Local Taxes… the issue with EU is the taxes and cost of labour.

That's not the issue. If your business is dependent on slave labor and offloading your externalities on the society to make a profit it simply means your business should not exist.

Its evident that labor cost and taxes are not excessive in EU by the reality of existence of plenty of businesses in a healthy society.

What doesn't exist in EU is the "tech" business, and the tech doesn't have margins too slim to employ people and pay taxes. On the contrary, the margins are fat. The reason that the tech sector isn't a large one in EU is that its easy to incorporate in USA and access the full EU market from there instead of incorporating in some small EU country and deal with their bureaucracy and internal border limitations. The 28th regime and the EU-INC is to address exactly that.

If the USA-EU relations deteriorate enough, it will also create instant trillion Euros market. Just look at the quarterly reports of US tech giants, they generate EU revenues that are not that behind the US revenues. For Apple thats %60 of the US revenue, or ~110B$ for the last quarter and that's happening despite Apple having a much smaller market share in EU.

A full blown conflict between US-EU will be a huge opportunity to replicate the US tech sector in EU and having an EU-INC will be the necessary facilitator that is currently missing when compared with the landscape in USA.

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kvgr 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Cost of labour i meant work taxation. You can see the waste everywhere. We could have half income tax, half social security and half health. Instead of taking 50% you your income. We could give 25%. And have more to boost the economy or save for future. EU is in slow death. Dying out, pyramid scheme retirement system mostly.

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mrtksn 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not so sure about that. Elon Musk and Trump promised something of this sort, created the DOGE department and ended up not saving anything despite claiming to uncover waste.

> Dying out, pyramid scheme retirement system mostly.

The solution to this is more creampies 20 years ago, no government action can change that. Every generation pays for the retirement of the previous one and if a generation makes less kids then they put higher burden on those kids. Before the taxes and pensions people used to look after their aging parents, today people who live in cities and pay taxes so that they can have independent lives from their parents. That's how biology works, people born procreate age and die and if you live in a society the young ones take care of the old onces until they die.

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kvgr 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Well the slovak goverment alone stole billions of euros. Stole. Imagine if we didnt have to pay all the farm subsidies to keep 5 goats in mountains. Or to pay hungary for lookout towers in the middle of nowhere.

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mrtksn 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Sound like you should go after the Slovak government

	▲	kvgr a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		Well, isn’t the EU supposed to watch out for this? Taxe frauds with VAT are a big deal. And nothing gets done. But people making peanuts will get taxed to the tits…

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ExoticPearTree 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> If your business is dependent on slave labor

There is no such thing as slave labor in the tech sector. Some countries offer a lower barrier to entry than others. The EU has a very high barrier to entry when it comes to taxation.

You can believe what you want, but I think every country's goal is to reduce taxation as much as possible for companies and for people. Unfortunately, the current in the EU is to keep raising them and give state more and more monopoly on services.

	▲	mrtksn 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		EU doesn't actually have power to tax people, each government does its own taxation. They come up with agreements like minimum tax levels to prevent things like pretending to be in Ireland to avoid taxes in France but that's about it. Most of the Europeans trust the government more that they trust the businesses and demand some services to be provided by the government and they all collect taxes accordingly. Some countries like Bulgaria have relatively small governments and do %10 flat tax for companies and individuals and other countries like France or Germany provide robust government services and safety net and do much higher taxation.
	▲	pjc50 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The assumption that a company can pay US tax rates while selling into the EU is perhaps one that should be questioned, like the ability to pay Chinese tax rates while selling into the US. (see Apple Ireland)

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traceroute66 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> the issue with EU is the taxes and cost of labour.

450 million and counting people would still prefer to live and work in the EU than anywhere else.

Even more so with present geopolitics, to put it politely !

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PaywallBuster 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 450 million and counting people would still prefer to live and work in the EU than anywhere else

majority of population of any given country doesn't emigrate ever, even inside EU where it would be extremely easy

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ExoticPearTree 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> majority of population of any given country doesn't emigrate ever, even inside EU where it would be extremely easy

Because unlike the US, we don't speak the same language. If there would have been a real push to have a common EU language since its inception, we would have been more mobile and more US like. But no...

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traceroute66 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> Because unlike the US, we don't speak the same language.

The majority of Europeans, and especially those of recent generations speak incredibly good English.

Most Europeans speak 2–3 languages anyway, so there is always a common language to be found. No need for one to be forced on you.

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ExoticPearTree 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, they might, but in practice and with the exception of multinational corporations and some start-ups, everyone speaks their own language. And it's all fun and games that you can speak english in restaurants, cafes, train stations and the like, and then when you want to find a job in an EU country you get hit with "do you speak our language? no? ah, we're sorry then."

There's a big difference between being a tourist in Europe and actually living here.

