Huge respect to the author for the details that have gone into this. I'd spent a week hammering at a Claude max 20x plan to try and build schengen 90/180 rolling window + tax residency in a couple of countries tracker... and that was hard work. I can only imagine how much effort has gone into this, to get all the details right.
It's unclear whether the author wrote all of this themselves, or if they outsourced a bunch of it to Claude. My experience with Claude was that it was terrible at writing code to do the math, even when I explained what the calculation needed to be, what the input was, and what the expected result was. It ultimately took starting a whole new project just to do the rolling window calculation, and then have that fed back in.
My biggest question for the author, if they happen to see this, is: how much manual testing validation did you do of the outputs the app produces? IE: Did you do the inputs + transformations = output calculations yourself as well, counting days on calendars, etc, to validate that the app is actually accurate? (That was the only way I developed any faith in solution I made for myself, which is way less impressive than your app). Regardless of whether you wrote the code yourself or not, a thorough test harness feels vitally important for an app like this.
I wonder if this is something that could be built on top of Google location tracking. Presumably there's not enough info there by itself, but basic time/position data should be sufficient.
I just realized this was the same author who made the apple watch integration for their gym entry system, I loved their writing then, and I loved it here!
There's some similarity between nationality and copyright: arcane, obscure, complex and mean rules that only benefit incumbents and punish everyone else.
At the rate things are going, even EU and Schengen, areas in which their citizens are blissfully unaware how nice they have it compared to outsiders, are going to come to an end. Far-right nationalists are on the rise over Europe.
It grows exponentially the more countries are involved. I am a citizen of country A but live and work in country B, and I have to satisfy country B's visa requirements, which involves quite a bit of paperwork. I also have to pay taxes to country A, which involves more paperwork. It gets complicated.
But I'm only dealing with the requirements of two countries. The author mentioned five or six countries; I'm glad I'm only dealing with two.
I still have to submit the paperwork that says which country my income was earned in, which is basically the standard tax paperwork from country A plus an extra form or two. (And in years when I went to country A on business trips, it's non-trivial. Simple enough, but not as trivial as years when I was in country B the whole time). It's not extremely burdensome, but it's still one more piece of paperwork to keep track of than the tax paperwork that people who have never left country A have to deal with.
This typically means they agree you don't get double charged (so you can claim taxes paid in one back in the other) but they both still want you to complete the paperwork regardless. Saves money, not time.
Don't get double-taxed on income, specifically. You may still get double-taxed on investments, property, wealth, etc depending on which pair of countries
The problem with those rules is that they "all make sense" somewhat (and where details might have been influenced by local idiosyncrasies) locally but if you mix and match them then it gets weird
But the trick here is: if you're relying on the details for your benefit then make 100% sure it's provable (though tbh legal proof is less - and different - than what your HN commenter might understand). Or just make it easy on yourself and don't rely on them
Shame we hate all advertising here though, except for the ones it turns out we do like. Humans are fickle that way, I guess.
If only there were some sort of organization that wanted to unite the nations together, that would have been the best place for an app such as this to happen from. Ah well, I guess late stage capitalism is the only way to get anything done.
I just came back from a passport using vacation too! Thankfully mine wasn't anywhere approaching complicated that would have needed this app, but I have done that before.
It's unclear whether the author wrote all of this themselves, or if they outsourced a bunch of it to Claude. My experience with Claude was that it was terrible at writing code to do the math, even when I explained what the calculation needed to be, what the input was, and what the expected result was. It ultimately took starting a whole new project just to do the rolling window calculation, and then have that fed back in.
My biggest question for the author, if they happen to see this, is: how much manual testing validation did you do of the outputs the app produces? IE: Did you do the inputs + transformations = output calculations yourself as well, counting days on calendars, etc, to validate that the app is actually accurate? (That was the only way I developed any faith in solution I made for myself, which is way less impressive than your app). Regardless of whether you wrote the code yourself or not, a thorough test harness feels vitally important for an app like this.
If that's the first thing he thinks of while transiting through a UK airport, he deserves a citizenship, no questions.
https://drobinin.com/apps/residency/
If I wasn't on android and decidedly sedentary at the moment, I'd love to see how it works.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44910865
- search it on a search engine -> google it
- fetch it from an API -> cURL it
I hope we will eventually get rid of both.
But I'm only dealing with the requirements of two countries. The author mentioned five or six countries; I'm glad I'm only dealing with two.
But the trick here is: if you're relying on the details for your benefit then make 100% sure it's provable (though tbh legal proof is less - and different - than what your HN commenter might understand). Or just make it easy on yourself and don't rely on them
Shame we hate all advertising here though, except for the ones it turns out we do like. Humans are fickle that way, I guess.
If only there were some sort of organization that wanted to unite the nations together, that would have been the best place for an app such as this to happen from. Ah well, I guess late stage capitalism is the only way to get anything done.
I just came back from a passport using vacation too! Thankfully mine wasn't anywhere approaching complicated that would have needed this app, but I have done that before.