Some years ago a case became quite famous in Spain. Someone wanted to turn a winery into a eco-tourism boutique hotel with a winery tour and experience. Should be simple in theory, in practice they were waiting for authorization to open for more than 4 years.
I’ve been involved with startups and small businesses for more than a decade, and I haven’t still heard of any of them doing things 100% by the book, because it’s just impossible.
People just start and hope the taxman doesn’t come.
Because a agricultural business and a hotel business are two different things, and Spain has, rightfully so, their thumb on the spread of tourism, because it affects local communities negatively.
Otherwise investors could just come in, buy a random agriculture business and then turn it into luxury hotels/lodging.
> I’ve been involved with startups and small businesses for more than a decade, and I haven’t still heard of any of them doing things 100% by the book, because it’s just impossible.
Because entrepreneurs are notoriously bad thinking further than their own interests. It always, "just" something they want to do.
Zoning rules and regulations have their purpose. Are some of those in some places idiotic? Yes. Do most of them still have their reason? Also yes.
Otherwise we can stop protesting datacenters and the trump family building a eco-luxury resort in a nature reserve.
how much would it cost to pay someone "1 hour away by train" to go into that office for you?
However, that does put the company in their name. On paper, they have full control over it. That's a risk to the criminals trying to use the company as a financial asset for laundering money.
How do you realize anything without being able to send an invoice and collect?
The challenge is if someone makes a software company, and a team of 20 workers on computers create a €10B business, does the state have a fair claim to €5B of it when the company at most with the most generous possible estimate (and then double it for good measure) used €50M of state services?
Yes, it does. Quite simply because that's the law, and it's morally right (in principle) because if your business fails then you don't get a bill for 50 million. If "winners" only paid their exact share then these services wouldn't exist.
So $50m would cover their true societal cost (I'll multiply it by 10 for you, call it $5m) 10x over.
Its extremely difficult to build a clearly logical structure where a company that made a wildly successful product needs to hand half the value to the government. It's very easy to do if we hand wave with ambiguous terms like "right thing to do" and "morally obligated".
Selling a company and paying tax on the profit in tax is a completely different proposition from paying tax on hypothetical profit you haven't made (and might never make) just because you want to move.
Not a dealbreaker in itself, but the sort of little thing you don't want to build a stack of. Shady PO-box address, Yahoo contact email, expired ssl certificates etc.
Wait, how does that work? Are you saying that if the bank doesn't like me, instead of just denying me a loan, they can convince other banks not to loan to me as well?
You just have to specify it when registering the company, and have an accountant certify the value.
But obviously, it's more annoying and you have to keep track of depreciation.
Same story goes for opening a personal account.
That means you pay German taxes + double amount of compliance ( because you have to file everything in Germany+ Estonia ).
Double taxation is not better.
https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/understanding-cross-border-tax...
Estonian CIT is 0%. If you pay dividends (which is not required), or if you pay director’s salary (optional if you’re a one-man company without a ton of admin), those will be taxed in Estonia. If you only pay yourself for your actual services – no taxes in Estonia.
Germany might tax your Estonian company if they determine the company is a German resident. Check with your accountant.
(IANAL)
If you do business in Germany you are evading taxes just by the fact of doing business. Everything and anything you make belongs to the government. It is an unfortunate loophole in the law that temporarily permits you to steal some of your profit back from the government where it rightfully belongs.
Yeah, this is sarcasm, but not really. The practical reality is that it simply makes no sense to incorporate in Germany. For example, the OP missed six months of opportunity just to please the bureaucracy and it's not even the end of it.
OP missed six months of opportunities because he is an idiot, that has been scammed by a tax consultancy that is interested in his money.
He should have setup a UG, start the business and invest into building a GmbH.
Or change something. But yeah, I agree that leaving a country that you don't like is a good solution. I did that myself.
> There is no justification for tax evasion
The basics of philosophy behind taxation state exactly the opposite: it is an obligation of a business to evade as much tax as possible - as long as it is legal.
I'm sorry, but Germany is democratic country, and citizen of the country can choose by definition.
Leave your motherland because your government is crazy in one way or another? It is nonsense.
In reality, sometimes people need to do it (because it becomes too dangerous to stay), but it should not be this way. In any country.
A lot of the entrepreneurs I meet become tax & social insurance fraudsters as soon as I mention this, because they think they can setup a company somewhere but live in Spain, without paying or registering companies here.
But if you are some noname making maybe up to a few mils per year income, nobody is going to chase you and prove you are avoiding local taxation. You are always "in a short holiday trip" :).
Unless you also personally relocate, then it probably makes sense.
Getting a little bit more annoying year-on-year for maintenance with stuff like identity checks and software requirements for eg tax information, but still trivial to initially create
In practice banks will deny anybody to open an account, for no reason at all, because they are above the law in Sweden. The country has for a long time been owned by a few powerful banker families.
Edit: Down voters might first want to look at Wikipedia for the Wallenberg family. This is as much part of Swedish culture as IKEA or meatballs.
I challenge anybody to find a country in modern history which is more owned and controlled by bankers than Sweden.