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Comment by erictobia | Hacker News Reader

Any (non U.S.) folks with startups in the countries on this list? Is the article consistent with your experience?

Canada here and yes.

I'm not sure what their definition of "Starting a business" is though, since technically in Canada all you need for that is a GST number, which you can apply for online for free and comes in the mail as soon as they can get it to you. You get a temporary number that you can use prior to that.

Trade is about right though, especially from the US. Where this free trade that we're supposed to have is I have no idea.

> I'm not sure what their definition of "Starting a business"

Starting some sort of limited liability company that is its own legal entity, is my guess.

And that's a breeze in Canada. Starting from a position of complete ignorance, I had everything finalized in a day and only had to leave my home to get a document notarized by a lawyer around the corner. Total out-of-pocket was around $200.

If you are Canadian and want to start a business, you can find everything you need on starting (and running) a corporation here: http://www.ic.gc.ca/cgi-bin/sc_mrksv/corpdir/corpFiling/regi...

See, that's my issue. You started a corporation, which of course is a business, but a business in Canada is not always a corporation. A sole proprietorship is a perfectly valid legal entity, although without the limited liability aspect.

I moved out of Denmark. If a Danish company sells something to consumers it has to charge 25% VAT, even if those consumers live somewhere else. Living costs are high. Corporate tax rate has been lowered, but pretty much all the other taxes are higher than USA for instance. Taking money out of the company costs you more tax. Very high personal income tax.

If you buy a USD $2500 computer you can't deduct the expense immediately. Or if you just buy a printer and that plus the computer you use the printer with is more than the limit of around $2000, you can't deduct it from your taxes immediately.

It's true that the paperwork for starting a business is pretty quick and easy. But for a LLC or Corp. type of business structure you need to put a minimum of DKK 125K (about USD $25K) in the business.

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