform
- You will receive an additional 5% cashback with every booking in the form of AVA tokens, Bitcoin, or Travel Credits in your wallet
- You can get an additional 15% bonus on your AVA tokens annually by depositing them on the Travala platform or by spending AVA tokens on the platform itself every Thursday of the year
- If you book your accommodation/tickets in AVA tokens, you get an additional 3% discount
- Once in a while, airdrops work, where additional tokens/benefits can be earned
If you opt for the Diamond program (which means you have to buy a unique NFT avatar; there are only 2,000 of them), which I just activated today, you have an extra:
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- Up to 10% cashback in the form of AVA tokens, Bitcoin, or Travel credits to your wallet
- Annual 20% Smart bonus on pledged AVA tokens
- 4 free access to Airport lounges per year
- Opportunity to earn Marriott Bonvoy Points
- Access to your own "Concierge" personal assistant for bookings totaling more than $20,000
Even though it may seem like a big shitcoiner platform (and I admit that Juraj and I felt the same way), applying all these discounts is usually realistically cheaper than booking through Booking.com (I have the Genius 3 program).
I've made a few bookings already and saved money.
Friends using it longer have recouped all the costs multiple times.
And since we're paranoid that the AVA token can crash like any other shitcoin, Juraj created a manual to hedge this risk and to shard AVA tokens against USDT/BTC so that you don't lose all the money you've invested in AVA in case it crashes.
The manual is available to all Paraguayan and Uruguayan clients who get it into the Signal group.
If you have also decided to go with Travala after reading this post, feel free to use our referrals—Juraj's and mine.
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Suppose you're looking for something similar to a commercial "stand-by" program for perpetual travelers that works well in the EU and surrounding countries. In that case, there's (on the recommendation of one of our guys) Wizzar's "All You Can Fly" program for €599/year:
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- You only need to book your tickets 3 days before departure at the earliest, 3 hours at the latest.
- You choose the segments where you want to fly. You can fly anywhere Wizzair flies (except domestic flights in Italy). The flight price is 9.99 EUR.
- It works as a standby, so you only fly when there are empty seats on the plane, and therefore, you can fit (95% of the time you will fly)
- The standard price includes only a tiny backpack 40 x 30 x 20 cm (you can pay extra for a larger one). But pro travelers don't need a more oversized backpack.
The third generation of Meta Rayban Smart Glasses comes with augmented reality (AR) and a functional display. This news made me all the happier because my Smart AI Glasses (second generation) broke down on the San Blas Islands in Panama—a few drops of splashed water on a speedboat trip seemed to have completely ruined them. I'm hoping the new generation will be more water-resistant.
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Interesting links
Events
17-18.5.2025 Pizzaday, Second Culture in Prague
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8-12.8.2025 WHY2025 is the biggest hacker camp in the Netherlands
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