8 ms·

often problems that impact a small segment is blown out of proportion and this is a classic marketing strategy. throw in anonymous social media handles and boom

often problems that impact a small segment is blown out of proportion and this is a classic marketing strategy. throw in anonymous social media handles and boom you created the illusion a need for a problem you dont have or likely have but the reality is if you dont have 1M ARR from EU there really isn't enough on the table to matter. So you owe 1k in Hungary or UAE, they are not getting INTERPOL to bust down your door especially if you dont live in EU or have legal entity in EU. It's amazing how rampant crowd thinking is among software engineers and its exploited constantly by a gaslighting crowd who show up to spread the fears until it becomes just accepted as a real risk.

Silhouette 2y ago
I don't consider failing to meet legal and tax obligations to be merely a "problem that impacts a small segment". It's true that realistically SMEs have a degree of shielding from the consequences because there are plenty of large enterprises to go after first and they have bigger wallets for the tax man and his limited resources to chase. But those enterprises also have armies of lawyers and accountants to defend themselves and the scale to treat any lost decisions and resulting penalties as just a cost of doing business. To a small business the cost of responding to a formal audit by the tax man alone can be a major expense and have a deep and long-lasting personal impact on the people running the business. Ask anyone in the UK who's been the wrong side of an IR35 investigation - even one they "won" after several years of fighting with HMRC. As I said before - the trouble with the ostrich argument is that it works until it doesn't. The argument people are making against mine here is essentially that it's OK not to do your taxes if you can get away with it. If software engineers are excessively risk averse in this then maybe entrepreneurs are excessively risk tolerant. We probably never hear about the acquisition that never happened because of something that showed up in due diligence or the startup that never got that far because it did get bogged down in red tape when something went wrong and never recovered. The real point here is that it's crazy that anyone even has to have this discussion. Governments should get their acts together and reach agreements where international trade below some reasonable de minimis threshold doesn't incur any international compliance or tax obligations at all and only businesses big enough to be turning over significant amounts of money in a particular area need to do anything special. There should be no need for merchant of record services to exist - at least not from the point of view of ensuring tax compliance for small businesses.
- localfirst 2y ago
  k
- jen729w 2y ago
  > The argument people are making against mine here is essentially that it's OK not to do your taxes if you can get away with it. For clarity, this is not the argument that I am making. My argument is that it is obviously impossible for me, a solopreneur, to meet my global tax ‘obligations’. As in, literally impossible. It’s not that I’m just choosing not to. It would be impossible for me to run a business while registering for and remitting tax to all of the global authorities who, since I sold a $20 PDF to someone in their country, believe that I owe them taxes. And so if that’s against the law, well so be it. Let them come. There’s nothing I can do short of shutting down my business. Because whose law, by the way? Serbia’s tax law? I’ll tell you now, sitting in my kitchen in Australia, Serbia’s tax law is not high on the list of things that I fear.

Silhouette 2y ago

I don't consider failing to meet legal and tax obligations to be merely a "problem that impacts a small segment". It's true that realistically SMEs have a degree of shielding from the consequences because there are plenty of large enterprises to go after first and they have bigger wallets for the tax man and his limited resources to chase. But those enterprises also have armies of lawyers and accountants to defend themselves and the scale to treat any lost decisions and resulting penalties as just a cost of doing business. To a small business the cost of responding to a formal audit by the tax man alone can be a major expense and have a deep and long-lasting personal impact on the people running the business. Ask anyone in the UK who's been the wrong side of an IR35 investigation - even one they "won" after several years of fighting with HMRC. As I said before - the trouble with the ostrich argument is that it works until it doesn't. The argument people are making against mine here is essentially that it's OK not to do your taxes if you can get away with it. If software engineers are excessively risk averse in this then maybe entrepreneurs are excessively risk tolerant. We probably never hear about the acquisition that never happened because of something that showed up in due diligence or the startup that never got that far because it did get bogged down in red tape when something went wrong and never recovered. The real point here is that it's crazy that anyone even has to have this discussion. Governments should get their acts together and reach agreements where international trade below some reasonable de minimis threshold doesn't incur any international compliance or tax obligations at all and only businesses big enough to be turning over significant amounts of money in a particular area need to do anything special. There should be no need for merchant of record services to exist - at least not from the point of view of ensuring tax compliance for small businesses.

localfirst 2y ago
k
jen729w 2y ago
> The argument people are making against mine here is essentially that it's OK not to do your taxes if you can get away with it. For clarity, this is not the argument that I am making. My argument is that it is obviously impossible for me, a solopreneur, to meet my global tax ‘obligations’. As in, literally impossible. It’s not that I’m just choosing not to. It would be impossible for me to run a business while registering for and remitting tax to all of the global authorities who, since I sold a $20 PDF to someone in their country, believe that I owe them taxes. And so if that’s against the law, well so be it. Let them come. There’s nothing I can do short of shutting down my business. Because whose law, by the way? Serbia’s tax law? I’ll tell you now, sitting in my kitchen in Australia, Serbia’s tax law is not high on the list of things that I fear.