Living in Barbados on Income from Abroad: the Welcome Stamp
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Dominica on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
81 exceptions recorded across 33 countries · none match Dominica to Barbados · Residency on passive income
The Barbados Welcome Stamp is the one remote-work route in this comparison that has a statute of its own. It was created by the Remote Employment Act, 2020-23, which commenced on the day after assent, and extended by the Remote Employment (Amendment) Act, 2021-11, which added renewal. The Act does the work in nine short sections: a non-national employed in a country other than Barbados may be granted a stamp to work here for twelve months on proof of annual income of $100,000 or more generated outside Barbados, a valid passport and valid health insurance; the fee is $4,000 for an individual and $6,000 with family; a renewal costs $3,000 and $4,500 and runs another twelve months. The holder is deemed not resident for the purposes of the Income Tax Act residence test, and income received by a stamp holder is not income derived from Barbados. They may not take any other employment in Barbados.
At a glance
- Length of the stamp
- 12 months only
- Income threshold
- $100 000 or more a year, generated outside Barbados
The Act writes the figure without naming a currency. Its own Schedule states the fees as BDS, and Barbadian statutes use the Barbados dollar, so this is BDS$100,000 - about US$50,000 at the fixed two-to-one rate, which is the figure every secondary account prints without saying which currency the statute used.
- Fee, individual
- $4 000
The Act writes it as $4 000 and the Schedule as BDS $4,000.00.
- Fee, with family
- $6 000
The Act writes it as $6 000 and the Schedule as BDS $6,000.00.
- Renewal fee, individual
- $3 000
Inserted as section 7A(3)(a) by the 2021 amending Act, which commenced on 23 July 2021.
- Renewal fee, with family
- $4 500
Inserted as section 7A(3)(b) by the 2021 amending Act.
- Employment in Barbados
- Prohibited, other than the employment the stamp was granted for
- Tax residence
- Deemed not resident for the purposes of the Income Tax Act residence test
- Dependant
- A child or step-child under the age of 26 years, or a relative wholly dependent by reason of age or infirmity
From the definitions printed in the Schedule to the Act, not from a definition section.
Requirements
- Not being a citizen of Barbados
- Employment in a country other than Barbados
- A valid passport
- Proof of annual income of $100,000 or more, and that the income is generated outside Barbados
- Valid health insurance for the period of the stamp
- An application to the Minister responsible for Immigration in the form set out in the Schedule to the Act, submitted electronically with passport bio-data, birth certificate, proof of relationship for any dependants and an entry visa where one applies
In detail
An instrument, not a scheme
Almost everything written about the Welcome Stamp describes a programme. It is not: it is a nine-section Act of Parliament that received assent on 23 July 2020 and commenced the next day, with the application form printed as its Schedule. That matters because the figures everyone quotes - the twelve months, the income threshold, the fee - are in the statute rather than on a web page, so they change only when Parliament changes them. The renewal that the 2021 amendment added is in the statute too, as a new section 7A, and that Act commenced on 23 July 2021, the day it was gazetted.
The currency the statute does not name
Section 3 requires proof of annual income of $100 000 or more. It does not say which dollar. The Schedule to the same Act prices the stamp as BDS $4,000.00 for an individual and BDS $6,000.00 for a family, which is how a Barbadian statute writes money, and the Barbados dollar is pegged at two to the United States dollar. The widely repeated US$50,000 is therefore the same figure converted, and the widely repeated US$2,000 fee is BDS$4,000 converted. Neither conversion is in the Act, and the Act is what an applicant is held to.
What the stamp does to tax
Section 4 deems the holder not to be resident in Barbados for the purposes of section 85(5) of the Income Tax Act, which is the test that would otherwise make anyone spending more than 182 days here a resident. Section 6 goes further and takes income received by a stamp holder out of "income derived from Barbados" for the purposes of section 16, which is the charge on a non-resident. The combined effect is that a stamp holder living in Barbados for a year is outside the Barbadian income tax net on the income they came with. It says nothing about where else that income is taxable.
