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Meanwhile, Germany is moving in the opposite direction. Taxes are increasing and now Germany is the second highest taxed country in the world (according to OECD

Meanwhile, Germany is moving in the opposite direction. Taxes are increasing and now Germany is the second highest taxed country in the world (according to OECD). and freelancers here can't even work without a tax advisers who will manage all their taxes, because the system is so complicated. Mobile internet is extremely expensive. Just one day of using mobile internet in Germany will cost you more than a a whole month mobile internet in Ukraine... everything is very bureaucratic and a lot of paper work is required on every corner. and don't forget, there are more than 300000 laws and rules for everything. I can keep this list forever, but after all, I think I should just move to Estonia, because Germany is definitely not for me.

tluyben2 9y ago
Sounds a lot like Spain, rules and paperwork. Taxes are lower but so crappy that even with an accountant you often pay the weirdest things and cannot declare many of the legitimate expenses you might have so in the end I pay as much as I did in NL. The Estonia e-residency is very good for ‘nomads’ ; if you travel a lot (say you do not reside in one country 6 months + 1 days and (but this is debatable somehow) are not in a country more than 60 days continues, you can have a company in Estonia and declare tax for that company there. Which is to say, no tax until you take money out. If you don’t travel like that it is far more complex.
- iagovar 9y ago
  Spain is not nearly as complicated for a freelance. The problem in Spain is that the administration is a disaster in the "customer care" level. Also, every time a new technology appears they have to open a process for companies to bid (basically because their own IT dept is totally overloaded and I highly doubt they are keeping up with technologies) and do whatever is needed, but it's at least one year cycle. They try to make everything anti-cheat, but in the end cheaters cheat anyway, and in the process they make everything slow and painful.
tormeh 9y ago
It's not moving in the other direction. In fact there's a clear political consensus among the parties (probably) making up the next government that "digitization" should be one of the main foci of attention going forward. Particularly the liberal parties of course (Greens, FDP), but the CDU seem to also fancy this newfangled internet-thingy. Fifteen years late, but moving in the right direction. I have the feeling this is generally true in the other conservative parts of the EU as well. Eyes are very much on Estonia in the EU for this reason. It's all very sluggish, but the wheels are starting to turn, I think.
- uoaei 9y ago
  Knowing Germany, the transition will probably be 10 years long, because everything has to be 100% perfect and 99.8% ist außerhalb der Fehlermarge!
adwhit 9y ago
And yet.. Germany has probably the most successful economy in the world. I guess being friendly to startups and freelancers just ain't that important?
- netsharc 9y ago
  Having countries peg their currencies to yours certainly helped: http://fortune.com/2014/10/22/why-germany-is-the-eurozones-biggest-free-rider/ http://fortune.com/2014/10/22/why-germany-is-the-eurozones-b... , meanwhile the other Euro countries are suffering. Even freaking Finland. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/greece-eurozone-germans-single-currency https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/greece...
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  What metric are you using to measure successful?
  - adwhit 9y ago
    High productivity, huge trade surplus, low unemployment, very high standard of living
    - _Tev 9y ago
      Huge trade surplus (and resulting low unemployment) is effect of the euro, which is undervalued for Germany (and overvalued for most of the eurozone). Germany sure is nice country to live in, but it benefits a lot at the expense of others.
  - wolco 9y ago
    average and peak developer income would be a good metric.
- tormeh 9y ago
  >Germany has probably the most successful economy in the world Nope. Not even in the EU. Not even close. Where does this myth come from? Is it that it has passed the UK per capita? I mean, there are loads of nice things about Germany, and economic strength is one, but that's a wild exaggeration.
k__ 9y ago
I'm a freelancer in Germany and I only have to pay two kind of taxes, income tax and turnover tax.
- rmoriz 9y ago
  And Rundfunkbeitrag, Krankenversicherung, Pflegeversicherung, Kapitalertragssteuer, Kirchensteuer, Gewerbesteuer (if you have a LLC (UG, GmbH)...
  - dualogy 9y ago
