7 ms·

Fixing Italy, a little bit at a time

142 points by ot 12y ago

ecesena 12y ago
Could you elaborate and compare to a US Inc., rather than a LLC? There are several reasons to prefer a Inc vs a LLC. Without entering into a battle, I refer to Sam Altman lecture [1]. From http://www.srlfacile.org http://www.srlfacile.org (translated): > In the UK, the cost of a "Ltd" (Limited) varies from 25 pounds for a basic package, 250 pounds 'all inclusive'. In the United States, create a "LLC" (Limited Liability Company), it costs 50 to $500 depending on the state in question, and you can do everything through the site in many cases. My fear, in some sense, is that we go towards something which is better than the current Italian Srl, but with the drawbacks of a LLC vs Inc. I'm not criticizing, just asking for clarifications. [1] http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18/ http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18/
- davidw 12y ago
  An Inc is the equivalent of an Italian SPA, which is even more expensive to register and maintain than an SRL. I went for the SRL's because it's low hanging fruit. If you compare an Inc in the US to an SPA in Italy, it's even more in favor of the US, although unlike an LLC with a single owner and pass through taxation, I think with an Inc, you're going to want to get an accountant and lawyer involved from the get-go.
lultimouomo 12y ago
A nitpic: with a traditional S.R.L., 10k€ is the minimum capital of the company, but you don't actually need all of it to get started. A S.R.L. only needs 25% of its capital to get started, so you need at a minimum 2500€, which your newborn company will spend anyway in its first month, to pay the notary and the registration fees. Of course if you go bankrupt you still need to pay the remaining 75% of the capital to pay your debts. Overall, the new form of reduced-capital S.R.L. will make you save around 1500€ for the notary, but it remains quite onerous, especially time-wise, because of all the bureaucracy you need to go through.
- davidw 12y ago
  Yes, there is ample room for improving things further in Italy, but I think: if I was able to do that, what could be accomplished if more people tried? Especially people with money/power/connections/etc... Heck, my Italian is good, but I'm not even a native speaker!
idiocratic 12y ago
As an Italian living in the UK I'm not sure anything changed in Italy in this field. I see more and more Italians establishing their companies in the UK or Germany, because it's mostly hassle-free and better in the long run. Italy has a problem with business, risk is not something that the few investors are willing to consider and startups are just a tiny fragment of an IT market ruled by short-term contracts with 3 levels of outsourcing. There are exceptions, but you can count them on the fingers of one hand.
- davidw 12y ago
  Italy certainly hasn't become the place to create a company, but it is improving, slowly. I think with all the good things Italy has, it doesn't have to be run perfectly, or have the best laws: it just has to suck less. If you think about it, California is similar in some ways. It is not the most "business friendly" state in the US - but it does have a lot of other things going for it, so people go there anyway.
- 1_player 12y ago
  Fellow Italian here also in the UK. I've been self employed in both countries, and, boy, how easy it is to open a company in the United Kingdom compared to Italy. The taxation system is much better and fair (although PM Monti's new tax regulations for new small businesses have helped, but they have their share of shortcomings) and the market and average salary for a software engineer is at least 2x compared to the Italian average: - Good luck earning more than €24000 after taxes in a non-management position. - Good luck finding full time positions: here in the UK I have the opposite problem, as a consultant I'm often looking for part-time offers and everybody's looking for full-time engineers. You may actually work full time for a company, but more often than not you get a short term contract with much lower benefits that gets renewed until you quit. - Good luck if you're looking for remote work: nobody likes or trust remote workers here. - I've quit my job after learning that my salary was filtered through 2 levels of outsourcing agencies, and my take-out pay was 16% (or 1/6th) of what the client was actually paying. That's my personal 7 year experience in Milan, arguably the best Italian city for service-related work.
radicalbyte 12y ago
It's not just Italy which has horrible rules around private limited-liability companies (LLC). In The Netherlands you need to invest 18k EUR to create a BV, which is the Dutch form of a pLLC. Combined with strong worker protections it's amazing that there are so many startups here. I guess the culture, high level of English-speaking and high education level explains it.
- phesse14 12y ago
  I agree. I'd dare to say it's a common problem in most EU countries. EU is a more regulated environment in comparison to the US. EU is the old school of business (i.e. banks), so politicians are more focused on protecting them instead of helping to create new ones. This involves a cultural change. The economic downturn is the opportunity to do so
- bkor 12y ago
