Live data from Hacker News

EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

eu-inc.org

441–450 of 761 posts

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

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Estonian company they run now has to file tax returns and pay taxes not only to Estonia but also Spain. Yes, this again makes sense to me. You have a company in Estonia, so that pays taxes in Estonia. You work for this company from Spain, so you pay taxes in Spain. Doesn't it work the same elsewhere? What other ways could it work, assuming we want taxes somewhere ? > But then if what Estonia considers acceptabl…

The Estonian company pays the Spanish resident money to them personally. Indeed it is normal that the Spanish resident has to deal with the Spanish taxes on this money only. If the Estonian company is supposed to be considered a separate legal person based in Estonia, it shouldn't have to deal with anything Spanish.

> If the Estonian company is supposed to be considered a separate legal person based in Estonia, it shouldn't have to deal with anything Spanish.

If the Estonian company has employed a person located in Spain, shouldn't the laws of both countries apply to this employment then? The employee lives in Spain, so obviously Spanish labor laws should be followed, and the company is in Estonia, so obviously Estonian law should apply.

I'm not sure why the Estonian company wouldn't have to follow Spanish law if they've decided to employ a Spanish person? What laws should cover the person living in Spain, Estonian laws, although they don't live there?

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is possibly the greatest bullshit I've read today. Greetings from Germany!

Read so far* You haven't read all the 280 comments in this submission yet ;)

Not sure it's worth the time. ;-)

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

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a company should be able to register in x days Which EU bureaucrats will fully pass by treating this as "a company should be able to register in x days once the full set of documents has been collected".

Companies are treated like persons legally and while I'm sure there is too much bureaucracy in many places, I'm also sure that there are important documents that should be required. For example to make sure that a company can be held responsible when it breaks the law. There are already enough loopholes to disconnect legal responsibility from profit-taking, and not every company is benign. Sure, if the documents cann…

In most (all?) US states, you can just start a company. You file a form, usually online, with the state, and you ask the IRS, online, for an ID number called an EIN. Technically you have a valid company after just step 1, but good luck getting any sort of bank account without doing step 2.

If you want to employ people, you need to file gratuitously obnoxious paperwork, but it’s still automatic.

What’s the actual problem? Why should it be harder?

Some states like California dislike small businesses in that they charge $800/year. But that’s pretty much it.

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

#444
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This here is the problem for most of EU countries. We Dutch are proud how easy it is to do business here. Maybe, compared to some other countries. But starting a BV here and 1 month later finding a representative of a trade union (metal sector, which somehow semiconductors fall under together with car garages, petrol stations, steel factories..) and asking me to come to their office in person to explain what we do, a…

> finding a representative of a trade union > how much their cut will be Did you have any employees yet? I guess so. Isn't it the employees' responsibility pay for their union membership?

> Isn't it the employees' responsibility pay for their union membership?

No, contributions are handled by the employer/company

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

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what's even more important is that the costs for founding and maintaining such an LLC should scale with revenue, including scaling to 0 . In many EU countries, you still have to pay social security and/or health insurance, even if your company brings in no revenue. This isn't supposed to be a problem, as you're not really supposed to officially start a business unless you cross specific revenue thresholds. Ho…

Startups but definition have no revenue. Its also a chicken and egg problem. Having a revenue means having a company and vice versa. Unless you're in very old fields, which explains lack of new tech companies in Germany

> Its also a chicken and egg problem. Having a revenue means having a company and vice versa.

How would you pay your employees making the product/service that will eventually bring in the revenue? That's what "own capital" is for.

Typical LLC/JSC will have at the very least one employee -- the CEO -- and that will bring one minimum wage worth of expenses (sort of). There are legal entity types that can function without employees with shareholders sort of self-employing, but those are not universal across the EU.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're complaining that DE tax funds go to the EU? Very curious what you're talking about and your rational. Germany is the biggest net contributor to the EU. The money comes from German taxpayers, who receive disproportionately little value in return.

This is wrong on so many levels. The German economy profits _a lot_ from the membership. You can't just look at the monetary in/out flows to/from EU accounts but to the system as a whole.

