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Italia Startup Visa

italiastartupvisa.mise.gov.it

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Re: Italia Startup Visa

#71

Post by DeusExMachina »

gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

I'm Italian too, and I came to this thread to make the same comment. Stay away. Running your business in our country, given the taxation laws and other stupid draconian regulations, it would just be crazy. In 2014 the rate of failing companies was 2 per hour. And we are not talking about just startups here, which have a high burn rate. Many companies that have managed to survive for years have been killed by changes in the regulations during the last years.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#72

Post by hackerboos »

gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

Is the mafia still a problem in mainland Italy? Serious question...

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#73

Post by edelweiss22 »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #71
gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

I'm Italian too, and I came to this thread to make the same comment. Stay away. Running your business in our country, given the taxation laws and other stupid draconian regulations, it would just be crazy. In 2014 the rate of failing companies was 2 per hour. And we are not talking about just startups here, which have a high burn rate. Many companies that have managed to survive for years have been killed by changes…

Which changes?

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#74

Post by edelweiss22 »

Lucadg wrote: post #66
gruturo wrote: post #11

One piece of advice from an Italian, who was born and grew up there: It's a suicide, absolutely do NOT do this. We have the best weather, culture, food, wine, beaches, etc, you name it. But opening a business in that dysfunctional country? RUN and don't look back. Between fiscal pressure, crazy laws and compliances, the effective presumption of guilt, completely broken or unavailable infrastructure in the hand of mon…

As an Italian running a business focused on Italy I can only agree: RUN. I basically begged to be able to run my online company in Italy. No way. I had to emigrate to Germany instead and I've paid taxes there for more than 10 years. Hell, I even paid for the reconstruction of Eastern Germany. Just go to some Selection Day in any Italian incubator and you'll witness how fiscal and regulatory issues are discussed more…

Don't you have taxes or regulations in Germany?

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#75

Post by jnardiello »

italysinkin wrote: post #60

Here we can see italians still don't get we went through globalization yet. If you open a startup in Italy it doesn't mean you need to rely on the italian market to survive. You can create value at a cheap price and then sell somewhere else. Also: ever heard of russian/chinese/japanese/american mafias? "People with connections" have more chances everywhere. Other countries beware of italians with the mindset shown he…

Bullshit. Sorry but this is rhetoric and you clearly never went through the amazing experience of bootstrapping a company in Italy.

Italy is just entrepreneurs hell on earth, and it's a very practical statement.

1) Open a company: minimum of 4k spent on papers (of course, thanks to notars and accountants) 2) First year: face insane taxes. Pay for your pension, pay for your IRAP/IRPEF. Anticipate 50% of what is dued next year due to "projections" the gov do on how much you'll make. 3) iterate first year

On a 30k eurs revenue, with the "Young entrepreneurs formula" (where you are supposed to pay much less than usual limited companies) you'll end up paying up to 17k in taxes. I let you doing the math. And this happened to ME, not to some random friend of a friend.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#76

Post by smarques »

I am italian, running a start up in italy. Its a beautiful country, fascinating, great art, food, weather. IMHO definitely and unfortunately not a good eco system for a start up to grow in.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#77

Post by taejo »

s3nnyy wrote: post #32

Wouldn't this be a great way for non-EU citizens to get a residence-permit within the EU? Then, one could move and work in more lucrative places, like Switzerland. (Full disclosure: I am interested in tech-recruiting in Switzerland - see https://medium.com/@techrecruiting.ch/eight-reasons-why-i-mo... )

A residence permit in a Schengen country only allows you to live in that country (although you can visit the rest for 90 days out of every 180).

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#78

Post by DeusExMachina »

edelweiss22 wrote: post #73
DeusExMachina wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Italian too, and I came to this thread to make the same comment. Stay away. Running your business in our country, given the taxation laws and other stupid draconian regulations, it would just be crazy. In 2014 the rate of failing companies was 2 per hour. And we are not talking about just startups here, which have a high burn rate. Many companies that have managed to survive for years have been killed by changes…

Which changes?

For example, in recent years a stupid regulation called "sector studies" have been introduced. Basically, they look at the average you should be earning in a specific field. If you report less than that amount in a tax declaration, you are assumed to be evading taxes. Practically you are assumed guilty until proven innocent, which is not as easy to do as you think.

This is without adding other systemic diseases. Having a tax check is not a desirable outcome in Italy. One anecdote from a friend: he got a tax inspection in his company (in the construction sector). After two days of checks, nothing was found. But instead of being left alone, the inspectors told him this: "we haven't found anything, but since we have been checking for two days, we have to find something". In the end they agreed on faking some irregularities on the heating system and a 500€ fine.

Yes, this is just one episode, but not really an uncommon one, unfortunately.

I left my country 5 years ago and never looked back. There are so many better places in Europe, I strongly advice not to start a company in Italy.

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#79

Post by riffraff »

tobltobs wrote: post #51

If you want to tap into the pool of talented italian engineers you could also open up a shop at the border to Italy in Switzerland and employ cross-border commuter from northern Italy. You would have to pay them more than if you would open up your shop in Italy, but you would avoid these kafkaeske system called Italy and enjoy all the advanteges of Switzerland.

didn't switzerland clamp down on commuters some months ago?

Re: Italia Startup Visa

#80

Post by Lucadg »

edelweiss22 wrote: post #74
Lucadg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Italian running a business focused on Italy I can only agree: RUN. I basically begged to be able to run my online company in Italy. No way. I had to emigrate to Germany instead and I've paid taxes there for more than 10 years. Hell, I even paid for the reconstruction of Eastern Germany. Just go to some Selection Day in any Italian incubator and you'll witness how fiscal and regulatory issues are discussed more…

Don't you have taxes or regulations in Germany?

I'll reply with a metaphor:

- taxes or regulations in Germany are like OS x

- taxes or regulations in Italy are machine code written by monkeys in the 50s based on 2000 years old Roman code and the last monkey who knew how to read it died 10 years ago. Now there's more monkeys writing on top of it not even pretending to make it work retroactively.

If you find a bug you must guess what to do and hope for the best. You can ask for a monkey machine code expert to decipher it for you but not even he knows how to do. He's just better at guessing. If you make a mistakes due to the bugs they send the Gorillas.

[edit: formatting]

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