After reading articles about life in Cyprus, I also decided to share my experience, slightly complementing the experience of previous authors. Arrival on a work visa, own company that can make visas, green card (LTRP), citizenship, only 15 years. And add more numbers. Perhaps it will be useful for potential IT immigrants.
The narrative will be as abstract as possible without water.
IT worker
In previous articles, everything was described in principle. Most of the local vacancies are somehow related to Forex (fin-tech companies), the system administrator should probably look towards DevOps in the same place.
Taxes
This is the main plus - they are probably the lowest in the European Union.
Social Insurance (UST) per employee -8.3%, per employer -8.3% +2%+1.2%+0.5%+8%. The last 8% go towards future vacations and are returned to the employee.
Since June, another tax on medicine has been added.
Income tax (personal income tax) up to €19 per year after all deductions 500%, further from 0 to 20%.
VAT (VAT) -19%.
The first 5 years after the move - a 20% discount on taxable income.
, Social Insurance has since grown.
Work visa ->LTRP->citizenship
If the employer has a good lawyer, and all the formalities are met, the documents are made in a week and there are no gaps. In fact, gaps in dates are important only when obtaining a residence permit (LTRP Long Term Resident Permit), when obtaining citizenship, there is a court decision that if the migration department issued the next permit, it means that at the time of the gap the person was legally in Cyprus.
As I said, if a normal lawyer and the filing process are not delayed, then there will be no gaps, usually they arise due to Shiga-Siga company manager who did not prepare documents on time.
After 5 years of residence, you can apply for an LTRP green card. The process is not difficult, you just need to pass the A2 Greek exam. I am not a humanist, for me it would be unrealistic, but I got it when the exam was not yet required.
After 7 years of permanent residence in Cyprus (2560 days must be counted all arrivals and departures) you can apply for citizenship, knowledge of the language is not required. If you have financial resources and a good lawyer, you can get it in a couple of years. If there is a desire to try without a pusher lawyer, then you can wait another 7 years and most likely go to him anyway).
In addition to finding a job where they can make a work visa, you can also open your own company, drive through the account 171000€ as an investment, and get the opportunity to make work visas yourself. I myself went through this path, if you are interested, I can paint it in detail.
Visas to Schengen and UK
Unfortunately, Cyprus is not part of the Schengen area, so a work permit, a residence permit and a green card do not allow you to travel freely. While there is no Cypriot passport, you have to constantly apply for Schengen and UK visas. You can immediately make a second Russian foreign travel, since it is not expensive and relatively quickly, there are two Russian consulates in Cyprus - in Nicosia and Limassol.
Accomodation
This is the topic of a separate article.
For comfortable living, double glazing, blinds without gaps and thick walls are desirable. In principle, all houses built after 2000-2004 correspond to these parameters, the main thing is not to get into housing built for refugees, there may be a half-brick wall to the south. The relationship between tenant and landlord is regulated by law. You can increase by 10% every two years. The tenant cannot terminate the contract. Moreover, Cyprus is a place where you can sleep with an open window all year round, so it’s better that there are no noisy streets under it.
Air conditioners must be new, inverters. As practice shows, replacing junk with new ones reduces the electricity bill by almost half.
Roads
There are traffic jams, but not very big, the only problems are getting to the city from the surrounding villages by the beginning of the school.
Parking - if not the center, then you can find free parking within 100m, in the center 2-3 €. All this applies to Limassol, in Nicosia it is worse.
A special “trick” is the passage of the rings - the English system, you need to get in the right lane in advance, it’s especially insulting when there is a traffic jam in your lane for 10 minutes, and the next one is empty. The speed limit on the highway is 100km/h+20 km/h, and 50+15 km/h in the city, but lately there have been a lot of speed bumps, so in the city it has become 30-50 km/h even in a soft car, and on hard cars in general 20-40 km/h.
On the highway, you can set a cruise of 122 km / h and never slow down to get to the capital (80 km). From Limassol to any airport you lay 45 minutes and always have time.