  A LLC is a burden on the country if you go bankrupt. So obviously you need to show that you have enough money. Are you sure about the rules? I was taught (though ages ago), that you could basically get a short loan for the amount. Further, it was more like 10k IIRC. I'm surprised you think the rules should be eased. An LLC is pretty often abused for fraud. Putting everything in an LLC, letting it go bankrupt, moving to the next one, etc. Edit: BV for .nl is 260 EUR at https://www.oprichtenbv.nl/ https://www.oprichtenbv.nl/. I just googled for it. No additional costs.
  - jarek-foksa 12y ago
    The directors are fully liable if their actions are found to be fraudulent. It's "limited liability", not "no liability whatsoever".
    - bkor 12y ago
      Which in practice is not enforced very often.
  - lavamantis 12y ago
bakhy 12y ago
Great work! And I could not agree more with the conclusion. It's like people think that they either have to get exactly what they want, str8 away, or the cause is not worth their effort at all. But if everyone chipped in a little, as much as they could, mountains could be moved in a day.
jkot 12y ago
And why register company in Italy? We have EU and foreign companies can be present in Italy. I would register in Ireland or Estonia.
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  If you are BASED in Italy and register in Ireland or Estonia I'm pretty much sure you are breaking the law, EU or not.
  - nodata 12y ago
    How?
    - jarek-foksa 12y ago
      Keywords: tax residence, controlled foreign company. To be more specific, such structure would not be illegal, but you would have to deal with double the amount of bureaucracy and you would pay the same taxes.
    - Kurtz79 12y ago
      You are working in country which as to pay for things like roads, military, firemen, police, health services, schools, pensions using taxes from companies and citizens living there and this country is not seeing a single euro from you (which are taking advantage of the infrastructure paid by those taxes). How would you expect this to be remotely legal ? Sure, there are plenty of people doing that, just as there are companies registered in the Cayman or Gibraltar, or people having secret Swiss bank accounts.
      - davidw 12y ago
        > How would you expect this to be remotely legal ? If you pay taxes (in Italy, say) on the income from your company, wherever it happens to be. I get the impression that it's all something of a legal gray area. It'd be a lot simpler if people could easily have companies in their own countries. I'm all for paying one's fair share of taxes on income in the country you live in. What I intensely dislike about the laws in Italy surrounding companies is that there are all kinds of expenses that have to be paid even if you are losing money.
davidw 12y ago
That's my article, if anyone's curious about the details. Edit - I may as well post this here: I finally wrote this up 3 years after the fact as something of a "swan song" for my time in Italy, which is drawing to a close for now (I'm sure we'll be back in the future!). We're moving to Boulder, Colorado, and are actively looking for people to meet, jobs, housing, etc...
- balsamiq 12y ago
  David! I met you at Better Software in Florence a few years ago, not long after I had finished scrounging up 2,500 euros to start Balsamiq SRL (I had to give my mother 1% of the company, otherwise I would have to deposit 10,000 euros, which I didn't have at the time). I remember thinking "I hope this guys is successful" when I talked to you, and when the new law came into effect, I remember thinking "I wonder if that guy had anything to do with this awesome change". :) As an Italian entrepreneur, thank you. I meet with lots of wannapreneurs, and I alyways tell them "it's cheaper now!". Now I can tell them "thank David Walton!" too. :)
  - davidw 12y ago
    Thanks for the kind words, and thanks also for the inspiration - your talks at Better Software, and MicroConf Europe were very nice in that they show that it's possible to do a cool, successful bootstrapped startup in Europe too.
  - giovannibajo1 12y ago
    I checked both of you in at the registration desk at Better Software. Yay, I got my share of celebrity now :)
- pmontra 12y ago
  Cheers from the Italian Ruby Forum and thanks for starting this initiative!
JanezStupar 12y ago
For all things that are shitty in Slovenia (next door neighbor to Italy), starting a company is not. If you want a LLC - you will need 7500€ of capital, however there are no fees and whole process doesn't take more than a week.
jarek-foksa 12y ago
As far as I know there is no European country that would have legal structure similar to LLC in the US. If you want to avoid double taxation while maintaining limited liability, you have to get into some complex and obscure legal structures - like a limited partnership where one partner is a limited company (with at least two directors) and the another partner is you. Even then, the limited liability is very limited and it's easy to make a mistake that will make you fully liable.
- lultimouomo 12y ago
  In Italy you can actually avoid double taxation, in small LLC companies (less than 10 partners, only natural persons) you can opt for a "fiscal transparency" mode in which you avoid corporate revenue taxes.
  - ane 12y ago
    I think in Estonia any invested money is exempt from taxation, that is to say, if you invest your profits, you will not be taxed.
- adventured 12y ago
  I believe Slovenia has such (as noted by another HN member): http://www.eugo.gov.si/en/starting/business-registration/limited-liability-company-doo/ http://www.eugo.gov.si/en/starting/business-registration/lim...
danmaz74 12y ago
Good job David ;)
Fede_V 12y ago
