Working from Serbia as a Germany resident

At a glance

Rule coverage

What the rules say about Serbia

The rules below are the ones most likely to shape a stay in Serbia, in plain words and with the source behind each one. Your own report tells you which of them apply to you.

1. Significant issuePersonal income tax

   One dominant client can get a pausalac legally recharacterized as an employee, the 2020 independence test

   Since 1 March 2020, an amendment to Article 85 of the Personal Income Tax Law lets the Tax Administration apply a 9-criteria test of independence, test samostalnosti, to any relationship between a pausalac and a single client, nalogodavac. The 9 criteria cover who sets your working hours, who provides your equipment, whether you were hired through a job ad or recruiter, whether you carry business risk, whether a non-compete blocks other clients, whether at least 70 percent of your annual income comes from that one client, and whether you worked 130 or more days for them in 12 months. Meeting 5 or more of the 9 in relation to one client means that client relationship is reclassified as disguised employment. The income from that specific client is then taxed at 20 percent of gross with no standard cost deduction, plus mandatory pension and disability contributions on top, a materially worse result than ordinary pausalac taxation. Crucially, this applies even when the dominant client is a foreign company with no presence in Serbia, such as a Dutch employer, the test does not require the client to be Serbian.

2. Significant issueTax residency

   183 days in a 12-month period spanning the tax year makes you a Serbian tax resident

   Serbia's Personal Income Tax Law treats an individual as tax resident once they are present in Serbia for 183 days or more, continuously or with breaks, within a 12-month period that begins or ends in the relevant tax year. This is close to but not identical to a simple calendar-year count, since the 12-month window can straddle two calendar years. Crossing this line brings worldwide income into the Serbian tax net, not just income earned inside the country.

3. Significant issueImmigration and visa

   Past 90 days without a residence permit, lawful presence simply ends

   The 90-day visa-free allowance is a hard ceiling, not a soft guideline. There is no grace period or informal extension available at the border or at a police station. Once the 180-day window shows more than 90 days used without an approved residence permit, presence in Serbia is unlawful, which risks fines, removal and a re-entry ban under the Law on Foreigners. The practical fix has to be arranged before day 90, not after.

4. Needs checkingPermanent establishment risk

   Running your company from a Serbian kitchen table can make the company itself Serbian-resident

   Serbian corporate tax residency turns on mesto stvarne uprave i kontrole, the place of actual management and control, not on where a company is formally registered. A company incorporated anywhere else in the world, including the Netherlands, risks being treated as a Serbian tax resident if the real management decisions are actually being made from Serbia, pulling its worldwide profit into Serbia's 15 percent corporate tax net. This runs both ways, the same logic that could make a foreign company Serbian-resident applies just as much to a Serbian company actually run from a Dutch kitchen table, which risks becoming Dutch tax resident instead. A tax treaty rarely fully rescues this, since place-of-effective-management tests are exactly what treaty tie-breakers are designed to arbitrate, not avoid.

5. Needs checkingRight to work

   There is no dedicated digital nomad visa, the real route is the flat-rate entrepreneur permit

   Despite what a lot of nomad-focused websites imply, Serbia has never created a distinct digital nomad visa category. What actually works, and what most remote workers who settle in Serbia use, is registering as a preduzetnik pausalac, a flat-rate taxed sole entrepreneur, and then applying for temporary residence on the basis of self-employment. This gets a genuine legal foothold, a tax number and a residence permit tied to your own business rather than to a nonexistent visa product. It takes more paperwork than a single-purpose nomad visa would, but it is the compliant path that actually exists in Serbian law.

6. Needs checkingSocial security

   Without EU A1 machinery, a Dutch employer needs the 1979 convention's own coverage certificate instead

   For an EU destination, a Dutch employer would request an A1 certificate to keep an assigned worker on Dutch social security while abroad. Serbia is not covered by that regulation, so the mechanism is different, the 1979 Netherlands-Yugoslavia convention as applied to Serbia has its own posted-worker and coverage-certificate provisions that a Dutch employer needs to invoke directly with the SVB rather than through the standard EU A1 process. Skipping this step because the destination feels similar to an EU posting is the most likely way to end up with a genuine coverage gap, either double contributions or none at all.

Tax treaty between Germany and Serbia