	▲	traceroute66 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well, if you insist on not learning a non-English European language, last time I checked Ireland was still in the EU and they speak English. But honestly, I'm not sure what the problem is. As previously mentioned by other people on this discussion, vast swathes of Eastern Europeans live and work in the West and have had no trouble whatsoever picking up the local language. As they say, the best way to learn a language is by immersion. Most Europeans will have gone to a school where they typically learnt a minimum of one extra language and often two extra languages. With the exception of Finnish, the majority of Western European languages are not that difficult. Its not like Chinese or Japanese which are simply impenetrable unless you went to school there or you are super-smart and managed to pick it up in later life through sheer brain power.

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zajio1am 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Common language works for employment and business, but then you go to government bureau (or want to fill government form) and they will insist on official language.

That is why english as secondary official language would be beneficial.

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mrtksn 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But evidence shows that they do emigrate in mass when there's a reason, it's one of the core issues of the last decade and the reason why fascists gained power all over the world. If fact its the reason why masked people in USA are hunting down immigrants.

Its also factual that there's a large scale migration intra-EU, with people from poorer countries moving to rich ones to seek jobs. Bulgaria, Romania and Poland are prime examples for that.

Its also well documented that those same people stop migrating and even coming back once their counties level up with the rest of the EU, again Poland and Bulgaria are good examples for this in the last years.

EU is trying to make sure that the poorer countries receive the help they need to catch up and it looks like its working.

	▲	traceroute66 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> But evidence shows that they do emigrate in mass when there's a reason If you go to the CNN website there are lots of articles on there right now (e.g. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/us-woman-moved-to-germany) about US peeps who have emigrated to Europe recently and are thoroughly enjoying their new life with no plans to return to the motherland in the foreseeable future. I can't possibly think why. ;)

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kvgr 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Listen i live in europe. But the amount of money wasted is huge.

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atmosx 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I haven't come across a single list of problem from business orgs that lists EU or local taxes, even if particularly high (California, Canada?), as a problem.

Usually, high taxes go hand in hand with high quality welfare state. Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of business ppl are educated and understand the added value of an accessible publicly funded healthcare, pension and education system.

Commonly listed (and perennial business problems) are: unstable political environment (in the sense that tax law changes every four years, complex legal system, so long term planning is impossible), corruption (meaning you have to know who to bribe to get the job done), crime rates and lack of infrastructure.

	▲	veltas 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Every list of problems I see from economists of all brands explaining why e.g. the UK has such poor economic performance and such a severe cost of living crisis mention the complexity and scale of taxation in the country first as a barrier to economic growth and cause of inflation.

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Cthulhu_ 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Neither of which are actually an issue - companies earn money after all. Nobody complains that SF engineers earn (and thus cost) six figures.

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eclat 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While that’s also true, the EU varies widely. The tax wedge is very low in places like Czechia or Lithuania and very high in France and Germany. If you add other European countries you get some of the lowest taxes on earth in places like the Isle of Man or Switzerland.

Having said that, the lack of proper integration is a huge problem, like imposing tarrifs of over 100% on ourselves.

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hanspagel 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If I understand correctly, the plan is to add a virtual state to address this.

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lotsofpulp 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

California’s taxes and cost of labor combined are surely up there.

Besides a fractured market with lots of different bureaucracies to deal with, the lack of at-will employment is a big labor cost when you need to be able to quickly spin up or spin down operations.

Welfare should always be a responsibility of the government, not businesses. Let businesses business and let government redistribute wealth.

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carlosjobim 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Labour is much more expensive in the USA, and other taxes are very comparable. And the USA is the startup capital of the world.

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ExoticPearTree 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Labor cost has many aspects. One big and key difference between the EU and the US is that due to socialist policies in the EU, it is much much harder to fire people when the business takes a downturn. And this is why companies are not that eager to hire as fast as needed because it is very hard for them to downsize.

In the US, this provides the companies with the levers they need to maintain a functioning business in pretty much an instant. In the EU you can't do that.

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formerly_proven 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t know about other countries but e.g. in germany the law all but forces you to fire higher performing people before lower performing folks, with additional protections for especially unproductive employees. And that’s for when your business is sufficiently struggling to justify layoffs under the law.

The US hire-and-fire approach is then the other extreme.

The optimal amount of worker protection is somewhere in-between.

	▲	lotsofpulp 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The optimal amount of protection provided by businesses is none. Employees are like any other costs, that may need to change based on supply and demand. The government should be providing protection, by way of providing education and welfare to support reallocation of labor, and taxing businesses to do it. Requiring each business to do it and then policing them is far less efficient for all parties.

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carlosjobim 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In practice you can hire people for at least 6 months in Europe on a "fire-at-will" contract. But yes, you're probably right. Down-sizing is not a problem in Europe, but you can't easily choose which people you want to let go, which is a problem.