charlesdm

Perhaps it's more streamlined in the UK, but generally in Europe you will have to go to a notary.

The process is often 1) notary (incorporation deed creates the entity), 2) followed by setting up a bank account (get the initial capital in) and 3) do some additional registrations for your new entity, such as corporate and VAT number.

While it can take a while depending on the country, it in all honesty isn't as bad as portrayed. But since he was setting up a holding entity to hold the shares before he could incorporate his actual operating company, he had to go through it twice.

400 million revenue, 20 billion acquisition price. Sounds like free market to me? They paid up to protect their business and everyone walked away happy.

The right way is to move away from gas and invest in renewables.

Where are you based? If you are able to speak English well, the honest answer is that you can be making the same as EU/US based peers. But perhaps not at the same company.

Usually landing a remote position creates significant opportunities. My girlfriend, a talented senior designer, has increased her compensation nearly 5 fold from her previous work situation and now also works from home.

You ultimately get what you negotiate.

The answer is likely not to hold any local currency. Which might not really be feasible for many local people.

Which is fine. It's fine to get paid. That's the deal -- you are getting a bag of cash (more than you could ever make as an employee) for an asset. You lose all say over it once you have gotten your bag of cash.

VAT is a tax on consumption. But it is only levied when you take a certain action with your funds -- i.e. consume it. You could also (re)invest and let your capital compound.

So yes, if you spend all your money to the last penny, that would be your tax rate. But many (higher income) people do not.

It seems weird you are forced to distribute the dividend in BGN. Pay the withholding tax, yes. But the dividend itself? Most accountants can calculate the corresponding currency equivalent for the dividend being declared on the payout day. Worth looking into.

Also, does Bulgaria support interim dividends? The loan set-up, while not an issue, can perhaps be avoided by use of interim dividends.

Unless you're actually living in a tax haven or a third world country with no CFC laws, you're almost certainly breaking the law with this.

The conversations I have had with people who have found the gold wheel is mind boggling, and they almost all get in trouble at some point.

He is probably adding VAT to his income tax rates, which imo is not correct.

Consumption yes. But how do you get to 70-80% for reinvesting? Corporate taxes are 20%, dividend taxes 30% on remaining 80? That gets you to 44% net tax. From gross to net. Income taxes are higher but still not 70-80%?

I agree income taxes are high throughout most of Western Europe, but the way to grow wealth is by acquiring assets that can grow without having to sell them and pay taxes.

An investment fund (or a property) can often grow for a long time and throw off cashflows that are taxed more efficiently. So can a business where you build up value in the equity. Cashflow keeps the lights on, but equity (even in a small business) builds wealth.

You can't just work your way to wealth. You need to reinvest what you make into other assets and let them compound...

That said, I know self employed developers making 150-200k (EUR) gross per year as contractors. But I also know employees that get allocated a few 100k/year in stock options as part of their compensation.

Yes, you do need to be exceptional. And you need to be smart in the choices you make. I thought that was a given, since millions of dollars don't just come falling from the sky.

You forgot to mention you do have a wealth tax. For wealthy people, those tend to be one of the "worst" taxes, because it is payable regardless of whether your investments do well or bad.

Most self employed in Europe have access to similar tax policies. You could think about and approach things differently to attain a similar result.

I live in Belgium with similar high income tax rates to Sweden, but I know quite a few people that I grew up with who have done very well. Better than his story. All mid 30s and all came from nothing. Even as an employee. No excuses, man.

These stories might not be listed in the newspapers, but that does not mean there are none.

The honest answer is: it does not matter. Great products have been built on very diverse tech stacks. Million dollar businesses have been built on a single VPS running PHP, without version control.

It's about finding a problem to properly solve, not about the tech stack.

If you steal the Coca Cola recipe and release it, don't you think you'd be acting illegally? These documents were stolen from law firms, trust managers and accounting firms.

Aside from the fact that many of these structures are not illegal, and are often declared to local tax authorities of the resident, these are private matters. Plenty of money is laundered through onshore jurisdictions as well -- this has nothing to do with the entities itself.

The result of years of low interest rate policies.

How does a system created by the SEC detect that person A is a (close) friend of person B, with accuracy? Family I can understand, if you share the same last name etc, but friends?

Dubai has no income taxes. So this is irrelevant. Companies are not even required to hold records for tax purposes.

Maybe. But it is better than the alternative? It's the quickest solution. Have a look at what happened when Venezuela ended up launching the Petro.

That should be taxable in the hands of the employee, obviously. Estonia seems to be doing well with their tax system, and it's pretty much exactly what is described above.

Depends on your citizenship. If you hold non US citizenship, it is generally easy to avoid most taxes by physically relocating to a tax haven (low or no tax). But that is perfectly legal, not fraud.

FATCA is a pain though

I personally would not have gotten the US citizenship due to the negative tax consequences (global taxation), but to each their own. Unless you own substantial assets they can still renounce it in the future if interested.

Venezuela aside, a lot of these LatAm countries have some type of capital controls in place. (Girlfriend is Colombian)

Unless you have originally brought cash in the country and received some type of pre clearance from the government, it generally is not so easy to convert back to EUR/USD/etc and move meaningful amounts of cash out of the country.

Don't know what the adoption rate is in Argentina, but with inflation being 30 to 40% a year, why would you even bother holding local currency?

Going freelance is likely the right answer in Europe. Many companies are happy to pay 400+ EUR daily for a qualified developer, on longer term engagements.

The last pure engineering gig I did (specialised mobile work while trying to figure out what to do next) a few years ago was for a german multinational company and paid around 700/day. Remote work from home (Belgium, low CoL). That was a long running engagement for about a year.

They were happy to extend pretty much indefinitely but I ultimately started a new entrepreneurial project. At ~220 billable days that amounted to ~155k/year gross.

Which tech did you use for this? Nice end result!

I'm definitely not antivax. I've gotten pretty much every common vaccination. In my view there is a difference between antivax and a new drug or vaccine that has not been widely tested.