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Europe's Software Problem

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Re: Europe's Software Problem

#531

Post by chupy »

mnouquet wrote: post #464
tored wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but depending on your yearly income there is another tax separate from the normal income tax (inkomskatt), if you earn more than 523 300 SEK you also need to pay "statlig inkomstskatt" at 20% for everything above that rate. And previous year 2020 was the first tax year without värnskatt, an extra 5%, ie 25% total, for everything above 703 000 SEK. It was abolished 2019.

Oh my god, a $100k salary would be taxes at 42%, plus a 25% VAT on general spending, that's just insane...

In Belgium, you can get to 50% tax on that 100K + 21% VAT on normal goods (6% on food).

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#532

Post by mmarq »

kaba0 wrote: post #479
drstewart wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All European developers are lower paid compared to their US counterparts. Except maybe Swiss ones.

And as I said is not really something outright comparable. Housing is more expensive, no universal healthcare, etc.

A half decent flat in London costs in excess of 2000£ per month. Where “decent” means you don’t deal with pests, walls are not made of paper and your neighbour going to the toilet doesn’t cause the whole building to shake.

Universal healthcare varies a lot in Europe, for instance in the UK it is rather limited compared to continental Europe, even compared to Southern Europe. In the UK you would need a health insurance costing ~200-300£pm to enjoy the same quality of care of places like Italy or Germany.

On the other hand a good developer in the US may earn enough to retire in 5 years, 500K$ per annum are not totally unheard of. In Europe if you are very very good, you may get slightly above 100K£, but it’s still extremely rare and you will end up paying half of that in taxes.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#533

Post by magicalhippo »

fvdessen wrote: post #240
misterbwong wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A second reason is simply that the US as a big homogeneous market is a nice one to tackle for European companies as well. And often that means having a (big) presence in the US. The EU is basically many markets unified by really complex rules, bureaucracy, etc. There is free traffic of people but companies have a harder time dealing with local variations in legislation, hurdles for billing and taxation (e.g. VAT), ba…

It goes far beyond that. If you are in Italy and want to expand to Germany you need to hire german speaking people and that means opening a Sales Office in Germany, and dealing with different labour regulations etc.

Our software essentially is for registering and sending some official forms to the government. We're based in Norway but couldn't get access to Danish governmental systems for testing our because we had no physical presence in Denmark.

We couldn't just set up a PO box and get an org. number, apparently that wasn't enough.

So far one of our customers have been kind enough to lend us their credentials for testing, but yeah would have been nice to have our own.

In Sweden we spent almost two years after being done getting our software released there, as the officials required that the main UI was approved by them and it involved a ton of back-and-forth.

Not just that, but each major version change that altered the main UI would also have to be approved...

The Finnish are quite decent at spending money on their government IT systems it seems, so they're more up to date. However not all documentation is in English and while your average Norwegian can read Danish and Swedish just fine, Finnish is something else entirely.

And of course all the Scandinavian governments have completely different systems for this, even though the forms are essentially the same across the countries, so zero code sharing there. Heck the Danish even have two completely different systems depending on which form you send.

We're just dealing with the Scandinavian countries, I'm sure it's similar in the other EU countries.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#534

Post by rad_gruchalski »

pvaldes wrote: post #515
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am, my company isn't. What's your point? How would things get 21% more expensive from one day to another? The VAT system already functions and is already calculated into the cost of living. An example: selling a SaaS subscription in the EU, the price would be 100%-19% VAT + VAT, selling the same subscription to the US, the price would be 100%. Consumer in the EU does not lose anything. Business neither because the…

> How would things get 21% more expensive from one day to another? New Laws. Is more expensive because everybody is paying a 21% more in taxes. So either the customer pays more, or the seller accepts to take a cut in their benefits to keep the price in a strategic value (below the product of his competitors) To compensate it and survive, the startup needs now to find a way to produce the 'same' product 21% cheaper. F…

> New Laws.

How did we end up on new laws when we started about VAT explicitly?

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#535

Post by rad_gruchalski »

pvaldes wrote: post #491
pvaldes wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To start, YOU are the end consumer. Lets imagine that you wake up one day, and all is 21% more expensive, would be happy with it?

