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How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

christianpetroske.com

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Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#21

Post by js4ever »

raverbashing wrote: post #10
Uberphallus wrote: post #3

Honestly, this reads as those books titled "How to make money selling books on Amazon". Living in France, I can tell, France is very startup hostile. The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. The only way a small tech company can make any money and be sustainable (let alone grow) is having all employees as associates (with all the organization…

> The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. How much are taxes if you live in SF again? Or NY? > is having all employees as associates... otherwise literally more than half of the salary is gone in taxes The income tax rates in France in 2020 are as follows: Up to €10,064: 0% €10,064–€25,659: 11% €25,659–€73,369: 30% €73,369–€157,806: 41% €157…

You are taking account only of 1 of the gazillion taxes you have to pay in france, this one is only the employee part. Also the net amount in the employee pocket is way lower than this after medicare and unemployment mandatory taxes contributions (roughly 10 to 25% of salary). On his side, the employer have to pay in total something like 80% in additional taxes on the amount paid to the employee. That also explain why salaries are lower in France compared to other top 10 countries.

Source: until last year I had a company in France with several employees.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#22

Post by raverbashing »

Uberphallus wrote: post #19
raverbashing wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. How much are taxes if you live in SF again? Or NY? > is having all employees as associates... otherwise literally more than half of the salary is gone in taxes The income tax rates in France in 2020 are as follows: Up to €10,064: 0% €10,064–€25,659: 11% €25,659–€73,369: 30% €73,369–€157,806: 41% €157…

For a salary of 100k, the company pays beyond 200k. Many social charges are on the company. My salary isn't that high, but after taxes, both on me and the company, I get about 1/3 of what the company pays for me overall.

True the expatica link touches on that point, I'm not sure how much is employee paid in other countries (and it can vary depending on how the company is established)

It definitely makes sense to avoid it as much as you can (but it is a fee not unique to France)

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#23

Post by raverbashing »

js4ever wrote: post #21
raverbashing wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. How much are taxes if you live in SF again? Or NY? > is having all employees as associates... otherwise literally more than half of the salary is gone in taxes The income tax rates in France in 2020 are as follows: Up to €10,064: 0% €10,064–€25,659: 11% €25,659–€73,369: 30% €73,369–€157,806: 41% €157…

You are taking account only of 1 of the gazillion taxes you have to pay in france, this one is only the employee part. Also the net amount in the employee pocket is way lower than this after medicare and unemployment mandatory taxes contributions (roughly 10 to 25% of salary). On his side, the employer have to pay in total something like 80% in additional taxes on the amount paid to the employee. That also explain wh…

Can't disagree with you on that. Delegating to accountants make more sense usually.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#24

Post by Uberphallus »

bouzouk wrote: post #17
Uberphallus wrote: post #3

Honestly, this reads as those books titled "How to make money selling books on Amazon". Living in France, I can tell, France is very startup hostile. The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. The only way a small tech company can make any money and be sustainable (let alone grow) is having all employees as associates (with all the organization…

Living in Paris for a very long time and having started a few businesses (current one: a challenger bank with 20+ employees), I don’t relate to anything you are saying. Yes there are high taxes, (not half of the salary, for a software engineer it is very often around 30%) but they basically cover a lot of employee services that you would need to pay extra for in the US (health coverage, retirement,...). Most startup…

> not half of the salary

More than half if you consider taxes on the company. A 30k salary costs the company about 80k. Sure, there are loads of social services, but still. In the company I created we did the work ourselves, and sometimes hired freelancers for certain things we're not familiar/experts in, but without external funding taking one single employee is a major blow to the accouting of a small company.

With 20 people you'll soon need to have a comité d'entreprise :P

> Most startup in France don’t have « all employees as associate », that makes no sense to me.

That's the only way to operate if you don't get external funding.

> I actually don’t see French startups moving there HQ somewhere else, so I wonder where that affirmation came from...

I'm sure Paris is different, but that's a common pattern for companies founded around Sophia Antipolis, the "Silicon Valley" of France. The startups that tend to stay it's because they have local clients, the rest often leave or die, with notable exceptions (LivePepper comes to mind).

> Aren’t you just repeating some stereotypes you heard elsewhere? If France were as hostile as you pictured it, how would it have such a dense startup ecosystem and even (God forbids!) some very successful ones?

Nope, I insist, I'm sure Paris is different, but most people don't live in Paris. Also dense compared to where? The Netherlands or Belgium are denser.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#25

Post by npsomaratna »

bouzouk wrote: post #17
Uberphallus wrote: post #3

Honestly, this reads as those books titled "How to make money selling books on Amazon". Living in France, I can tell, France is very startup hostile. The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. The only way a small tech company can make any money and be sustainable (let alone grow) is having all employees as associates (with all the organization…

Living in Paris for a very long time and having started a few businesses (current one: a challenger bank with 20+ employees), I don’t relate to anything you are saying. Yes there are high taxes, (not half of the salary, for a software engineer it is very often around 30%) but they basically cover a lot of employee services that you would need to pay extra for in the US (health coverage, retirement,...). Most startup…

Out of curiosity, what's the challenger bank you started? I'd love to learn more.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#26

Post by hrktb »

Uberphallus wrote: post #3

Honestly, this reads as those books titled "How to make money selling books on Amazon". Living in France, I can tell, France is very startup hostile. The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. The only way a small tech company can make any money and be sustainable (let alone grow) is having all employees as associates (with all the organization…

> otherwise literally more than half of the salary is gone in taxes.

That's par for the course. Is there many countries where companies can get away with paying much less (including employee health insurance, retirement etc.) ?

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#27

Post by Qiu_Zhanxuan »

nix23 wrote: post #14
raverbashing wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. How much are taxes if you live in SF again? Or NY? > is having all employees as associates... otherwise literally more than half of the salary is gone in taxes The income tax rates in France in 2020 are as follows: Up to €10,064: 0% €10,064–€25,659: 11% €25,659–€73,369: 30% €73,369–€157,806: 41% €157…

> €157,806+: 45% That's the problem you see?

reality check, 120k€/year already puts you in the top 1% of income earner in France. Past this point you should be satisfied with how much you've already earned and maybe starts caring more about the impact your job/company should have...

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#29

Post by jwr »

Please write a blog post with a more complete list of podcasts that you listen to and sites that you read!

It turns out it is surprisingly difficult to find pointers to sites and podcasts if you speak French, but do not live in France. The internet is really good at keeping us in our bubbles, making a lot of assumptions on geolocated IPs.

As a side note, I will add that there is one thing that is somewhat problematic about the French business culture, namely that French companies will really go out of their way to deal only with other French companies. It is very difficult to do business with France because of this. It does help if you speak fluent French, but even then, unless you are a French business, you are at a big disadvantage and your product needs to be really much better than the competition. I guess in the case of the OP this worked well, because the business was based in France after all.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#30

Post by therealmarv »

Don't. There are so many other countries with great programmers in Europe. I would go with Bulgaria or Romania when EU is a requirement. Otherwise I would go to Georgia (the country).

First row countries like France or Germany are start up hostile.

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