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How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

lectronz.com

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Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#941

Post by barrenko »

arjie wrote: post #362
barrenko wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's like there's a uno card that's "increase taxes for freelancers". And they sure like to use it.

That makes sense given the structure of the society, no? If you were to build an organization whose purpose was a predictable amount paid out to the senior most members committed ahead of time for an indefinite period, you would prioritize predictable income. In the ideal, your contracts would all be long-term contracts that don’t fluctuate very much. Any entity that seeks to take risks to earn outsize income increas…

Appreciate this input.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#942

Post by pembrook »

dvdkon wrote: post #870
pembrook wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need to both: a) exempt companies with under 50 employees to not kill small business AND b) are okay with doing so, ie. there's little consequences from exempting companies from this Then this is the mark of a terrible piece of legislation. What problem are we actually addressing here by creating another fee collecting, headache inducing registration regime and the 684th enforcement bureaucracy in the EU over…

What does "positive market incentives" mean for you? My immediate thought is various subsidies, but given how those usually end up (easy money for companies spending more on lawyers than actual productive work), I'd much rather just have a tax.

The tax won't actually create the desired outcome though. In practice the tax is basically just a wealth transfer from the private sector to the state, who will use that money to dump into boomer pensions and not invest in packaging innovation.

Punitive taxation doesn't invent new technologies. Investment does.

For example, the only reason the electric car market even exists today is because of subsidies 15 years ago.

I agree subsidies can easily turn into a boondoggle, but so can the state itself given more tax money.

Ultimately, I personally think government choosing to focus time and money on this specific thing over other far more important issues is dumb (like say, the thousands of young men dying in Ukraine right now, the social welfare debt spiral, the lack of a capital markets union, the lack of any coherent military strategy, etc. etc.)

But if we're going to posture as if we actually care about this issue, we are going about the desired outcome the completely wrong way.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#943

Post by tverbeure »

mfost wrote: post #758
tverbeure wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take that “EU website” broad, as in: any website in the EU. I just tried to order train tickets in Portugal. Not only do they ask for my passport number, they also ask for your tax id. I will, of course, totally give them my SSN for a train ride… It’s a mandatory field too. People on Reddit say you can just fill in anything, it doesn’t matter, but I hate that kind of uncertainty.

Better get used to that. Nearly every time you buy something in Portugal they'll ask you for your tax id so that they can print it on the receipt. This is because this is something you can use for some tax breaks later and also there is some lottery going on I think? Though obviously the original reason for it to exist is to combat tax fraud. This is also entirely optional for those kind of purchases, and meaningless…

Just go to the Alfa Pendular website and you'll see that the field is marked as mandatory, even when you select US as country of residence. I kind of expect this kind of friction when I book or purchase things in Europe.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#944

Post by rjsw »

mstaoru wrote: post #776
riffraff wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This gives time to prepare and implement (unlike EU border controls mess...) The Entry/Exit System was supposed to start in 2024[0], it was delayed to 2025, then it was delayed to 2026. They also changed from a full turn on to an incremental rollout over 180 days[1]. At some point you have to turn on things and "bugs will shake out", you can't delay things forever. [0] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press…

...this is not the approach I would take with something like border controls.

The level of border controls hasn't changed, only the technology used to implement it.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#945

Post by gizajob »

Cpoll wrote: post #916
mike_hearn wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn't care about guys like Lectronz, they're far too small, and the EU Commission really doesn't care about Amazon. They're openly antagonistic to US tech firms. Occam's Razor applies here. These regulations exist because the EU is 10,000+ civil servants writing whatever laws they want with no meaningful democratic accountability (this sort of thing is nobody's priority). They love creating new laws, they lo…

I don't have a horse in this race, but sources I found claim Brexit was economically detrimental to this day, including but not limited to the wiki page and its citations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit

Give it time

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#946

Post by seydor »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #556
germandiago wrote: post #528

My first decision when building my company was to leave Spain. They smash you very quickly. They do not care if they ruin you via prosecurion or you have to shut down. The tax agency is extremely agressive. The laws favor the agents to extents that are illegal and weven criminal (check the bonus of inspectors). Check Robert Amsterdam work on this, something we all spanish know for a long time.

Spain also smashes foreigners owning a property in Spain. They see tourists and foreigners (even if they're from the EU) as a gigantic target to squeeze and screw as hard as they can. That's what you get when your economy is based on tourism and rich foreigners owning property there: you have to squeeze those hard for it's basically all you have. Officially tourism is "only" about 15% of the GDP but Spain is a servic…

To be honest i have no sympathy for immigra,,, er sorry expats. It is pure location arbitrage: rich pensioners moving to south europe to get a vastly bigger bang for their buck than they would get back home. It would eventually backfire, and i am glad it does. It was idiotic of the touristic countries to invite this kind of thing in the first place.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#947

Post by seydor »

germandiago wrote: post #528

My first decision when building my company was to leave Spain. They smash you very quickly. They do not care if they ruin you via prosecurion or you have to shut down. The tax agency is extremely agressive. The laws favor the agents to extents that are illegal and weven criminal (check the bonus of inspectors). Check Robert Amsterdam work on this, something we all spanish know for a long time.

Another data point: Self-employed people in Greece are now taxed based on a "mandatory income" , which is meant to reduce tax evasion but also force small businesses to consolidate or shut down (guess which one happened). About 4000 people have objected this unfair taxation and requested being reaudited. 90% of them ended up being taxed even more, because tax laws are overly burdensome , complex and erratically applied. It's also not because of lack of oversight by tax authorities. In fact greece has the most complex digital oversight rules and digital bureaucracy , to the point that it is now ranked the world's worst country to do business: https://www.tmf-group.com/en/news-insights/articles/global-b...

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#948

Post by meatpile »

pfa87 wrote: post #726
floro wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole discussion is the reason innovation it's dead in Europe. The regulations are so complex that you need a team dedicated to navigating the bureaucracy nonsense. Small companies and startups can't do that.

Same tax on software, just less visible. A solo browser extension or a tiny site still has store review, OAuth consent, privacy pages, and a different "are we a company" answer in FR vs UK. No parcel, still a lawyer-shaped afternoon before you can take a euro. The FAQ-as-PDF problem is the product.

Go away, Claude

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#949

Post by awigotsky »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #515
giorgosh4 wrote: post #475

Yeah time for EU to change, all these legislation and rules never helped EU to grow. I guess it's up to Gernamy/France to finally figure it out

France is about to have either a very far-right or very far-left president and neither party like the EU very much so I wouldn't count on that. As for Germany, Mertz is disliked greatly and the AFD will most likely win the next state elections in the east which could accelerate his departure. Finally Germany and France are both facing many internal issues including migration, debt and low economic growth prospects. A…

Will they allow AFD to win? Hmm...
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