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I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it, but the bureaucracy of licensing, taxes, and now national sales tax collection is unhelpful to the startup. Not that it's a

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it, but the bureaucracy of licensing, taxes, and now national sales tax collection is unhelpful to the startup. Not that it's a startup, but I just jumped through all the hoops required to legally hire a nanny in the US state of Washington: - obtain Federal EIN number - obtain state business license & UBI number (still waiting on this, and I need childcare now) - file with state employment security department - pay state labor & industries insurance - pay state employment security taxes - pay my portion of income taxes for the nanny - pay payroll company to deal with all the tax payouts and paychecks Oh, and actually pay the nanny. All of this to just have a nanny and be above board. And what I do for my startup is way more complicated than this.

ChristianBundy 8y ago
I'm confused, to legally hire a nanny you need to start a legal entity and hire the nanny as a contractor/employee? It seems to me that this would be the nanny's responsibility to start a business and charge the customer (you) money for their service. I'm sure you're much more familiar than me, can you help me correct my intuition?
tchock23 8y ago
Over the past 4 years I have advised startups at an incubator in a mid-size US city. During that time I have only seen 2 startups run into issues around licensing and taxes that caused significant hurdles to their startup. However, in both cases I think the entrepreneur was largely using bureaucracy as an excuse for lacking product/market fit and personal sales skills... In my experience the issue of fewer startups being created is multi-faceted and has to do with lack of affordable healthcare options/healthcare tied to employment, changing attitudes toward risk across generations, student loan and housing debt, lack of awareness of entrepreneurship as a viable career path (and more).
Gibbon1 8y ago
I worked at a smallish company in the 1980's. None of the above is new in any way.

ChristianBundy 8y ago

I'm confused, to legally hire a nanny you need to start a legal entity and hire the nanny as a contractor/employee? It seems to me that this would be the nanny's responsibility to start a business and charge the customer (you) money for their service. I'm sure you're much more familiar than me, can you help me correct my intuition?

tchock23 8y ago

Over the past 4 years I have advised startups at an incubator in a mid-size US city. During that time I have only seen 2 startups run into issues around licensing and taxes that caused significant hurdles to their startup. However, in both cases I think the entrepreneur was largely using bureaucracy as an excuse for lacking product/market fit and personal sales skills... In my experience the issue of fewer startups being created is multi-faceted and has to do with lack of affordable healthcare options/healthcare tied to employment, changing attitudes toward risk across generations, student loan and housing debt, lack of awareness of entrepreneurship as a viable career path (and more).

Gibbon1 8y ago

I worked at a smallish company in the 1980's. None of the above is new in any way.