[flagged]

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If dealing with VAT is a large problem for your business today, running a business might just not be for you, it's very trivial today to get it right and there are even platforms who basically does all the "hard" work for you. But even without those 3rd party solutions, I think the complexity is vastly oversold, it's relatively easy to get right compared to other regulations. Maybe I'm just EU-damaged already though,…

>>If dealing with VAT is a large problem for your business today It's not a problem for me today. It was a big problem when I had no revenue, needed to do all the paperwork, meet ridiculous local accounting requirements connected to selling software in a different currency than my local one, write code, setup licensing, shipping the software to the clients etc. It was a major source of stress and sleepless nights for…

> It's not a problem for me today. It was a big problem when I had no revenue, needed to do all the paperwork, meet ridiculous local accounting requirements connected to selling software in a different currency than my local one, write code, setup licensing, shipping the software to the clients etc.

Since this depends mostly on what country you are in/you are setting up the country in, what specific country was this? Because it's not the same everywhere, and by the sounds of it, is a lot more complicated than most other EU countries. Germany is famously bureaucratic, as just one example, and differs wildly from the type of experience you'll have in Sweden.

> It wasn't so simple when I had 0 capital and just wanted to ship software to see if people want to buy it.

Most people, accountants or not, won't tell you this, but you're usually fine starting to charge people and running a business "unofficially" for a couple of months without having to pay any fines or anything when you finally "regularize" your situation. Many accountants have dealt with this sort of setup countless of times too. But again, people won't advice you to take this route, but it is one option if you just wanna ship software and see if people want to buy it. If no one buys it, just don't tell anyone :) Unless you're doing five figures or more in revenue, no one will mind.

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

#448
post #398
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The market is far too risk-averse for a grassroots early-stage startup scene. Or, in reality: there's literally no expectation for companies to succeed or to turn in profit in the US, and hasn't been for over a decade. US startups now exist to do one thing hoping for exactly one of two outcomes. Do: spend unlimited investor money. Hope: to be acquired by larger entities, or to engage in VC-subsidized predatory-pric…

> no expectation for companies to succeed or to turn in profit in the US, and hasn't been for over a decade. It's been a lot longer than a decade. The initial dot-com boom was nearly 30 years ago . It's very much institutionalized at this point. And the US continues to produce the most valuable companies in the world.

The US continues to produce "most valuable companies" by the absolute non-sensical value called "market share" and "market capitalization".

Menawhile almost every single of those "valuable" companies are either actively harmful, or keep offloading the effects of their operations onto society.

Prime example: Uber lost 20 billion dollars, will never get them back, and offloaded all the issues of gig workers on workers themselves, or the society. It's "value" (market cap) is "175 billion dollars" (it's not)

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

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the claim was that early stage VCs in Europe invest in US instead, contrary to my experience. If they were instead investing in US companies, I'd see that instead, I don't know if I used the wrong word here, where exactly is the tautology? Not to disrespect your experience, but I don't it is particularly relevant, because the capital deployment from EU HNW is overwhelming deployed outside the bloc, largely in t…

> because the capital deployment from EU HNW is overwhelming deployed outside the bloc, largely in the US. Again, that directly goes against my own experience with the very same people you say are investing largely in the US. Not sure if I'm not being clear, or if I'm using the wrong words, but clearly something is missing/misunderstood here.

As politely as possible, your experience is simply wrong, I'm afraid to say. US angel/seed round investing by EU-resident HNWs alone exceeds all angel/seed investing in the EU, by quite some margin.

I'm actually quite curious who it is you think are people in the EU deploying capital in early stage investments, as you appear to be very confident?

I suspect maybe you're thinking of people investing in EU startups to avail of the myriad tax incentives like Germany's INVEST, Ireland's EIIS, etc. If so, then that represents a tiny fraction of capital invested by EU HNWs in early stage companies.

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

#450
People are completely overreacting how much regulation there is in Europe here. There is more regulations against monopolies and USA BigTech is always crying about that and spreading propaganda about that. But starting a startup is way cheaper in Europe you won't need funding like in the USA even.
Post reply on HN