There's quite a few now, something like 33 countries with these visas. The terms tend to vary. I took advantage of the first one, the Barbados digital nomad visa which they created to work around the loss of tourism due to COVID. Since most taxes in Barbados are sales taxes and they have a peg to the US dollar it has worked well for them in terms of foreign currency reserves and supporting the tourist industry during the pandemic.
Other countries like Costa Rica require visa holders to pay local income tax which is fair enough while others don't or have a reduced rate.
I'm unsure of the overall morality of it but it can be done legally through the correct pathways as I have been doing.
I don't like that people will just do it on tourist visas instead though which I'd guess is the bulk of the objection to it.
I think most tourist visa's in most countries which are likely to have this issue are at most 3 months. If a country chooses to allow back to back tourist visa's like that then they sort of know what's going on and have accepted it as a net benefit overall. If they don't permit back to back then after 3 months you've got to up and move somewhere else which many people do, but realistically they're not that much different from a tourist in practical terms.
There's quite a few now, something like 33 countries with these visas. The terms tend to vary. I took advantage of the first one, the Barbados digital nomad visa which they created to work around the loss of tourism due to COVID. Since most taxes in Barbados are sales taxes and they have a peg to the US dollar it has worked well for them in terms of foreign currency reserves and supporting the tourist industry during the pandemic.
Other countries like Costa Rica require visa holders to pay local income tax which is fair enough while others don't or have a reduced rate.
I'm unsure of the overall morality of it but it can be done legally through the correct pathways as I have been doing.
I don't like that people will just do it on tourist visas instead though which I'd guess is the bulk of the objection to it.