Live data from Hacker News

EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

eu-inc.org

651–660 of 761 posts

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

#651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has a borderline stagnant economy, couldn't defend itself from Russia, facing population collapse, totally whiffed on the tech scene explosion in the last 25 years, now also missing out on AI. European social obligations are expensive, yet nobody seems to really want to stress about creating new sources of wealth. At some point Europeans need to look in the mirror, and understand that the last 30 years has bee…

We can defend ourselves, it's just that the US didn't want a too-powerful Europe until trump. In particular nuclear. They heavily pushed against that. We'll have to scale this up now but it is not a big problem. Population collapse is a good thing. We already have too many people in this world, causing environmental and housing issues. We can't keep ever growing as humanity, stabilisation or even a reduction is very…

Europe didn't want a too powerful Europe until Trump.

Are you going to look me in the eyes and say that you, and your general Euro brethren, have been pushing for a greater defense budget at the expense of greater social program spending for the last 30 years.

Please, please make that statement. C'mon...

This is the same Europe that thought it would be a good idea to buy gas from Russia, the same Europe that thought it would be a good idea to have a fully American tech stack, and the same Europe (whose largest company is an automotive one) that is importing cheap Chinese cars.

Anything to avoid having to leave their 30 year vacation.

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

#652
post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Individuals pay like 25-30 Euronth contribution, which is tax deductible. Employers can pay a lot, like 10% or more, which is often going to a social security fund.

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

#653

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…

Social security gets paid on wages. Revenue doesn’t play into it.

In Portugal (for example) is is mandatory for an Lda (limited company) to have an employee, and they must be paid minimum monthly amount. In practice this means a few hundred euros a month go to the government in taxes. Then on top of that is another hundred or so in accountancy fees.

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

#654

It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or SA in some EU countries. It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it. Huge amount of risk and cost on founders and a huge distraction from running a business. I think that EU-Inc _could_ be an improvement, but it needs to avoid the committee laundry list of ideas/requirements/form fields that plagues the EU startup ecosystem. My worry…

Dissolving an LLC is a in ideal case a multi month process. It's often easier and cheaper to just keep the LLC as zombie instead of trying to dissolve it.

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

#655
post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum capital requirement is the whole point of a GmbH. If you don't want it, you can found a UG, which is the same thing with no capital requirement.

If both are the same what’s the point of having 2?

Trustworthiness. You know a GmbH has at least 25000€ you can sue them for. And a UG has to put parts of their profits into becoming a GmbH, so eventually everyone big enough is a GmbH.

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

#656
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have to physically go to the notary and have a person READ OUT all the statutes to you. I guess, you've never bought a house in the Netherlands then, because it's the same exact process

I am living in my second house I bought and they absolutely did not. They just confirmed I was buying a house for X. They did not read the whole thing.

A reading is mandatory (art. 43 WNA), but a party may opt for a limited reading if it declares that it has read and understood the content.

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

#657

It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or SA in some EU countries. It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it. Huge amount of risk and cost on founders and a huge distraction from running a business. I think that EU-Inc _could_ be an improvement, but it needs to avoid the committee laundry list of ideas/requirements/form fields that plagues the EU startup ecosystem. My worry…

In the USA California, Texas, Delaware etc all have different company registration and compliance processes. This has not damaged the business environment. It should be left to each EU country to decide how to manage their company compliance processes. Those companies can then easily trade all over the EU. You can easily set up a company in Ireland. The EU does not to over reach with one-size-fits-all regulations. Th…

Well yes and no.

Yes you can form a company in Ireland while living in France. But you cannot get an Irish VAT number without a physical presence in Ireland.

And if – for example – France learns that you are running an Irish company from France (i.e. you have a 'permanent establishment' in France), they'll want you to file and pay French corporation tax. Which is likely sufficiently annoying that you may as well have formed a French company in the first place.

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

#658
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanna tell us more? Why has unifying the energy market been catastrophic for Sweden?

Sweden has plenty of cheap hydropower. But as prices are now tied to countries like Germany which made catastrophic decisions around energy, Swedes have to pay much more than if Sweden had an independent energy market.

That has nothing to do with the EU, it's just capitalism. Even if the EU wouldn't exist, the energy companies would have found a way to sell the cheap Swedish hydropower to Germany.

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

#659
post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refusal to learn and change, even if it means learning from people you disagree with, is simply arrogant and stupid. The US is the biggest economy in the world with the strongest tech sector in the world, they are obviously doing something right. And many personal accounts from people doing business in the EU in this thread show that the EU is doing at least some things wrong.

We don't care only about money. We're doing pretty great, we have some issues like housing cost but the US has those too. I'm happy with my life and I don't feel like there's something missing that having more money would fix. Less employment and welfare rights would cause a lot of worry and uncertainty though. It's not all about economy and getting ever more more more like the US. I'm pretty happy living here and I…

> And it's not all about business. But about people, the employees.

Everyone here is missing this critical point.

The USA does not value human life as having value itself outside of what someone can contribute economically. Everyone talking about GDP, and "missing out" on AI, tech, etc.

Life has value outside of economic contributions. It's not a matter of "missing out" it's different priorities and philosophies of how to structure a human society.

Endless growth is not sustainable, and the late stage capitalism happening in the US right now is not sustainable. Why would anyone want to model themselves after it, seeing all of its failures and the enormous wealth gap it has created?

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

#660
post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing then that there's a range of options between being let go immediately for no reason and companies being forced to employ bad employees for life.

Yes and that's basically what we have in most of Europe. Only France really has a bit of the latter. You can get rid of employees. You just have to show to the court that is necessary. Circumstances depend on whether it's individual performance or business need etc. But the at will is very harsh and we don't want this here.

AUstria (and especially Switzerland) has virtually at-will employment. No need to show anything to any court, just the notice period. Job security is virtually non existent.
Post reply on HN