Hey, what you did is awesome. It is a small step, but it is decidedly in the right direction - and often us Italians are too cynical and resigned to a shitty system to push back against it as much as we should. Kudos!
ybalkind 12y ago
The real story seems to be ItaliaCamp since they seemed to be the ones who gave the idea traction. But their website is only Italian. Can the author or anyone else explain a bit more about ItaliaCamp and how they manage to successfully lobby for change?
- davidw 12y ago
  They certainly played a big role in actually making things happen. I'm not sure too much about how - I know a bunch of them are connected with a private school in Rome, LUISS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libera_Universit%C3%A0_Internazionale_degli_Studi_Sociali_Guido_Carli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libera_Universit%C3%A0_Internaz...
stefantalpalaru 12y ago
> More than anything, I think that it resoundingly demonstrates that as a person, you can make a difference, even if you are not rich, powerful, or well-connected politically. Yes, you just need to be naive enough. The resulting law only allows €1 charges for people under 35 and it does nothing about the other expenses that stifle small businesses: - the payment of anticipated VAT for the next fiscal year as estimated by the government based on this year's ledger - the market studies that establish the average income of a similar business in your field and then taxes you according to this hypothetical income if your documented one is bellow average - certain taxes that have a fixed minimum forcing you to reach a certain income immediately or dig yourself deeper into debt - an aversion towards bankruptcy - you are usually guilty of fraud until proven otherwise and the legal process is long and costly - insane fiscal policies like the one forcing retail shops to only have large price reductions 2 months per year, at the season's end, after communicating it to the local authorities and only being allowed to charge bellow the acquisition price in certain conditions, as to maximize the state's return (they reason that reducing the price also reduces the taxes) While small timers have to deal will all this, big businesses get public money in order to "save the jobs" or protect strategic industries, they get to use the government's resources to secure deals abroad and they get to negotiate with the revenue service when they are caught red handed. The signs are clear: become an employee or pay the price of your foolishness. You can't fix the system. At most you can provide some PR material for one politician or another and write a self-congratulatory blog post about it.
- davidw 12y ago
  If you read the article, you will notice that I never claim to have fixed all of Italy's problems, but rather that I lit a fire that helped improve one small one. > The resulting law only allows €1 charges for people under 35 The did end up fixing that one actually, and now it's available for everyone. Most of the other things you point out are certainly real problems. I hope other people will do their part to help fix them! > You can't fix the system That is exactly the kind of problematic attitude that I am talking about. No one ever claimed it was easy, but if you do not try, it's obvious nothing will improve!
pierotofy 12y ago
This is not exactly correct... "At least 10,000 Euros of capital that you were required to invest in the company.". You are required to "pledge" that amount, but you are not required to invest all of it right away. You can invest as little as 2,500 (and the founder will owe in the books the remaining 7,500). It's still a significant amount compared to what's required to open a company in the U.S. however. The notary fees absurdity is true. A disgusting privileged class problem. "a lot of people told me it’d never happen, so why bother". Sadly, it's a very typical attitude among Italians.
- davidw 12y ago
  > This is not exactly correct... "At least 10,000 Euros of capital that you were required to invest in the company. You are completely correct, as is lultimouomo, but I skipped over the exact details - this article was aimed at a broader audience than those interested in the technical details of Italian company formation.
  - pierotofy 12y ago
    That's understandable. By the way, thank you for your efforts. Italy needs more people like you that push for entrepreneurial reforms. Right now a lot of talent is emigrating to other countries because of the difficulties to start a successful business (or even just a career).
Animats 12y ago
The real questions with the creation of corporate forms are 1) how do taxes work, 2) how does bankruptcy work, and 3) what rights and powers do investors have. Most startups fail, so 2) is an important issue. Policies vary by country. The US is lenient on corporate bankruptcies; Ireland is very tough. There are a number of rackets associated with easy corporate creation. Ordering stuff and then going bankrupt with the stuff missing is a classic. (The usual strategy is order a little stuff, pay for it, order more stuff, pay for it, order a lot of stuff, disappear with the stuff. Popular in New Jersey.)
- davidw 12y ago
  > There are a number of rackets associated with easy corporate creation. This is an interesting point. Italy tends to optimize for the 'worst case'... "well, this could go wrong, so we'll make everyone do X, Y, and Z". Therefore, all the honest people have to pay extra in terms of time and bureaucracy to the detriment of society as a whole. My take is to make things easy for honest people, and come down on the dishonest/fraudulent ones fairly hard.

