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Comment by beberlei | Hacker News Reader

Looked it up for Germany (my home) and it is just 9,7% of the working population:

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/38297/umfrage...

Even though we have universal health care it is not free and not paid from taxes but from individual direct fees. the minimum monthly rate is currently a whopping ~400€ (450$). They will decrease the minimum rate to 200€ next year.

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As far as I understand the German system has lots of limitations on freelancing though, to protect the employees. For example, as a developer you can't freelance for one client only, as the client company could be in hook for employer payments. You need at least two customers.

Not a German national, so I'm happy to be corrected.

No, you're basically right. But it's more like a grey area: There are ways to circumvent this. But of course this introduces a lot of unfairness because rookies usually will be out of the know.

Kind of reminiscent of a lot of tax-scandals that come along regularly: Usually nothing illegal but because of well meant intentions created a complicated system, gaming the system benefits only those that are able to do so.

My understanding is that the German health care system still has disincentives for sporadic work, because you pay a higher rate under the philosophy that "you have to insure yourself first, and make up for the expected lulls in income" or something like that. I read stories on reddit about immigrants getting burned by that when they were self employed.

The biggest disincentive is the progressive tax-rate. But you stay on your public health-care plan as long as you don't reach a threshold of time spent per week. But of course, if you're an immigrant and never were covered by public healthcare then yes, you'll get burned.

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