Country-level policy
Barbados publishes its law in three places that do not agree with each other about how current it is, and none of them says so on its face. The Supreme Court's statute library carries the Chapters, printed by the Government Printer, with a Law Revision Order year in the running head of each page - 2007 on the newest pages of the Immigration Act and the Income Tax Act, 1997 on the Income Tax pages that carry the residence and domicile rules. The Attorney General's Office carries annual Acts and statutory instruments, and its series of annual Acts stops at 2020. The Government Printing Department publishes the Official Gazette, which is where an Act of 2021 or later is actually found. A reader looking for the law in force has to use all three, and an amendment made between 2021 and today is invisible in the first two.
The Exchange Control Act, Chapter 71, is in force, and it works the way exchange control always has: a general prohibition, with permission from the Authority as the exception. Only an authorised dealer may buy, borrow, sell or lend foreign currency. Payments to or for the credit of a person resident outside Barbados need permission. Securities denominated in Barbados dollars cannot be transferred between a resident and a non-resident without the Central Bank's permission. The Authority is the Minister of Finance, who has delegated most of the work to the Central Bank, which in turn delegates to authorised dealers and depositaries. For a person moving to Barbados the practical consequence is that "resident" means something different here than it does for tax: three years of continuous residence, and never if you are on a work permit.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Dominica
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«may, upon making application to the Minister responsible for Immigration in the form set out in the Schedule, be granted a Barbados Welcome Stamp to work in Barbados for a period of 12 months, subject to the following conditions:»The three conditions are a valid passport, proof of annual income of $100,000 or more generated outside Barbados, and valid health insurance for the period of the stamp. The words "responsible for Immigration" were deleted here by the 2021 amendment, which moved the definition of "Minister" into section 2.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government's law portal, with four sections: annual Acts, annual statutory instruments, consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation, and indices. The annual series is where an Act is found as enacted, with its assent and commencement dates on its face - the Remote Employment Act 2020-23 and the Caribbean Community (Movement of Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act 2020-3 both come from here. Files are served from a flat /attachments/ path.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The annual Acts and statutory instruments series stops at 2020. An Act of 2021 or later is not here at all, so the absence of an instrument on this site proves nothing about years after 2020 - for that, the Official Gazette is the publisher to use. Its consolidated statutes list is a partial mirror of the judiciary's and does not carry the Immigration Act or the Citizenship Act. It consolidates and does not issue, so a commencement date read here is the Act's own statement rather than a gazette record.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«of annual income of $100 000 or more; and»Sub-paragraph (ii) adds that the income must be generated outside Barbados. The Act names no currency; its Schedule prints the fees as BDS.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government's law portal, with four sections: annual Acts, annual statutory instruments, consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation, and indices. The annual series is where an Act is found as enacted, with its assent and commencement dates on its face - the Remote Employment Act 2020-23 and the Caribbean Community (Movement of Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act 2020-3 both come from here. Files are served from a flat /attachments/ path.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The annual Acts and statutory instruments series stops at 2020. An Act of 2021 or later is not here at all, so the absence of an instrument on this site proves nothing about years after 2020 - for that, the Official Gazette is the publisher to use. Its consolidated statutes list is a partial mirror of the judiciary's and does not carry the Immigration Act or the Citizenship Act. It consolidates and does not issue, so a commencement date read here is the Act's own statement rather than a gazette record.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«A Stamp shall be granted for a period of 12 months only.»About this source
The Government's law portal, with four sections: annual Acts, annual statutory instruments, consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation, and indices. The annual series is where an Act is found as enacted, with its assent and commencement dates on its face - the Remote Employment Act 2020-23 and the Caribbean Community (Movement of Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act 2020-3 both come from here. Files are served from a flat /attachments/ path.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The annual Acts and statutory instruments series stops at 2020. An Act of 2021 or later is not here at all, so the absence of an instrument on this site proves nothing about years after 2020 - for that, the Official Gazette is the publisher to use. Its consolidated statutes list is a partial mirror of the judiciary's and does not carry the Immigration Act or the Citizenship Act. It consolidates and does not issue, so a commencement date read here is the Act's own statement rather than a gazette record.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«The fee for the grant of a Stamp shall be
(a) $4 000 in the case of an individual; and