142 points by ot 12y ago

Could you elaborate and compare to a US Inc., rather than a LLC? There are several reasons to prefer a Inc vs a LLC. Without entering into a battle, I refer to Sam Altman lecture [1]. From http://www.srlfacile.org http://www.srlfacile.org (translated): > In the UK, the cost of a "Ltd" (Limited) varies from 25 pounds for a basic package, 250 pounds 'all inclusive'. In the United States, create a "LLC" (Limited Liability Company), it costs 50 to $500 depending on the state in question, and you can do everything through the site in many cases. My fear, in some sense, is that we go towards something which is better than the current Italian Srl, but with the drawbacks of a LLC vs Inc. I'm not criticizing, just asking for clarifications. [1] http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18/ http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18/

davidw 12y ago
An Inc is the equivalent of an Italian SPA, which is even more expensive to register and maintain than an SRL. I went for the SRL's because it's low hanging fruit. If you compare an Inc in the US to an SPA in Italy, it's even more in favor of the US, although unlike an LLC with a single owner and pass through taxation, I think with an Inc, you're going to want to get an accountant and lawyer involved from the get-go.

lultimouomo 12y ago

A nitpic: with a traditional S.R.L., 10k€ is the minimum capital of the company, but you don't actually need all of it to get started. A S.R.L. only needs 25% of its capital to get started, so you need at a minimum 2500€, which your newborn company will spend anyway in its first month, to pay the notary and the registration fees. Of course if you go bankrupt you still need to pay the remaining 75% of the capital to pay your debts. Overall, the new form of reduced-capital S.R.L. will make you save around 1500€ for the notary, but it remains quite onerous, especially time-wise, because of all the bureaucracy you need to go through.

davidw 12y ago
Yes, there is ample room for improving things further in Italy, but I think: if I was able to do that, what could be accomplished if more people tried? Especially people with money/power/connections/etc... Heck, my Italian is good, but I'm not even a native speaker!