Cars
Very cheap used cars from England, but they are northern cars with dark interiors and miles on the speedometer. Taxi drivers working on cars from England, if they park a car during the day, cover the seats with towels so as not to cook anything for the passenger and themselves. Prices for new cars are like in Russia, sometimes there are big discounts. I have never seen winter tires, there are a lot of crossover models with front-wheel drive equipment.
Fuel, now 1.3€ per litre. Taxes on the car are calculated on CO emissions. For example: 2.2 diesel Euro 6 - 60 € per year, for a 3 liter diesel Euro 4 will be more than 500 €.
Drinking half a bottle of wine with dinner and driving home is normal.
Internet
About home wrote in the comments
All home tariffs have a maximum of 8 mb / s upload, if you need more - then from 300 € and this is xDSL or coxial (terribly crooked provider). Symmetrical optics 50mb/s costs 2000€/month + VAT. Well, the delay. Working entirely on VDI (RDS) infrastructure in European data centers on ADSL is not very comfortable, on optics it is acceptable.
Screenshots of tracing to Hetzner and OVH are the first from optics, the second from xDSL.
Now Mrs. providers have subsidized tariffs but no one has tried it yet.
Utility payments
Water is expensive, the system is complex, the bill is issued every 4 months,
rates
The meter is on the street, from the meter to the house there is a pipe most often underground, depending on the builder’s curvature and greed, this pipe can be made of low-pressure polyethylene, also with twists, all this is filled with concrete and combined with a large number of micro-earthquakes gives a leakage probability close to 100%. And since the readings are taken by hand once every 4 months, the figure in the bill can be very surprising.
An example of such an account
Fortunately, for the first time and sometimes even for the second such a leak is forgiven.
The idea for a startup is a counter that sends data to the cloud and from there statistics and alerts to the mobile.
Electricity is on average 0.25 € kilowatt, you can put solar panels on your house. At such a price and the number of sunny days, they pay off in 4-5 years, plus a cool roof, minus - birds love to nest under them and yell in the morning.
Example of an invoice with solar panels
Garbage 150€ per year.
Kerosene or diesel, for heating, is sold at a discount, this year it was 0.89€ per liter, if the house has a heating system, it is cheaper and more comfortable to heat than with electricity.
Schools
Greek - free, at the place of residence. English on average cost 4000 € per year for elementary and 7000-10000 € for higher education. There are two Russian schools in Limassol and I think they cost the same.
Medicine
There are very good doctors, their names are passed from mouth to mouth. The cost of a visit is 40-50€. The tests are much more expensive than in Russia. Soon everything should change in connection with the introduction of free medicine.
Weather
In previous articles and discussions, a lot has been said, if the house has heating, then winter is easily tolerated, if in the summer you reduce fat intake and go to the gym two or three times a week, then the heat does not bother you either. Problems are frequent dust storms coming from the Sahara, heat, dust, if anyone has asthma, then this is a problem.
dust
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In my opinion, one of the most difficult organizations in Cyprus. First, shipping is very slow, many Amazon UK and DE sellers don't ship to Cyprus at all.
The second is customs clearance: all parcels not from the EU more expensive than 17.1 € are subject to customs clearance, and this is a queue at the central post office, 3.6 € + VAT from the assessment and it’s hard to park there for free.
Given that the range of local stores is limited, this is a problem.
And finally, two small life hacks with water supply to have hot water in winter and cold water in summer.
- Be sure to put a hot water temperature meter in the tank on the roof (any thermometer with a high-resistance resistor or a digital sensor, so that a long cable from the roof does not affect the readings) - this will save you from unpleasant surprises in the morning.
- The water in a cold barrel on the roof in the summer heats up above 30 degrees, and you won’t be able to take a cold shower. I installed two solenoid valves + check valves, a power supply and a toggle switch, now for the summer you can switch cold water from a barrel to running water.
Source: habr.com