Once again about Cyprus, the nuances of life

After reading articles about life in Cyprus, I also decided to share his experience, slightly supplementing the experience of previous authors. Arrival on a work visa, your own company that can do visas, green card (LTRP), citizenship, only 15 years old. And add more numbers. Perhaps this will be useful for potential IT immigrants.



The narrative will be maximally abstract without water.

IT Worker

In previous articles, everything was described in principle. Most local vacancies are somehow related to Forex (financial 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) with an employee -8.3%, with an employer -8.3% + 2% + 1.2% + 0.5% + 8%. The last 8% goes towards future leave and is returned to the employee.

Since June, another tax on medicine has been added.

Income tax (PIT) up to € 19,500 per year after all deductions of 0%, further from 20 to 35%.

VAT (VAT) -19%.



The first 5 years after the move - a 20% discount on taxable income.



An article for 2017 , Social Insurance has since grown.

Work Visa -> LTRP-> Citizenship

If the employer has a good lawyer, and all the formalities are followed, the documents are done 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 following permission, then it considered that during the break the person was legally in Cyprus.



As I already said, if a normal lawyer and the filing process are not delayed, then there will be no gaps, usually they arise because of the Sig-Sig company manager who did not prepare the documents on time.



After 5 years of stay, you can apply for the LTRP green card. The process is not complicated, just pass the Greek exam on A2. I am not a humanist, it would be unrealistic for me, but I got it when the exam was not yet required.



After 7 years of permanent residence in Cyprus (2560 days you need to count all arrivals, departures), you can apply for citizenship, knowledge of the language is not required. If you have a financial resource and a good lawyer, then you can get it in a couple of years. If you want to try without a pusher lawyer, you can wait another 7 years and most likely you will go to him anyway).



In addition to finding work where they can make a work visa, you can also open your company, drive 171,000 € through your account as an investment, and get the opportunity to do work visas yourself. I myself walked this way, if interested I can paint it in detail.

Schengen and UK Visas

Unfortunately, Cyprus is not included in the Schengen, so the work / residence permit and the green card do not allow free travel. While there is no Cypriot passport, you have to constantly issue a Schengen and UK visa. You can immediately make a second Russian overseas, the benefit is not expensive and relatively fast, in Cyprus there are two Russian consulates - in Nicosia and Limassol.

Housing

This is the topic of a separate article.



For a comfortable stay, 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 wall to the south in half a brick. Relations between the tenant and the lessor are 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 all year round with an open window, so it is better that there are 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; problems only go to the city from the surrounding villages at the beginning of the school.



Parking - if not the center, then you can find free within 100m, in the center 2-3 €. All this applies to Limassol, in Nicosia it is worse.



A special “feature” of the passage of the rings is the English system, you have to get in the right row in advance, it’s especially offensive when there is a traffic jam for 10 minutes in your row and the next one is empty. Speed ​​on the highway is 100km / h + 20 permissible excess, and 50 + 15 in the city, but lately there were a lot of speed bumps, so in the city it became 30-50 even by soft car, and by hard cars in general 20-40 km / h.



On the highway, you can set off a cruise of 122 km / h and never brake to reach the capital (80 km). You lay 45 minutes from Limassol to any airport and you always have time.

Cars

Very cheap used cars from England, but these are northern cars with dark salons and miles on the speedometer. Taxi drivers working in cars from England, if they park the car during the day, cover the seats with towels so as not to cook anything for the passenger and himself. Prices for new cars in Russia, sometimes there are big discounts. I have never seen winter tires, a lot of crossover models with front-wheel drive equipment.



Fuel, now 1.3 € per liter. Car taxes are calculated on CO emissions. For example: 2.2 Euro6 diesel - 60 € per year, for a 3 liter Euro 4 diesel engine there will be more than 500 €.



Drinking half a bottle of wine at dinner and driving home is normal.

the Internet

About home wrote in the comments habr.com/en/post/448912/#comment_20075676

All home tariffs have a maximum of 8mb / s upload, if you need more, then from 300 € and this is xDSL or coxial (a terribly crooked provider). Optical symmetrical 50mb / s costs 2000 € / month + VAT. Well, the delay. It’s not very comfortable to work completely on VDI (RDS) infrastructure in European data centers on ADSL, it’s acceptable on optics.





Now the state. the provider there were subsidized tariffs on optics, but so far none of my friends had tried.

Communal payments

Water is expensive, the system is complex, billed once every 4 months,





The meter on the street, from the meter to the house, there is a pipe most often underground, depending on the curvature and greed of the builder, this pipe can be made of low-pressure polyethylene, also with twists, it is all flooded with concrete and in combination with a large number of micro-earthquakes gives a probability of leakage close to 100%. And since the readings are taken by hand once every 4 months, the figure in the bill can be very surprising.





Fortunately, for the first time and sometimes even the second, such a leak is forgiven.



The idea for a startup is a counter sending data to the cloud and from there statistics and alerts to the mobile.



Electricity an average of 0.25 € kilowatts, you can put solar panels on your house. With this price and the number of sunny days, they pay off in 4-5 years, plus a cool roof, minus - the birds like to nest under them and yell in the morning.





Garbage 150 € per year.



Kerosene or diesel, for heating, is sold at a discount, this year it was 0.89 € liter, if the house has a heating system, it is heated cheaper and more comfortable than electricity.

Schools

Greek - free, at the place of residence. English on average cost 4000 € per year primary and 7000-10000 € higher school. There are two Russian schools in Limassol and I think they cost the same.

The medicine

There are very good doctors, their names are passed from mouth to mouth. The cost of the visit is 40-50 € analyzes are much more expensive than in Russia. Soon, everything should change in connection with the introduction of free medicine. vkcyprus.com/useful/8387-kak-budem-lechitsya-s-1-iyunya

Weather

In previous articles and discussions, a lot has been said, if the house has heating, then winter is tolerated easily, if in the summer you reduce fat intake and go to the gym two or three times a week, then the heat also does not bother. Problems are frequent dust storms coming from the Sahara, heat, dust, if anyone has asthma, then this is a problem.

post office

In my opinion, one of the most difficult organizations in Cyprus. First, delivery is very slow, many Amazon and UK sellers do not 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 the turn at the central post office, 3.6 € + VAT from the estimate 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 in summer.

1. 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 loop from the roof does not affect the readings) - this will relieve unpleasant surprises in the morning.
2. The water in the cold barrel on the roof heats above 30 degrees in the summer, and you can’t take a cold shower. I put two solenoid valves + check valves, a power supply and a toggle switch, now in the summer you can switch cold water from a barrel to flowing.