idiocratic 12y ago

As an Italian living in the UK I'm not sure anything changed in Italy in this field. I see more and more Italians establishing their companies in the UK or Germany, because it's mostly hassle-free and better in the long run. Italy has a problem with business, risk is not something that the few investors are willing to consider and startups are just a tiny fragment of an IT market ruled by short-term contracts with 3 levels of outsourcing. There are exceptions, but you can count them on the fingers of one hand.

davidw 12y ago
Italy certainly hasn't become the place to create a company, but it is improving, slowly. I think with all the good things Italy has, it doesn't have to be run perfectly, or have the best laws: it just has to suck less. If you think about it, California is similar in some ways. It is not the most "business friendly" state in the US - but it does have a lot of other things going for it, so people go there anyway.
1_player 12y ago
Fellow Italian here also in the UK. I've been self employed in both countries, and, boy, how easy it is to open a company in the United Kingdom compared to Italy. The taxation system is much better and fair (although PM Monti's new tax regulations for new small businesses have helped, but they have their share of shortcomings) and the market and average salary for a software engineer is at least 2x compared to the Italian average: - Good luck earning more than €24000 after taxes in a non-management position. - Good luck finding full time positions: here in the UK I have the opposite problem, as a consultant I'm often looking for part-time offers and everybody's looking for full-time engineers. You may actually work full time for a company, but more often than not you get a short term contract with much lower benefits that gets renewed until you quit. - Good luck if you're looking for remote work: nobody likes or trust remote workers here. - I've quit my job after learning that my salary was filtered through 2 levels of outsourcing agencies, and my take-out pay was 16% (or 1/6th) of what the client was actually paying. That's my personal 7 year experience in Milan, arguably the best Italian city for service-related work.

radicalbyte 12y ago

It's not just Italy which has horrible rules around private limited-liability companies (LLC). In The Netherlands you need to invest 18k EUR to create a BV, which is the Dutch form of a pLLC. Combined with strong worker protections it's amazing that there are so many startups here. I guess the culture, high level of English-speaking and high education level explains it.

phesse14 12y ago
I agree. I'd dare to say it's a common problem in most EU countries. EU is a more regulated environment in comparison to the US. EU is the old school of business (i.e. banks), so politicians are more focused on protecting them instead of helping to create new ones. This involves a cultural change. The economic downturn is the opportunity to do so
bkor 12y ago
A LLC is a burden on the country if you go bankrupt. So obviously you need to show that you have enough money. Are you sure about the rules? I was taught (though ages ago), that you could basically get a short loan for the amount. Further, it was more like 10k IIRC. I'm surprised you think the rules should be eased. An LLC is pretty often abused for fraud. Putting everything in an LLC, letting it go bankrupt, moving to the next one, etc. Edit: BV for .nl is 260 EUR at https://www.oprichtenbv.nl/ https://www.oprichtenbv.nl/. I just googled for it. No additional costs.
- jarek-foksa 12y ago
  The directors are fully liable if their actions are found to be fraudulent. It's "limited liability", not "no liability whatsoever".
  - bkor 12y ago
    Which in practice is not enforced very often.
- lavamantis 12y ago

bakhy 12y ago

Great work! And I could not agree more with the conclusion. It's like people think that they either have to get exactly what they want, str8 away, or the cause is not worth their effort at all. But if everyone chipped in a little, as much as they could, mountains could be moved in a day.

jkot 12y ago

And why register company in Italy? We have EU and foreign companies can be present in Italy. I would register in Ireland or Estonia.

