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Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

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Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#511

Post by mickelsen »

throwmeaway222 wrote: post #172
bmacho wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't businesses be owned by people that: - enjoy owning and managing a business - do think that owning and managing a business should come with the same compensation as any other dayjob (hairdresser or whatever) While managing a large amount of money naturally lead people to have enough to buy luxury items, IMO, this is just a sad fact of our world, and we should fight against it.

communism, and with this sentiment, no one will want to run a business. the country will wither and die

Yeah, I'm appalled a line of thinking this naive (because let's face it, it's not just idealistic) is making it to HN.

Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#512

Post by refurb »

da_chicken wrote: post #468
refurb wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing "winding a business down" with "bankruptcy" in the US. As long as you follow the law, there is no government "approval" of a dissolution. You notify shareholders and creditors, then resolve any outstanding payments, then dissolve.

You haven't said anything new. "As long as you follow the law" is basically what I described. You're taking the requirements of clearing your debts and burying them under a phrase, and then claiming you're saying something different. In part, "following the law" means "clearing any outstanding debts."

You seem to have ignored the important distinction - there is no government approval needed.

Even if you have outstanding debts, you can still dissolve the LLC. Of course creditors can cause trouble for doing that, but there is no government approval in the process.

Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#513

Post by littlestymaar »

WalterBright wrote: post #445
probably_wrong wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet evolved from Arpanet, a network established by DARPA. Given that was created by a government agency, and therefore funded by the same taxes companies are trying to avoid, I'd argue that it's a great example for why companies should indeed follow their civic duties and pay their taxes. It's also worth pointing out that many of those "wonderful things" had to be regulated by governments due to how bad thei…

The internet evolved from the telegraphy network, which was not created by the government. Besides, I've listed several times a number of other networks that sprang up. If it wasn't Arpanet, one of the others would have become dominant. The reason is simple - anyone with two or more computers tried to connect them together. The notion that we'd still not have any interconnections between them if it wasn't for Arpanet…

> The internet evolved from the telegraphy network, which was not created by the government.

Claining that the internet evolved from telegraph is very much bad faith, but the worse part about this argument is that it's wrong: the first country-scale telegraph network was indeed funded by the French government[1].

> As for bad environmental effects, socialism has a much worse track record

Why are you guys obsessed so much with socialism? There is no mention of socialism anywhere in this thread. Government funding stuff has nothing to do with socialism in the first place, otherwise it would mean that every developed country is a socialist one, with the only non-socialist countries being failed states like Somalia which really isn't the argument you want to make.

> Free markets produce enough surplus that costly mitigations become practical.

“Free market” doesn't exist, it's a propaganda phrase with no basis on reality. The government always and everywhere has a key role to play in the economy, by counteracting all kinds of negative outcomes that arise from markets (mitigating crashes or maintaining consumer trust through regulations to name a few).

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappe_telegraph

Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#514

Post by littlestymaar »

WalterBright wrote: post #439
littlestymaar wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid he's not (that was pretty much Milton Friedman's position as well as all of his UChicago fellow, which is the reason why we're back to the gilded age with robber barons all around)

I actually read the book "The Robber Barons". The author's conclusions do not match the facts he presents.

Not familiar with any particular book called that way.

The “Robber barons” is a phrase that have been used since the late 19th century, and the fact that the American economy had become toxically concentrated in the hands of a few back then really isn't something contentious.

Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#515

Post by procaryote »

swexbe wrote: post #211
procaryote wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An exit tax in itself does nothing to prevent hoarding of wealth. It might enable you to deploy other taxes that would make rational people leave the country, but it's a bit of a "lock the doors and rob people" strategy. If you have good advisors as a wealthy person you know this and leave as soon as an exit tax is on the table. If you start new businesses you start them outside of the country If you're a regular non…

Most businesses are not as portable as a tech startup.

Ownership is though.

Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#516

Post by exe34 »

nlitened wrote: post #476
exe34 wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the rich will always be greedy. They already pay the lowest taxes proportionally to their wealth/income (yes I know in absolute numbers they pay the most, but that's because a billion is about a million times bigger than a thousand - can't believe I have to explain this every time, or somebody will point out the absolute numbers like it negates my point).