    I concur with parent. Health insurance: if you're freelance, your health insurance is preferably private (cheaper) and you're free to cancel it if you please. Capital gains: is for speculations, can choose to "be a saver not a gambler". Church tax: is for church members, don't join. Gewerbesteuer: is for LLC/Ltd/GmbH/UG etc --- not for freelancers/Freiberufler Pflege: never joined that in my whole life. Seems to be optional then. Rundfunk: this becomes an issue when you register as a resident or fail to deregister as a resident. Now, not being registered as a resident while residing qualifies as "offense"/"misdemeanor" (Ordnungswidrigkeit), not as a crime, last I checked =) (I registered though, when I moved back here after years abroad. Though in retrospect, I have no idea why I did --- for someone who never makes it to the voting booth, all it gives you is GEZ hassles.)
    - rmoriz 9y ago
      You should talk to a tax laywer
    - skrause 9y ago
      > Health insurance: if you're freelance, your health insurance is preferably private (cheaper) and you're free to cancel it if you please. No, having health insurance has been mandatory in Germany since 2007. You're free to switch providers, or go from private to public insurance, but you can't just cancel it and go without insurance.
      - 9y ago
gumby 9y ago
> and freelancers here can't even work without a tax advisers who will manage all their taxes, because the system is so complicated. Basically everybody with more than a minimum wage job in the US needs this kind of help, and regulatory (actually congressional) capture by the two giants Intuit and H&R Block mean that any efforts to fix this are squelched.
aj-4 9y ago
People forget that Germany was still reverberating from its own bounce-back for many years. Now it's bogged down by immigration and currency woes. As for Estonia.. here's a golden ticket to make international internet income + low cost of living. Not to mention Talinn is charming.
icantdrive55 9y ago
I've never been there, but they look like they have a decent Social Safety net? It matters. It's much easier to take on risk, and do great things if you don't have the fear of being walked over on the sidewalk if you fail? I'm looking at you San Francisco. We seem to have one swing here, unless you come from wealth.
KGIII 9y ago
I can't find any OECD data that says Germany is the second highest taxed country in the world. The closest I can find is the tax as a percentage of GDP and, in that listing, they are 13th. I'm interested in reading more/a list of the highest taxed nations as a way to easily counter the claim that the US is the highest taxed. Do you have a link/citation, so that I can verify that?
- kylecordes 9y ago
  I think the general notion on such lists is that you can think of numerous different ways to rate how highly taxed in nation is. You can therefore come up with many different lists that have different countries in the top few positions. Simply pulling out a well-chosen list allows one to make the claim that a country to be criticized is the highest taxed. I'd also like to see such a list, but with several different measures of highly taxed, and some plausibly unbiased attempt to aggregate them together. I am curious how the overall taxation compares among countries.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    If you're in the US, you probably pay a much lower percentage than you do in many other nations. That much I can establish. Wikipedia has some good tables but, like you suggest, compiling that data is not that easy due to biases. There are also different names for the taxes, different categories, differences in reporting, etc... About all I can conclude is that I don't pay much, compared to what I'd pay elsewhere, in taxes. I actually don't mind paying taxes. I do mind how the money is spent, but that veers into a digression and politics. So, I'll skip that for today.
  - setr 9y ago
    Wouldn't the correct thing be to find some list that just tracks the final tax to each individual, averaged and bucketed over some range of income, ignoring individual reasons for taxes? It doesn't immediately seem that difficult for a group to gather, if they're interested in declaring average tax by country; and it seems like an interesting enough question that someone should have done it by now
- 9y ago
averagewall 9y ago
Luckily they can just walk across a couple of open borders to Estonia. Is that right? That must place a cap on how bad an EU country can get since it's competing with the others for citizens.
pasbesoin 9y ago
A couple of years ago, my friend bought... IIRC, a 40 MB wireless connection to his and his partner's new second, weekend home in the Eifel Mountains of Germany. (There was no reasonable wired option.) I forget the exact details, but again IIRC it was well under 100 € / month (40?, 60?) and unmetered. I was jealous. Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but it fell into my mental category of "Europeans now getting a lot more and better connectivity for a lot less". Contrasted with a decade or two earlier, when telecom prices over there seemed to be quite relatively high (compared to the U.S.). P.S. Pinged him to check the details.