Kurtz79 12y ago
If you are BASED in Italy and register in Ireland or Estonia I'm pretty much sure you are breaking the law, EU or not.
- nodata 12y ago
  How?
  - jarek-foksa 12y ago
    Keywords: tax residence, controlled foreign company. To be more specific, such structure would not be illegal, but you would have to deal with double the amount of bureaucracy and you would pay the same taxes.
  - Kurtz79 12y ago
    You are working in country which as to pay for things like roads, military, firemen, police, health services, schools, pensions using taxes from companies and citizens living there and this country is not seeing a single euro from you (which are taking advantage of the infrastructure paid by those taxes). How would you expect this to be remotely legal ? Sure, there are plenty of people doing that, just as there are companies registered in the Cayman or Gibraltar, or people having secret Swiss bank accounts.
    - davidw 12y ago
      > How would you expect this to be remotely legal ? If you pay taxes (in Italy, say) on the income from your company, wherever it happens to be. I get the impression that it's all something of a legal gray area. It'd be a lot simpler if people could easily have companies in their own countries. I'm all for paying one's fair share of taxes on income in the country you live in. What I intensely dislike about the laws in Italy surrounding companies is that there are all kinds of expenses that have to be paid even if you are losing money.

davidw 12y ago

That's my article, if anyone's curious about the details. Edit - I may as well post this here: I finally wrote this up 3 years after the fact as something of a "swan song" for my time in Italy, which is drawing to a close for now (I'm sure we'll be back in the future!). We're moving to Boulder, Colorado, and are actively looking for people to meet, jobs, housing, etc...

balsamiq 12y ago
David! I met you at Better Software in Florence a few years ago, not long after I had finished scrounging up 2,500 euros to start Balsamiq SRL (I had to give my mother 1% of the company, otherwise I would have to deposit 10,000 euros, which I didn't have at the time). I remember thinking "I hope this guys is successful" when I talked to you, and when the new law came into effect, I remember thinking "I wonder if that guy had anything to do with this awesome change". :) As an Italian entrepreneur, thank you. I meet with lots of wannapreneurs, and I alyways tell them "it's cheaper now!". Now I can tell them "thank David Walton!" too. :)
- davidw 12y ago
  Thanks for the kind words, and thanks also for the inspiration - your talks at Better Software, and MicroConf Europe were very nice in that they show that it's possible to do a cool, successful bootstrapped startup in Europe too.
- giovannibajo1 12y ago
  I checked both of you in at the registration desk at Better Software. Yay, I got my share of celebrity now :)
pmontra 12y ago
Cheers from the Italian Ruby Forum and thanks for starting this initiative!

JanezStupar 12y ago

For all things that are shitty in Slovenia (next door neighbor to Italy), starting a company is not. If you want a LLC - you will need 7500€ of capital, however there are no fees and whole process doesn't take more than a week.

jarek-foksa 12y ago

As far as I know there is no European country that would have legal structure similar to LLC in the US. If you want to avoid double taxation while maintaining limited liability, you have to get into some complex and obscure legal structures - like a limited partnership where one partner is a limited company (with at least two directors) and the another partner is you. Even then, the limited liability is very limited and it's easy to make a mistake that will make you fully liable.

lultimouomo 12y ago
In Italy you can actually avoid double taxation, in small LLC companies (less than 10 partners, only natural persons) you can opt for a "fiscal transparency" mode in which you avoid corporate revenue taxes.
- ane 12y ago
  I think in Estonia any invested money is exempt from taxation, that is to say, if you invest your profits, you will not be taxed.
adventured 12y ago
I believe Slovenia has such (as noted by another HN member): http://www.eugo.gov.si/en/starting/business-registration/limited-liability-company-doo/ http://www.eugo.gov.si/en/starting/business-registration/lim...

danmaz74 12y ago

Good job David ;)

Fede_V 12y ago

Hey, what you did is awesome. It is a small step, but it is decidedly in the right direction - and often us Italians are too cynical and resigned to a shitty system to push back against it as much as we should. Kudos!

ybalkind 12y ago

The real story seems to be ItaliaCamp since they seemed to be the ones who gave the idea traction. But their website is only Italian. Can the author or anyone else explain a bit more about ItaliaCamp and how they manage to successfully lobby for change?

