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Some companies have different offices in different countries, and one can issue invoices to the one in the US for 6 months and the one in Dubai for another 6 mo

by bitL 4y ago

Some companies have different offices in different countries, and one can issue invoices to the one in the US for 6 months and the one in Dubai for another 6 months if that were a problem. I've never heard of anyone in the EU having "exporter" clients in the US to require multiple of them every year though.

sarchertech 4y ago
It’s because no one is looking at this closely yet, because until recently it wasn’t popular enough to pop up on anyone’s radar. The loophole you’re talking about is alas probably tax fraud, if you are paying from multiple companies that you own to make it look like your “contractor” had multiple clients.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Definitely fraud. I have multiple clients, products and take risks etc; everything associated with a business (a small business but business nonetheless): nothing has been ever faked. Being an employee but trying to disguise it to gain benefits is simply seen as fraud but usually not enough to get caught; many do it. It has been popular, at least in NL for decades now: people invoicing eachother and moving money around just to make the threshold.
  - bitL 4y ago
    We are talking about companies operating outside EU. You are still set on companies operating in the same country. So a dev takes a risk, switches to a freelance mode, finds a client abroad, the client pays much better but at the cost of terminating agreement anytime, and for you it's a tax fraud? Smells like a crab bucket to me ("how unjust is it to earn that much more than me!").
    - tluyben2 4y ago
      Not my rules or ideas… if you try to invoice different companies to get around defacto employee rules we have here, then it is fraud; you probably won’t get caught. It’s not fraud ‘for me’, it is for the tax office of my country and, as other people have said, also maybe for the employer side. So I play it safe to make sure it’s neither, however, that is far different from taking a contractor job for one client for a long time; that often will be flagged as defacto employee and taxed like it.
      - bitL 4y ago
        I really think you are mixing completely unrelated things together. Just a thought experiment: there is a company that has no office/contact in the EU. Is a NL-based freelancer prohibited from working for them? In other words, is the freelancer prohibited from exporting their work to the country of origin of that company or not? You keep applying laws for companies operating in NL to any arbitrary company operating elsewhere.
        tluyben2 4y ago
        You can of course but there are rules that you need to follow for the tax office; if they mark you as defacto employee in NL for a US company, different taxation applies. You are marked as not an entrepreneur or company in that case and you will be taxed (a lot) more. I didn’t say anywhere it is illegal or prohibited anyway (I just said you will be flagged as defacto employee which brings consequences); it is just not very smart as you will have all the bad things and none/little of the good things working like that.

by bitL 4y ago

sarchertech 4y ago

It’s because no one is looking at this closely yet, because until recently it wasn’t popular enough to pop up on anyone’s radar. The loophole you’re talking about is alas probably tax fraud, if you are paying from multiple companies that you own to make it look like your “contractor” had multiple clients.

tluyben2 4y ago
Definitely fraud. I have multiple clients, products and take risks etc; everything associated with a business (a small business but business nonetheless): nothing has been ever faked. Being an employee but trying to disguise it to gain benefits is simply seen as fraud but usually not enough to get caught; many do it. It has been popular, at least in NL for decades now: people invoicing eachother and moving money around just to make the threshold.
- bitL 4y ago
  We are talking about companies operating outside EU. You are still set on companies operating in the same country. So a dev takes a risk, switches to a freelance mode, finds a client abroad, the client pays much better but at the cost of terminating agreement anytime, and for you it's a tax fraud? Smells like a crab bucket to me ("how unjust is it to earn that much more than me!").
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    Not my rules or ideas… if you try to invoice different companies to get around defacto employee rules we have here, then it is fraud; you probably won’t get caught. It’s not fraud ‘for me’, it is for the tax office of my country and, as other people have said, also maybe for the employer side. So I play it safe to make sure it’s neither, however, that is far different from taking a contractor job for one client for a long time; that often will be flagged as defacto employee and taxed like it.
    - bitL 4y ago
      I really think you are mixing completely unrelated things together. Just a thought experiment: there is a company that has no office/contact in the EU. Is a NL-based freelancer prohibited from working for them? In other words, is the freelancer prohibited from exporting their work to the country of origin of that company or not? You keep applying laws for companies operating in NL to any arbitrary company operating elsewhere.
      - tluyben2 4y ago
        You can of course but there are rules that you need to follow for the tax office; if they mark you as defacto employee in NL for a US company, different taxation applies. You are marked as not an entrepreneur or company in that case and you will be taxed (a lot) more. I didn’t say anywhere it is illegal or prohibited anyway (I just said you will be flagged as defacto employee which brings consequences); it is just not very smart as you will have all the bad things and none/little of the good things working like that.