Hi everyone,
I'm new here as you can see so let me introduce myself and my expat project ! I'm David, 39 yo, from Paris, France. My english is not too bad (I guess...) but my native language is french so please my apologies in advance for the many misspellings and awfully worded sentences I might be using...
Anyway, me and my partner are strongly considering taking a big step and moving to Gozo (or maybe Malta). I work as a sophrologist (this is not very well known in english speaking countries, let's say it's someplace between therapy and meditation teaching) and a shiatsu practitioner, and my partner is a photographer (specialized in landscape and architecture). We fell in love with the Island a few years ago and keep coming back every year for at least one week, but usually 3 or 4. We're kind of bored with Paris and would like to try something completely different, slower and peaceful life, etc. and every time we think of it, Gozo pops up in our heads. Of course we are aware we've known it only on holidays and that it's probably not the promised land we think it is, but we'll only know if we try. We own a nice flat in Paris that we can rent, which would make a regular income and help us before getting new activities started in Malta. We're coming back in mid-september and we plan to come again in spring... before maybe staying for good if we can get everything sorted !
We have many questions of course and I will try not to flood the forum with them (and right know I'm digging the archives and finding a lot of answers by myself) Anyway, right now a few of them remain unanswered and I hope your expat wisdom can help :
* one of our ideas comes as following : we may rent a 3/4 bedrooms farmhouse and then rent 2/3 of these bedrooms to tourists. I have absolutely no clue if this is legal or not ! (and despite my efforts, couldn't find any information about that) Does anybody know if this is possible (can we rent rooms as a b&b when not owning the house ?), how and where to register this if needed, and the taxes we'd have to pay ? If not, does somebody know where I might be able to find this information ?
* if this is legal and we can do it, my partner would like to teach photography and I would try to work as a meditation instructor (maybe in the house, maybe in some other place in Victoria) : can these activities be done under the "self employment" thingy ?
* we've never had any trouble being a gay couple on Gozo as tourists, do you think that would change if we were to live on the island full time ?
Ok, this post is very long, sorry, but any help on these subjects will be really appreciated ! Thanks a lot for your time reading this and maybe answering my dumb questions !
David