LSVVE Long Term visa Philippines

[JonnyStekkino]

Anyone had experience extensing the long term visa (LSVVE) in the philippines, seems that can be extended up to 36 months? and what about the taxation part?

 

[Mike Forman]

You can extend your tourist visa up to 3 years in the Philippines. Just need to go to bureau of immigration and pay for the extension which can be 1,2 or 6 months. You need to renew also your ACR-I card annually.

You can't open a bank account nonetheless with that.

As long as you don't work in Philippines for a local corporation you don't need to pay tax in Philippines since you are a tourist (not allowed to work in Philippines, though remote work for foreign company they don't care). You will normally still have to pay tax in your country of residence/citizenship.

 

[Juleski70]

You can't open a bank account nonetheless with that.

This seems to be a case-by-case/branch-by-branch thing; I have heard reports of people on tourist visa successfully opening a bank account, and other stories of them not succeeding. Seems to be more likely if you are not a US citizen.
For what it's worth, I don't have a bank account and get by on a GCash account (the local e-wallet — max' 50,000 pesos balance, 100,000 pesos/month transactions) and then use Wise to deposit/transfer my native currency into GCash, and a GCash card to get cash out of the ATM. But it's too limited if, say, I was trying to build a house or do something capital intensive.

and what about the taxation part?

The Philippines has pretty clear policies that — unlike most countries — you can stay there a very long time and NOT become a tax resident. They don't care about your foreign income, and are happy to simply have you spend your $ in their country.
What they don't like is when you take a job or open a local business… anything that could be interpreted as competing with Filipinos in the domestic marketplace. I even heard about a foreigner who volunteered to play piano in a hotel lounge for free — he'd still be providing value to the hotel that they ought to be paying a filipino to do, so it was considered too much of a gray area for the hotel to accept.

You can extend your tourist visa up to 3 years in the Philippines.

And then you can get on a plane, have lunch in Singapore or Ho Chi Minh or wherever you like, fly back and you're reset to day zero, and can spend another 36 months. I know guys who have been here almost 10 years on Tourist visas.