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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

#201

Post by hansvm »

krstf13 wrote: post #178
user5994461 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French has multiple words historically (impots, taxes, charges) with subtle differences in meaning. However they've not been observed strictly in a long long time. It's all money taken out of the employee pocket at the end of the day. In English it's all translated to "tax" and rightfully so. English languages and cultures don't have subtle semantics like French does. For example everything in the UK is a tax, corpor…

Also, you lie and move the goal posts. You really should say that you don’t wanna pay your employees. Fine by me, but be frank about it. I know I’ll be downvoted here, but the truth is this guy doesn’t want to pay his employees and pretends it’s because of additional costs that burden him. He’d rather give them more, if only they were able to spend responsibly. Yet, he doesn’t know the first thing about taxes, fees a…

I don't get that impression at all. The person you're replying to hasn't done anything more than try to clarify that whatever you want to call the cash being extracted by the French government, a reasonable person in other parts of the world could call it a tax and not miss any important defining characteristics.

With respect to claims of wanting to underpay employees, I don't think that's something anyone is actually arguing for when they talk about unfriendliness toward startups. The French government is levying a high _proportional_ tax to cover _fixed_ fees like health care. This can make sense at a societal level as a form of wealth redistribution, but it's a disadvantage for high earners like those in the software industry. Those employees can earn more in other countries with the same cost to their employers simply because less is taken out of their paycheck, and because the difference is more than enough to cover fixed fees like health care it's a good move for them to do so. The people being disadvantaged aren't startup employees (not passing a moral judgement -- the claim itself just seemed off).

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

#202

Post by jobigoud »

908B64B197 wrote: post #199
jobigoud wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm. At my previous job we were about 20 employees and we had one person dedicated to this. Grants for R&D, so her work was to make the paperwork explaining and documenting why it was R&D. Also there was another gov help to pay half the salary of employees for which it was the first job after their thesis or something along these lines.

Wow. The inefficiency of having to dedicate an employees to that paperwork (and probably the same manpower on the government side to receive it and take action) make it sounds like a welfare/job program. Would be way more efficient to simply drop the tax rate and make these 2 positions redundant, freeing more money for actual R&D. The post-thesis bit is interesting: How is it the taxpayer's job to finance that? I get…

Also she was conducting "interviews" with us to assess better what was and what wasn't R&D in our tasks, so once in a while we would spend an hour not doing any productive work.

Yes post-thesis are more valuable, including to other countries. I think it is an incentive to the employer so they can increase the compensation in order to limit brain drain.

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

#203

Post by jbn »

lma21 wrote: post #112
user5994461 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the taxes on French salaries for reference. - The company has 60k budget. - 25% goes to employer tax (charges patronales). 45k left. That's commonly called the gross salary (salaire brut). - 25% goes to employee tax (charges sociales). 34k left. Commonly called the net salary (salaire net) - Employee pays income tax at the end of the year. The rate is progressive and highly variable depending on personal situa…

Charges patronales and charges sociales are not really "taxes" given your understanding of taxation. Charges patronales and charges sociales are well explained in every payslip, i.e. where that money goes and how the employee/employer benefit from them. Also, every person's net income tax is also explained and you can see where it goes. At the end of the day, when a French person loses their job (even if they're a no…

You are right that Charges patronales and charges sociales are not really "taxes" , in fact some politicians (LFI and EELV come to mind) insist on calling it "socialized portion of the employee salary", which is a better description.

However doing this would cause a mind shift where the employees would realize how large a fraction of their compensation package is in fact retained by the government either in the form of taxes or in the form of charges. A positive outcome of this is that it would force this realization, since so many people think healthcare/education/pension are free...

Another aspect to this is that different corporations have been allowed to charge these Charges patronales and charges sociales at different rates (for instance nurses pay 14% for retirement, whereas the rest of the population pays 28%...). Worse an entire half of the workforce, namely all the civil servants, have no Charges patronales and charges sociales at all (in other words, the French state is a special employer that gets away with not paying for these, paying for the actual pensions out of its general budget rather than its stowed-away-for-later funds.... and when the French state goes bankrupt, it just needs to raise more taxes on the private sector employees to make payroll on its pensions!).

