As a freelancer, the world of remote work and digital nomads, screaming “work from anywhere”, or “work from home” has appealed to me a great deal.
So, quite naturally when I was given a choice to pick my topic for my LLM dissertation, and because it had to be somewhat related to Business Law, I chose “Taxing the Untethered : Exploring the intersection of digital nomadism, remote work and global taxation – an Indian perspective”.
My reasoning was that no one likes to pay tax, and that I would get to interview or interact with digital nomads, remote workers and other freelancers.
When I submitted my first draft of the thesis synopsis however, I was in for a shock.
The comments I received from my research guide were odd.
Notable mentions were:
1. Books must be printed books. (Granted, I put Amazon links instead of citations there, but still, they were at some point of time, actual printed books.)
2. Videos are unacceptable. (Which, seems absurd as we are in 2024, post-Jio era where people prefer to watch reels, shorts and bite sized content as opposed to reading books.)
3. Blogs are not relevant – Tell that to my 4 years of freelancing as a content writer/blog writer for finance/marketing companies.
4. You cannot compare so many countries. – As if 5 countries was too much to compare. If any digital nomad were to move to a different country, I’m willing to bet that they would review almost every article that said 66 Digital Nomad Visa Countries in 2024.
5. “These do not seem to be chapter titles. Frame accordingly.” – I wish there would be more feedback on what an “appropriate” chapter title were to look like.
Moreover, the unsettling thing is that my LLM thesis/dissertation isn’t even going to get published anywhere. There’s no repository or journal or website where anyone who wanted to check out what I’ve researched will ever get to read it. It feels like a lot of wasted effort.
Further unsettling demands are that the body should be at least 150 pages for the thesis and 75 pages for the project. And they also want a plagiarism check, which means it has to be original, and well-cited. The citation style being used here is the ILI citation style by the Indian Law Institute, who seem to have no presets that I could import into a tool like Zotero, and rather waste time manually creating the citations or hopefully by using something like House of Citation. And they want it by December 7th, which is another unrealistic deadline, but I will have to do whatever I can now to make it happen.
Anyway, rant over.
Now that I’ve lost most of you, I’d like to make a big ask. Could you put me in touch with remote workers/freelancers/digital nomads who would be willing to get interviewed by me about their lifestyle?
An example would be something like the below video:
I don’t need to go into the “How much are you making per month?” question, so your income will remain a secret. I’m more interested in why you chose this lifestyle, what are the pros and cons and how you manage your taxes – with the help of an accountant, or on your own, how you structure your business, have you incorporated in another country for tax benefits, isn’t GST a pain if you deal with Indian businesses? (spoiler alert, yes it is). And general mindset questions, which would help a complete boomer (read: external project evaluators for my LLM thesis defense viva exam) understand the merit in choosing this topic.