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EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

eu-inc.org

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Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#81
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has plenty of cheap hydropower. But as prices are now tied to countries like Germany which made catastrophic decisions around energy, Swedes have to pay much more than if Sweden had an independent energy market.

In that case it sounds like "unification was bad" is an unfair characterization. Unification was bad by proxy, due to the bad decisions of Germany. If Germany had made better decisions, unification would've been good as Sweden would've had lower prices on a larger market.

”Bad or good by proxy” is how all policy plays out though, your ideas mean nothing if reality says otherwise. And Germany going coal was well known by time of unification (one might think it was because of that, tinfoil hat on).

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#82
post #26

I really looking forward to this! I love being in the EU and I really like living in Germany. But creating and operating a small company in Germany is a nightmare, I hope this can give smaller EU companies agility and frictionless setup and operation so they can focus on building products and providing services to their customers.

Can you elaborate more? I am self employed electrician in Bavaria using simple Gewerbe. It is straightforward at the beginning. Literally hundreds of webpages describe the procedure. It is obvious, that growing the company into GmbH with own VAT number increases the complexity. But I haven’t seen it other way in Europe.

In the UK, it took me half an hour and 30£ to open a Ltd, which I think is the equivalent of a GmbH.

It might have changed, but a few years ago you could go from 0 to a fully functional limited company, with accounting, business account, registered address with mail forwarding, etc. in a matter of days, from the comfort of your sofa.

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#83
I always heard that the issue with startup investment in Europe was the general lack of capital investors willing to take Hail Mary risks on founders with a wild idea and maybe little experience. The market is far too risk-averse for a grassroots early-stage startup scene.

How would this organization address that fundamental psychological block?

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#84
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but if everyone starts thinking "No one else is lowering their emissions so why would I?", how are we supposed to ever make any sort of progress? Someone doing something is always better than no one doing anything, can we at least agree on that?

But it is by no means obvious that carbon taxes are the right path. Targeted investments in low-emission energy sources might work better.

Fair point, I agree, that isn't obvious. What is obvious to both of us (I assume?) is that pollution has to be lower, not just in the EU, but across the world. But we (Europeans) can mostly just influence what happens inside of Europe, EU and our countries. Hence, we do what we can to reduce it, where taxing it is one approach.

With that said, more investments into other energy sources are totally welcome, and I don't think that should mean we also need to tax pollution less, we can have both :)

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#85
post #73

Local Taxes… the issue with EU is the taxes and cost of labour.

That's not the issue. If your business is dependent on slave labor and offloading your externalities on the society to make a profit it simply means your business should not exist.

Its evident that labor cost and taxes are not excessive in EU by the reality of existence of plenty of businesses in a healthy society.

What doesn't exist in EU is the "tech" business, and the tech doesn't have margins too slim to employ people and pay taxes. On the contrary, the margins are fat. The reason that the tech sector isn't a large one in EU is that its easy to incorporate in USA and access the full EU market from there instead of incorporating in some small EU country and deal with their bureaucracy and internal border limitations. The 28th regime and the EU-INC is to address exactly that.

If the USA-EU relations deteriorate enough, it will also create instant trillion Euros market. Just look at the quarterly reports of US tech giants, they generate EU revenues that are not that behind the US revenues. For Apple thats %60 of the US revenue, or ~110B$ for the last quarter and that's happening despite Apple having a much smaller market share in EU.

A full blown conflict between US-EU will be a huge opportunity to replicate the US tech sector in EU and having an EU-INC will be the necessary facilitator that is currently missing when compared with the landscape in USA.

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#86

I would love to be able to setup in Europe a non-profit equivalent to the Zig Software Foundation. I haven't looked too deeply into it, but my understanding is that it's not possible to create an equivalent corporation in Italy (where I reside) nor the rest of Europe. I would love to be proven wrong though.

> I haven't looked too deeply into it, but my understanding is that it's not possible to create an equivalent corporation in Italy (where I reside) nor the rest of Europe. You certainly did not look deep enough. ;) Ask Mr Google about gGmbH in Germany, for example. Honestly, I would be incredibly surprised if every single European country does not already have a non-profit structure. In addition, do not forget that i…

Sure we have non profit companies also in Europe, the question if it's possible to create one to support an Open Source project, and which tax benefits donors can get.

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#87
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate more? I am self employed electrician in Bavaria using simple Gewerbe. It is straightforward at the beginning. Literally hundreds of webpages describe the procedure. It is obvious, that growing the company into GmbH with own VAT number increases the complexity. But I haven’t seen it other way in Europe.

I had my experience with bootstrapping a self founded UG (Unternehmergesellschaft), and the process was long (about 8 weeks), involving me getting support from a company (firma.de) to help me prepare all the documentation which involved a lot of physical paperwork, then there's the visit to the notary which is required. After you do that, you need to register with the Finanzamt, and then you start finding out about a…

The question is always the same: do you really need UG/GmbH at the beginning? It’s typical rookie mistake. I did it too, sold the company for 1€ to some shady people at the end. Gewerbe with 40000€ in the company’s account does not have the problems anymore. And the expensive tax consultants are just another cost of doing business in Germany. Ok, the quality of Finanzamt clerks varies heavily depending on location. Current town has nice ones.

I agree, the process is not easy or nice in Germany, but it’s enough to start businesses despite all the complications and overregulation. But getting VAT number and bank account in other comments mentioned Estonia was huge pita for friends.

Re: EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

#89
post #73

Local Taxes… the issue with EU is the taxes and cost of labour.

> the issue with EU is the taxes and cost of labour.

450 million and counting people would still prefer to live and work in the EU than anywhere else.

Even more so with present geopolitics, to put it politely !

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