And your startup is now a company, but also a tax collecting office. You are forced also to be a tax collector, collect money from your clients, keep it safe and pay it to the mobs... to the government before 100 days, either you have it or not. Your customers, of course, hate it. Will hate YOU for that. And will try to press you to forget VAT all the time. This system introduces a incredible amount of anger and fric…

> You are forced also to be a tax collector, collect money from your clients, keep it safe and pay it to the mobs... to the government before 100 days, either you have it or not.

Well, you raise an invoice with VAT on it, you get paid, you put the VAT money on the side because it is NOT YOUR money and you pay the VAT to the financial system. Your invoice goes into accounting only when it's paid. Can you explain what's wrong with that?

> Your customers, of course, hate it. Will hate YOU for that.

160 countries around the world have VAT / GST. Haven't seen widespread "HATE" anywhere.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#536

Post by pvaldes »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #534
pvaldes wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would things get 21% more expensive from one day to another? New Laws. Is more expensive because everybody is paying a 21% more in taxes. So either the customer pays more, or the seller accepts to take a cut in their benefits to keep the price in a strategic value (below the product of his competitors) To compensate it and survive, the startup needs now to find a way to produce the 'same' product 21% cheaper. F…

> New Laws. How did we end up on new laws when we started about VAT explicitly?

Maybe you are not aware, but VAT has been raised many times in the last years.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#537

Post by rad_gruchalski »

pvaldes wrote: post #536
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New Laws. How did we end up on new laws when we started about VAT explicitly?

Maybe you are not aware, but VAT has been raised many times in the last years.

Like any tax. In some cases, it was also lowered. Product groups move between VAT rates.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#538

Post by throwaway894345 »

amilios wrote: post #453
throwaway894345 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being behind first world countries in a few cherry picked regards doesn’t make one a third world country.

a) how are these regards cherry-picked? b) it doesn't no, you are right. However the "third world country with a gucci belt" phrase is intentionally tongue-in-cheek and used to call attention to the fact that the US is behind other first-world countries in many different important ways, which it is. Personally I consider healthcare, worker rights, and infrastructure pretty key issues of extremely high importance, and…

They are important, but ignoring every contrary indicator (per capita GDP, life expectancy, quality of life, etc) in order to exaggerate the extent to which the US lags other nations is the very definition of cherry picking. The US is squarely a first-world country even if it lags various countries other first world countries in certain regards. No doubt this “third world country” business is hyperbole for many people who invoke it (although I think there are many who invoke it who sincerely believe it or just have no moral scruples whatsoever), I’m just saying such rhetoric is unhelpful at best and probably divisive and misleading.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#539

Post by cwilkes »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #179

I'm a European, living in Europe, developing software. Lack of imagination is not our problem. It's so good that we supply our best talent to the US where it does extremely well revolutionizing AI, designing hardware for Apple, developing games, stream online music, etc. E.g. Amazon's CTO is Dutch. Basically the person that has been running AWS. The people and the education system are fine. Europe does have a few iss…

> Lack of imagination is not our problem. It's so good that we supply our best talent to the US

Isn’t that the point? Europeans individually are creative but there’s not a reward system in place for them, thus they flee to the US.

Sort of like European basketballers coming to the US or the opposite with soccer players.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#540

Post by throwaway894345 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #438
sschueller wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally I define a 3rd world country as a place that has a lot of inequality, corruption across the board, poor to no worker protection, failing and antiquated infrastructure, no free access to health care, high incarceration rate, persecution of journalists, a large working poor population with no ability to move up the social ladder, etc. Which one of those does the US not have?

The US does not have much corruption. It is present, obviously, but you probably don't realize what corruption is like in "real" 3rd world countries. About the infrastructure, the one in the US is comparable to that of most rich countries. If you cherry-pick, sure you are going to find something. Health care in the US is problematic but I think the best indicator of quality is life expectancy, and the US is high tier…

This is absolutely correct. I strongly suspect the people who say things about the US being a third world country have no experience in second world countries, much less third world.
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