davidw 12y ago
They certainly played a big role in actually making things happen. I'm not sure too much about how - I know a bunch of them are connected with a private school in Rome, LUISS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libera_Universit%C3%A0_Internazionale_degli_Studi_Sociali_Guido_Carli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libera_Universit%C3%A0_Internaz...

stefantalpalaru 12y ago

> More than anything, I think that it resoundingly demonstrates that as a person, you can make a difference, even if you are not rich, powerful, or well-connected politically. Yes, you just need to be naive enough. The resulting law only allows €1 charges for people under 35 and it does nothing about the other expenses that stifle small businesses: - the payment of anticipated VAT for the next fiscal year as estimated by the government based on this year's ledger - the market studies that establish the average income of a similar business in your field and then taxes you according to this hypothetical income if your documented one is bellow average - certain taxes that have a fixed minimum forcing you to reach a certain income immediately or dig yourself deeper into debt - an aversion towards bankruptcy - you are usually guilty of fraud until proven otherwise and the legal process is long and costly - insane fiscal policies like the one forcing retail shops to only have large price reductions 2 months per year, at the season's end, after communicating it to the local authorities and only being allowed to charge bellow the acquisition price in certain conditions, as to maximize the state's return (they reason that reducing the price also reduces the taxes) While small timers have to deal will all this, big businesses get public money in order to "save the jobs" or protect strategic industries, they get to use the government's resources to secure deals abroad and they get to negotiate with the revenue service when they are caught red handed. The signs are clear: become an employee or pay the price of your foolishness. You can't fix the system. At most you can provide some PR material for one politician or another and write a self-congratulatory blog post about it.

davidw 12y ago
If you read the article, you will notice that I never claim to have fixed all of Italy's problems, but rather that I lit a fire that helped improve one small one. > The resulting law only allows €1 charges for people under 35 The did end up fixing that one actually, and now it's available for everyone. Most of the other things you point out are certainly real problems. I hope other people will do their part to help fix them! > You can't fix the system That is exactly the kind of problematic attitude that I am talking about. No one ever claimed it was easy, but if you do not try, it's obvious nothing will improve!

pierotofy 12y ago

This is not exactly correct... "At least 10,000 Euros of capital that you were required to invest in the company.". You are required to "pledge" that amount, but you are not required to invest all of it right away. You can invest as little as 2,500 (and the founder will owe in the books the remaining 7,500). It's still a significant amount compared to what's required to open a company in the U.S. however. The notary fees absurdity is true. A disgusting privileged class problem. "a lot of people told me it’d never happen, so why bother". Sadly, it's a very typical attitude among Italians.

davidw 12y ago
> This is not exactly correct... "At least 10,000 Euros of capital that you were required to invest in the company. You are completely correct, as is lultimouomo, but I skipped over the exact details - this article was aimed at a broader audience than those interested in the technical details of Italian company formation.
- pierotofy 12y ago
  That's understandable. By the way, thank you for your efforts. Italy needs more people like you that push for entrepreneurial reforms. Right now a lot of talent is emigrating to other countries because of the difficulties to start a successful business (or even just a career).

Animats 12y ago

The real questions with the creation of corporate forms are 1) how do taxes work, 2) how does bankruptcy work, and 3) what rights and powers do investors have. Most startups fail, so 2) is an important issue. Policies vary by country. The US is lenient on corporate bankruptcies; Ireland is very tough. There are a number of rackets associated with easy corporate creation. Ordering stuff and then going bankrupt with the stuff missing is a classic. (The usual strategy is order a little stuff, pay for it, order more stuff, pay for it, order a lot of stuff, disappear with the stuff. Popular in New Jersey.)

davidw 12y ago
> There are a number of rackets associated with easy corporate creation. This is an interesting point. Italy tends to optimize for the 'worst case'... "well, this could go wrong, so we'll make everyone do X, Y, and Z". Therefore, all the honest people have to pay extra in terms of time and bureaucracy to the detriment of society as a whole. My take is to make things easy for honest people, and come down on the dishonest/fraudulent ones fairly hard.