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

#204

Post by jbn »

ldng wrote: post #182
lma21 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charges patronales and charges sociales are not really "taxes" given your understanding of taxation. Charges patronales and charges sociales are well explained in every payslip, i.e. where that money goes and how the employee/employer benefit from them. Also, every person's net income tax is also explained and you can see where it goes. At the end of the day, when a French person loses their job (even if they're a no…

The term "Charges" is not even legally correct. It is a way to give it a negative bias on purpose.

Yes. "Charges" translates to "load" or "burden" in English. Using that word makes it sound like it is only the employer that bears this burden, whereas it is very much >50% of the employee compensation package that is socialized (or mutualized, which may be a better word) towards health/unemployment/age insurance.

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

#205

Post by jbn »

throwaway4747l wrote: post #99
nerbert wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very common for French people to negate the advantages of the system they live in. France makes it easy to start a company and find seed investment. Paperwork became very limited over the years. People who describe France as startup hostile country live in the past (15-20 years ago)

You're right, with the caveat that France as a country with a strong social safety net and the best healthcare system in the world© is also a thing of the past. We're on our way to become more like the US each passing day, make of that what you will.

w.r.t "best healthcare system in the world" there are only 2 countries that think this of their healthcare: France (because people think it's free... it is not) and the US (because mostly of the quality of emergency medecine IMHO). Of course both are wrong, and it is a meaningless contest anyway.

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

#206

Post by jbn »

lm28469 wrote: post #83
jclos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you do realise that life is so easy because we are always complaining and not in spite of it. Worker rights and social safety nets did not magically appear out of thin air.

Sure, but what we're seeing here is people complaining the other way: "We pay too much taxes", "there are too many regulations", &c.

This rings true to me, people complain they pay too much taxes, but then go on to rely widely on what the state provides and of course will cry in horror if anything is to be taken away. For instance (and I don't necessarily approve these policies, just stating recent examples) the 5 euro/month decrease in APL subsidy for students, or the cancellation of the CSG exemption for retirees.

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

#207

Post by jbn »

bgorman wrote: post #165
shard wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in the US. On my paycheck there are Social Security tax, Medicare tax, State disability insurance tax, State unemployment insurance tax. If it is a mandatory deduction taken out of your paycheck to fund a government project (not the best word, but can't think of the proper word at the moment), even if you get benefits later, it's called a tax.

The US Government tries the same trick. Social Security is a called an "insurance program" although it is completely unrelated to conventional insurance. The closest financial instrument is a Ponzi scheme, which is illegal under US law.

It is insurance in the sense that it pools the risk. The risk here is "aging" ("Social Security" in the US only covers base retirement, whereas "Social Security" in France covers 5 risks), it only happens to be a risk that realizes 100% of the time, unlike fire insurance for instance.

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

#208

Post by harha »

refurb wrote: post #183
harha wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the way Singapore keeps it simple by having tax exemptions and lower rates for the first $ X of income (and overall lower tax than most places in Europe), this is easy to work with and allows you to reinvest in ways you see fit rather than having to deal with a bunch of other entities from advisors to government agencies that all have their own agenda. Edit: corporate income that is.

I love how Singapore’s income tax calculator fits on a single page in excel. https://www.iras.gov.sg/irashome/uploadedFiles/IRASHome/Indi...

Compare that to Germany. There’s a company (datev) that has a monopoly on SMB accounting and will only work with tax advisors. Complete waste of labor and money, all because taxation rules are so complicated.

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

#209

Post by P-ala-din »

realusername wrote: post #192
P-ala-din wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- I mean freedom of religion is a human right. - So In a majority christian state, is it ok to discriminate against jews?

> - So In a majority christian state, is it ok to discriminate against jews? People would still be discriminated for wearing a big cross in France as well, it's just not that common.

that was not my question.

and wearing a giant cross is not mandatory in christianity.

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