(b) where the individual is accompanied by his family, $6 000.»The Schedule to the Act prints the same two figures as BDS $4,000.00 and BDS $6,000.00, which is how the currency is settled.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government's law portal, with four sections: annual Acts, annual statutory instruments, consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation, and indices. The annual series is where an Act is found as enacted, with its assent and commencement dates on its face - the Remote Employment Act 2020-23 and the Caribbean Community (Movement of Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act 2020-3 both come from here. Files are served from a flat /attachments/ path.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The annual Acts and statutory instruments series stops at 2020. An Act of 2021 or later is not here at all, so the absence of an instrument on this site proves nothing about years after 2020 - for that, the Official Gazette is the publisher to use. Its consolidated statutes list is a partial mirror of the judiciary's and does not carry the Immigration Act or the Citizenship Act. It consolidates and does not issue, so a commencement date read here is the Act's own statement rather than a gazette record.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«shall be deemed not to be resident in Barbados for the purposes of section 85(5) of the Income Tax Act, Cap. 73.»Section 85(5) is the day-count and ordinary-residence test. Section 6 of the same Act then takes the stamp holder's income out of "income derived from Barbados" for the purposes of section 16.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government's law portal, with four sections: annual Acts, annual statutory instruments, consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation, and indices. The annual series is where an Act is found as enacted, with its assent and commencement dates on its face - the Remote Employment Act 2020-23 and the Caribbean Community (Movement of Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act 2020-3 both come from here. Files are served from a flat /attachments/ path.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The annual Acts and statutory instruments series stops at 2020. An Act of 2021 or later is not here at all, so the absence of an instrument on this site proves nothing about years after 2020 - for that, the Official Gazette is the publisher to use. Its consolidated statutes list is a partial mirror of the judiciary's and does not carry the Immigration Act or the Citizenship Act. It consolidates and does not issue, so a commencement date read here is the Act's own statement rather than a gazette record.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«An individual to whom a Stamp has been granted shall not engage in employment in Barbados other than employment for which the Stamp was granted.»The declaration in the Schedule puts it more widely still: the applicant declares that neither they nor their family will accept any employment from, or offer any services to, a citizen, permanent resident, immigrant, work permit holder or any person or entity carrying on business in Barbados.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government's law portal, with four sections: annual Acts, annual statutory instruments, consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation, and indices. The annual series is where an Act is found as enacted, with its assent and commencement dates on its face - the Remote Employment Act 2020-23 and the Caribbean Community (Movement of Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act 2020-3 both come from here. Files are served from a flat /attachments/ path.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The annual Acts and statutory instruments series stops at 2020. An Act of 2021 or later is not here at all, so the absence of an instrument on this site proves nothing about years after 2020 - for that, the Official Gazette is the publisher to use. Its consolidated statutes list is a partial mirror of the judiciary's and does not carry the Immigration Act or the Citizenship Act. It consolidates and does not issue, so a commencement date read here is the Act's own statement rather than a gazette record.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«$3 000 in the case of an individual; and
2. $4 500 where the individual is accompanied by his family.»Cited to the resulting section of the 2020 Act, naming the Act that inserted it. Paragraph (b) adds $4 500 where the individual is accompanied by his family, and sub-section (4) makes the renewed stamp valid for twelve months.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Publisher of the Official Gazette and the only place a Barbadian Act of 2021 or later can be read in full. Part A carries Acts and statutory instruments, dated by issue, as HTML text rather than as a scan, with the assent date, the Act number and the commencement line on the page. The Remote Employment (Amendment) Act 2021-11 is here in the Gazette of 23 July 2021 and nowhere else we found.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments as enacted and does not consolidate, so an Act read here is the amending Act and its section numbering is its own, not the numbering of the law that results. Its archive is paginated by issue date with no index by subject or by Act name, so finding a known Act means knowing roughly when it was gazetted. It must not be cited for whether an instrument is still in force.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«Commencement: 23rd July, 2021»Assented on 22 July 2021 and in force from 23 July 2021 - the date it was gazetted. The amending Act is in force, so renewal is live law and not a proposal.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
Publisher of the Official Gazette and the only place a Barbadian Act of 2021 or later can be read in full. Part A carries Acts and statutory instruments, dated by issue, as HTML text rather than as a scan, with the assent date, the Act number and the commencement line on the page. The Remote Employment (Amendment) Act 2021-11 is here in the Gazette of 23 July 2021 and nowhere else we found.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments as enacted and does not consolidate, so an Act read here is the amending Act and its section numbering is its own, not the numbering of the law that results. Its archive is paginated by issue date with no index by subject or by Act name, so finding a known Act means knowing roughly when it was gazetted. It must not be cited for whether an instrument is still in force.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The Act is silent on what happens at the end of a second twelve months. Section 7A permits renewal and makes the renewed stamp valid for twelve months; it does not say how many times it may be renewed, and no instrument we read puts a ceiling on it.