tluyben2 9y ago

Sounds a lot like Spain, rules and paperwork. Taxes are lower but so crappy that even with an accountant you often pay the weirdest things and cannot declare many of the legitimate expenses you might have so in the end I pay as much as I did in NL. The Estonia e-residency is very good for ‘nomads’ ; if you travel a lot (say you do not reside in one country 6 months + 1 days and (but this is debatable somehow) are not in a country more than 60 days continues, you can have a company in Estonia and declare tax for that company there. Which is to say, no tax until you take money out. If you don’t travel like that it is far more complex.

iagovar 9y ago
Spain is not nearly as complicated for a freelance. The problem in Spain is that the administration is a disaster in the "customer care" level. Also, every time a new technology appears they have to open a process for companies to bid (basically because their own IT dept is totally overloaded and I highly doubt they are keeping up with technologies) and do whatever is needed, but it's at least one year cycle. They try to make everything anti-cheat, but in the end cheaters cheat anyway, and in the process they make everything slow and painful.

tormeh 9y ago

It's not moving in the other direction. In fact there's a clear political consensus among the parties (probably) making up the next government that "digitization" should be one of the main foci of attention going forward. Particularly the liberal parties of course (Greens, FDP), but the CDU seem to also fancy this newfangled internet-thingy. Fifteen years late, but moving in the right direction. I have the feeling this is generally true in the other conservative parts of the EU as well. Eyes are very much on Estonia in the EU for this reason. It's all very sluggish, but the wheels are starting to turn, I think.

uoaei 9y ago
Knowing Germany, the transition will probably be 10 years long, because everything has to be 100% perfect and 99.8% ist außerhalb der Fehlermarge!

adwhit 9y ago

And yet.. Germany has probably the most successful economy in the world. I guess being friendly to startups and freelancers just ain't that important?

netsharc 9y ago
Having countries peg their currencies to yours certainly helped: http://fortune.com/2014/10/22/why-germany-is-the-eurozones-biggest-free-rider/ http://fortune.com/2014/10/22/why-germany-is-the-eurozones-b... , meanwhile the other Euro countries are suffering. Even freaking Finland. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/greece-eurozone-germans-single-currency https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/greece...
aaron-lebo 9y ago
What metric are you using to measure successful?
- adwhit 9y ago
  High productivity, huge trade surplus, low unemployment, very high standard of living
  - _Tev 9y ago
    Huge trade surplus (and resulting low unemployment) is effect of the euro, which is undervalued for Germany (and overvalued for most of the eurozone). Germany sure is nice country to live in, but it benefits a lot at the expense of others.
- wolco 9y ago
  average and peak developer income would be a good metric.
tormeh 9y ago
>Germany has probably the most successful economy in the world Nope. Not even in the EU. Not even close. Where does this myth come from? Is it that it has passed the UK per capita? I mean, there are loads of nice things about Germany, and economic strength is one, but that's a wild exaggeration.

k__ 9y ago

I'm a freelancer in Germany and I only have to pay two kind of taxes, income tax and turnover tax.