All people are greedy, not only rich ones, that’s human nature. However high taxes ensure that it’s becoming more difficult to become rich, and only rich can get richer. Personally I think it’s better when more people can become rich, not fewer.

> All people are greedy, not only rich ones, that’s human nature.

An yet in the current discussion, only the rich get to profit from it.

> However high taxes ensure that it’s becoming more difficult to become rich, and only rich can get richer.

> Personally I think it’s better when more people can become rich, not fewer.

They won't get rich without food, education and housing. They're barely surviving because the rich keep sucking any chance of building wealth out of them. When inequality is low, more people become rich. When it is as high as it is currently, more people remain poor.

Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#517

Post by randyrand »

1718627440 wrote: post #152
wolfgangK wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is presumably that you would "sell" at an artificially low price.

Which is illegal if you do it for tax evasion.

and legal if you’re just helping your buddy out

Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#518

Post by [deleted] »

olieidel wrote: post #23
akersten wrote: post #3

Is there a look back period? What stops me from selling my business to my buddy the day I leave and then buying it back the day after?

Yup, this is possible. It would have to be at some fair market value, and you'd (obviously) have to tax that in Germany. And depending on how much you trust your buddy, you might or might not have to draft up some complicated legal framework that you indeed have the right to buy back your company at some stage :)

[deleted]

Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#519

Post by pembrook »

avar wrote: post #433
pembrook wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah great, not so bad then! So you just need to: - Form a German holding company to manage the business - Deal with any conflicting taxation/regulatory issues when operating a german holding company from your new country of residence (in some countries this is not trivial) - Visit Germany twice per year and potentially more to deal with German authorities that require things be done on paper and in person (hope you di…

Let's be fair here, the GP is comparing this to the complexity of other bureaucracy in Germany. In that context this does sound easy, e.g. here's how you form a GmbH: https://major-grooves.medium.com/just-how-complicated-could-... > Snark aside, this chart makes total sense > to me now: https://i.redd.it/fxks3skmvt4e1.png Not that we're doing all that great here in Europe, but this list is somewhat an artifact of str…

The overall amount of innovation is absolutely not the same, you can easily compare productivity growth in both regions to see the EU is also lagging there.

Also, the chart does include companies that are European headquartered (like Spotify) unless I’m mistaken.

Even if it didn’t though, don’t you think it’s a problem that a group of 600 million people cant form an attractive enough capital market such that its companies wouldn’t need to go abroad to a group of 300 million people to go public?

This is the weak complacency I’m talking about, as someone living in Europe it’s maddening.

Re: Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big

#520

Post by nlitened »

exe34 wrote: post #516
nlitened wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All people are greedy, not only rich ones, that’s human nature. However high taxes ensure that it’s becoming more difficult to become rich, and only rich can get richer. Personally I think it’s better when more people can become rich, not fewer.

> All people are greedy, not only rich ones, that’s human nature. An yet in the current discussion, only the rich get to profit from it. > However high taxes ensure that it’s becoming more difficult to become rich, and only rich can get richer. > Personally I think it’s better when more people can become rich, not fewer. They won't get rich without food, education and housing. They're barely surviving because the ric…

> An yet in the current discussion, only the rich get to profit from it.

In the current discussion, it’s about people who built their wealth from _zero_ by working overtime for years of sleepless nights, sacrificing their health and personal relationships — bootstrapping entrepreneurs.

You kinda say: yay, fuck this greedy capitalist with taxes, we don’t want this kind who lift themselves from poverty through a lot of work. Instead we want people to stay poor, relying on government handouts, and only allow our usual masters with generational wealth not pay taxes, nobody is allowed to join the upper class through honest work.

> They're barely surviving because the rich keep sucking any chance of building wealth out of them

I have strong impression that you don’t personally know any person actually barely surviving (not only in Germany, but in any other country as well), and you base your opinion on pictures from social networks, where mentally ill working-age people beg for money to buy their next dose of alcohol or drugs.

> When inequality is low, more people become rich.

This literally never happened in the history of humankind when the taxes were this high (~20% VAT, up to 50% personal income tax) — feel free to provide a counterexample. Taxes this high is actual slavery.

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