Time on a Welcome Stamp is not stated anywhere to count towards permanent residence, immigrant status or citizenship, and the Act does not mention any of them.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs page about the programme is a 2020 press item reporting application numbers and still points to barbadoswelcomestamp.bb for details. That site would not return a page to us; the figures here come from the Act and its Schedule instead.
This record rests on the Remote Employment Act, 2020-23 as the Attorney General's Office publishes it, and on the Remote Employment (Amendment) Act, 2021-11 as the Government Printing Department publishes it in the Official Gazette of 23 July 2021.
- consolidatesRemote Employment Act, 2020-23
Office of the Attorney General of Barbados
About this source
The Government's law portal, with four sections: annual Acts, annual statutory instruments, consolidated statutes and subsidiary legislation, and indices. The annual series is where an Act is found as enacted, with its assent and commencement dates on its face - the Remote Employment Act 2020-23 and the Caribbean Community (Movement of Skilled Nationals) (Amendment) Act 2020-3 both come from here. Files are served from a flat /attachments/ path.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The annual Acts and statutory instruments series stops at 2020. An Act of 2021 or later is not here at all, so the absence of an instrument on this site proves nothing about years after 2020 - for that, the Official Gazette is the publisher to use. Its consolidated statutes list is a partial mirror of the judiciary's and does not carry the Immigration Act or the Citizenship Act. It consolidates and does not issue, so a commencement date read here is the Act's own statement rather than a gazette record.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
- issuesGazette July 23 2021 - Part A ACTS, including Act 2021-11
Barbados Government Printing Department
About this source
Publisher of the Official Gazette and the only place a Barbadian Act of 2021 or later can be read in full. Part A carries Acts and statutory instruments, dated by issue, as HTML text rather than as a scan, with the assent date, the Act number and the commencement line on the page. The Remote Employment (Amendment) Act 2021-11 is here in the Gazette of 23 July 2021 and nowhere else we found.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments as enacted and does not consolidate, so an Act read here is the amending Act and its section numbering is its own, not the numbering of the law that results. Its archive is paginated by issue date with no index by subject or by Act name, so finding a known Act means knowing roughly when it was gazetted. It must not be cited for whether an instrument is still in force.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
- administersBarbados Welcome Stamp Programme
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Barbados
About this source
The ministry responsible for consular policy and for CARICOM affairs, and the Government's voice on both. It publishes the complete visa table for every country in the world - the only such list any Caribbean country in this comparison puts out as a readable document - and it published the frequently asked questions for the launch of enhanced cooperation in free movement on 1 October 2025, including the Government's own answer to which laws govern it.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It administers and does not issue: nothing it publishes is an instrument, and its free movement FAQ is explicitly an explanation of a decision rather than a text of law. Its visa table carries its own revision date - August 2022 - and nothing says whether it has been reviewed since, so it must not be cited as the position today without checking. Its visitor page states a driving permit requirement that the Road Traffic Act as consolidated to 2022 does not contain.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source