It's probably a misunderstanding of the GDPR's requirement for a designated representative. https://searchnewscentral.com/blog/2019/08/23/does-gdpr-requ... Still a barrier to entry for startups.

Having a designated representative is for companies outside the EU anyway. If you're inside there's no need...

This is incorrect - if you have more than 10 employees that handle data, and that basically means everyone sitting behind a computer, your company has to designate someone as data privacy officer who has to make sure that things get handled according to GDPR.

These rules arent strictly enforced yet, but when you run into issues and it can be shown that you didn´t take steps to implement it, it has consequences.

No, you need people be handling personal data, not any data.

That's not what the GDPR says. There's no bright line for the number of employees handling data.

A DPO should be assigned if:

>(a) the processing is carried out by a public authority or body, except for courts acting in their judicial capacity;

>(b) the core activities of the controller or the processor consist of processing operations which, by virtue of their nature, their scope and/or their purposes, require regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale; or

>(c) the core activities of the controller or the processor consist of processing on a large scale of special categories of data pursuant to Article 9 and personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences referred to in Article 10.

(Article 37)

And in any case a data protection officer is different from a representative, as the title of Article 27 indicates ("Representatives of controllers or processors not established in the Union").

Sure, you can get by without one, just like you can speed without getting a ticket. But that doesn't mean it's the type of situation that normally occurs. For example, if nobody in your company knows how GDPR works, how would you know that you're complying with it? The same goes for tax laws.

You just have to lower the blinds and stay quiet when the GDPR Gestapo comes near your office.

such bullshit. someone has to fill in the relevant taxes paperwork and handle the invoices. who does that is the accountant, even if it has founder, owner or some other label attached, and the time it takes to handle the paperwork is not free, whether you pay for it in money or work hours.

I co-owned one company and presently a board member on another.

Noone said that accounting needs not be done, just that you don't have to employ anyone you listed in a startup. You do as with any other non-essential work like cleaning, catering and so on: buy external services on the need to have basis.

This is also not something in any way unique to Europe. American start-ups also need to file taxes, incorporate and so on.

did I say employ? no I said needs. everyone here so fast at replying but have you tried reading what's written? and however you want to spin it is a cost, and that is a barrier to entry which is actually quite tall if you trying to bootstrap something outside the angel/vc scene which is pretty dull anyway in Europe.

and Europe tax return are far more convoluted than the average Delaware company, especially because of bullshit like vatmoss schemes that are a specific result of the European market fragmentation, which was the main point to begin with

If you call yourself not an accountant despite doing the bookkeeping I’m pretty sure other accountants wouldn’t bat an eye at that language. It happens all the time in startups. Yes the work isn’t “free” but everyone wears many hats in a startup and often works for free.

Sure, the time cost it's not free, but it's not large enough to be a meaningful barrier of entry. For me, filing basic company taxes took like a couple hours per year.

Right. It's exactly the same barrier to entry a kebab restaurant or a bike repair shop has. If that's enough to detract one from starting a company, perhaps it's for the better.

Or, as with everything these days, pay another company to deal with it. I've been seeing ad's for Pilot.com all over recently which claims to do this work for you, in exchange for a fee, naturally.