rmoriz 9y ago
And Rundfunkbeitrag, Krankenversicherung, Pflegeversicherung, Kapitalertragssteuer, Kirchensteuer, Gewerbesteuer (if you have a LLC (UG, GmbH)...
- dualogy 9y ago
  I concur with parent. Health insurance: if you're freelance, your health insurance is preferably private (cheaper) and you're free to cancel it if you please. Capital gains: is for speculations, can choose to "be a saver not a gambler". Church tax: is for church members, don't join. Gewerbesteuer: is for LLC/Ltd/GmbH/UG etc --- not for freelancers/Freiberufler Pflege: never joined that in my whole life. Seems to be optional then. Rundfunk: this becomes an issue when you register as a resident or fail to deregister as a resident. Now, not being registered as a resident while residing qualifies as "offense"/"misdemeanor" (Ordnungswidrigkeit), not as a crime, last I checked =) (I registered though, when I moved back here after years abroad. Though in retrospect, I have no idea why I did --- for someone who never makes it to the voting booth, all it gives you is GEZ hassles.)
  - rmoriz 9y ago
    You should talk to a tax laywer
  - skrause 9y ago
    > Health insurance: if you're freelance, your health insurance is preferably private (cheaper) and you're free to cancel it if you please. No, having health insurance has been mandatory in Germany since 2007. You're free to switch providers, or go from private to public insurance, but you can't just cancel it and go without insurance.
    - 9y ago

gumby 9y ago

> and freelancers here can't even work without a tax advisers who will manage all their taxes, because the system is so complicated. Basically everybody with more than a minimum wage job in the US needs this kind of help, and regulatory (actually congressional) capture by the two giants Intuit and H&R Block mean that any efforts to fix this are squelched.

aj-4 9y ago

People forget that Germany was still reverberating from its own bounce-back for many years. Now it's bogged down by immigration and currency woes. As for Estonia.. here's a golden ticket to make international internet income + low cost of living. Not to mention Talinn is charming.

icantdrive55 9y ago

I've never been there, but they look like they have a decent Social Safety net? It matters. It's much easier to take on risk, and do great things if you don't have the fear of being walked over on the sidewalk if you fail? I'm looking at you San Francisco. We seem to have one swing here, unless you come from wealth.

KGIII 9y ago

I can't find any OECD data that says Germany is the second highest taxed country in the world. The closest I can find is the tax as a percentage of GDP and, in that listing, they are 13th. I'm interested in reading more/a list of the highest taxed nations as a way to easily counter the claim that the US is the highest taxed. Do you have a link/citation, so that I can verify that?

kylecordes 9y ago
I think the general notion on such lists is that you can think of numerous different ways to rate how highly taxed in nation is. You can therefore come up with many different lists that have different countries in the top few positions. Simply pulling out a well-chosen list allows one to make the claim that a country to be criticized is the highest taxed. I'd also like to see such a list, but with several different measures of highly taxed, and some plausibly unbiased attempt to aggregate them together. I am curious how the overall taxation compares among countries.
- KGIII 9y ago
  If you're in the US, you probably pay a much lower percentage than you do in many other nations. That much I can establish. Wikipedia has some good tables but, like you suggest, compiling that data is not that easy due to biases. There are also different names for the taxes, different categories, differences in reporting, etc... About all I can conclude is that I don't pay much, compared to what I'd pay elsewhere, in taxes. I actually don't mind paying taxes. I do mind how the money is spent, but that veers into a digression and politics. So, I'll skip that for today.
- setr 9y ago
  Wouldn't the correct thing be to find some list that just tracks the final tax to each individual, averaged and bucketed over some range of income, ignoring individual reasons for taxes? It doesn't immediately seem that difficult for a group to gather, if they're interested in declaring average tax by country; and it seems like an interesting enough question that someone should have done it by now
9y ago

averagewall 9y ago

Luckily they can just walk across a couple of open borders to Estonia. Is that right? That must place a cap on how bad an EU country can get since it's competing with the others for citizens.

pasbesoin 9y ago

A couple of years ago, my friend bought... IIRC, a 40 MB wireless connection to his and his partner's new second, weekend home in the Eifel Mountains of Germany. (There was no reasonable wired option.) I forget the exact details, but again IIRC it was well under 100 € / month (40?, 60?) and unmetered. I was jealous. Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but it fell into my mental category of "Europeans now getting a lot more and better connectivity for a lot less". Contrasted with a decade or two earlier, when telecom prices over there seemed to be quite relatively high (compared to the U.S.). P.S. Pinged him to check the details.