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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

#121

Post by mfld »

lnsru wrote: post #87
jcmartinezdev wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. C…

Agreed. In case you do not have big investors, just register as an individual entrepreneur, get a bank account and get going! It can be turned into a LLC/GmbH later if business goes well.

Also taxes will be much easier. Just get one of the countless apps where you add invoices, and they generate tax reports for you. With an LLC or when employing other people, getting a tax consultant is advised. IMO, they are not expensive - how many hours of your time are you willing to spend on this topic instead of paying e.g. 200 EUR/mo?

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

#122

Post by spiderfarmer »

skrebbel wrote: post #106
petcat wrote: post #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?

It wouldn't. I read this as "we gotta try something " but let's be honest, no amount of work on incorporation rules or employee options schemes or whatever they make up next, is going to meaningfully change the culture and attitude of European capital markets. If the EU really wants to light the fire, they should invest all those suddenly available defense euros in European companies only. Keep that going for a decad…

It's not going to change overnight, no. But it's an important step.

"Today, if a company wants to scale up, it is confronted with different requirements in each Member State - that leads to an overwhelming 27 different rulebooks."

One of the biggest investors in Europe are pension funds. And this is one of the reasons why they did not invest in EU startups. And they did not expect this move until 2028. So it's moving faster than expected for whatever that is worth.

https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/pension-funds-set-to-drive-europe...

https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/pension-funds-are-open-to-investi...

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

#123

Post by AndrewDucker »

brabel wrote: post #46
causalscience wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanna tell us more? Why has unifying the energy market been catastrophic for Sweden?

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.

Presumably because Sweden is selling some of that cheap power to Germany.

The solution to which is to generate even more power in Sweden (so you can sell it off cheap and have it cheap too) or that Germany produces power more cheaply so that it's not giving Sweden so much money for electricity. Both of these should happen if the market is set up well.

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

#124

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

techpression wrote: post #18
cjs_ac wrote: post #3

> The ultimate aim is to create a new truly European company structure. We call it EU Inc., with a single and simple set of rules that will apply seamlessly all over our Union. So that business can operate across Member States much more easily. Our entrepreneurs, the innovative companies, will be able to register a company in any Member State within 48 hours – fully online. They will enjoy the same capital regime all…

As a Swede the third one is terrifying, unifying the energy market has been catastrophic for us, both price and environment wise. The latest is added taxes due to choke points designed by EU from the first place..

I think you’re getting cause and effect wrong.

Previously Sweden was much tighter coupled to German prices, but since fossil fuels were cheap people didn’t really notice.

Today due to CO2 cap and trade fossil emissions are expensive. [1]

Couple it with a massive renewable buildout leading to a decoupling of the prices that didn’t happened before.

We now have maximum volatility. Jumping between expensive fossil prices and an absolutely mindbogglingly large surplus leading to essentially free energy.

As Germany, and the rest of Europe, transitions to renewables we will spend less and less time on fossil fuel marginal prices and see our energy systems stabilize on renewable and storage prices. Outside of emergency reserve style situations.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi...

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

#125

Post by mono442 »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #117
mono442 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy is expensive because burning fossil fuels is expensive due to taxes. A coal power plant pays around two times more for emissions than for the coal itself. They're trying to solve a problem which they have created themselves in the first place.

Europe is energy poor. We will never be able to compete on raw cost with the US, China and similar. Our path forward are through renewables, which today are vastly cheaper than fossil fuels. We decide the speed of the transition to green cheap energy by how much we tax fossil fuels. Low taxes = slow transition. High taxes = fast transition.

I don't believe this is true. The US has also seen a big growth of the renewables in recent years and they have managed to do it without carbon taxes.

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

#126

Post by fkarg »

This would help a lot. Many European startups are strongly local (also in talent search), because while moving is simple, share distribution and ownership structures are anything but, and investors usually don't want to bother with local regulation on that they don't even know.

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

#127

Post by arka2147483647 »

dbuxton wrote: post #118

Of all the challenges you face as a startup, the legal entity you choose is possibly the least consequential. Just choose a jurisdiction where investors understand how the legals work (Delaware C-corp, UK Ltd is OK too) and there's a finite administrative burden and/or commoditized tooling in place to help you handle it. Now, that may not work in all jurisdictions for reasons of local taxation etc (and you'll have to…

> Delaware C-corp, UK Ltd is OK too

Neither of which is in EU, which is exactly the point. Should be an EU one which is usable...

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

#128

Post by pornel »

closewith wrote: post #95
petcat wrote: post #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?

I think a big issue is that Europeans who want to invest in early stage VC do so in the States, because everything is geared towards entrepreneurial success there. Changing the business environment across the EU is necessary but definitely not sufficient to kick start the VC-backed startup scene in the EU.

It used to be the same for founders. If you wanted to raise, you went to SV. SV used to be the Schelling point for funding.

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

#129

Post by kristoff_it »

traceroute66 wrote: post #99
kristoff_it wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the question if it's possible to create one to support an Open Source project, and which tax benefits donors can get. As the old saying goes ... what has that got to do with the price of eggs ? A non-profit is a non-profit, doesn't matter if you are supporting Open Source or the community homeless. Same goes for donors. A donation is a donation. Codeberg e.v. (a.k.a. Forgejo) is one example that comes to mind, but…

My experience with the US tax system is that you need to get approval to get non-profit status, and more in general I do think this has something to do with the price of eggs in the sense that you should obviously be prevented from being able to setup a non-profit company if what you're doing has nothing charitable about it.

I made the mistake of leaving this unsaid, but 501c3 in the US also means that the company is tax exempt, which is the actual concrete thing I was implicitly asking about.

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

#130

Post by defo10 »

lm28469 wrote: post #42
noosphr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes 8 weeks from start to finish to be able to get paid for your first sale as a German limited liability company. People outside of Germany really have no idea how sclerotic the state is. Mean while Germans suffer from the brain damage of having lived there their whole lives and don't see a problem with this. If you think brain damage is too strong a word, the last time I brought it up a bunch of Germans came o…

> It takes 8 weeks from start to finish to be able to get paid for your first sale as a German company. You can bill as soon as you started the process afaik

You can bill, but the company owners are completely liable until the process is completed. Then the liability goes over to the company. Quite the risk if you ask me.
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