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Comment by oscardelben | Hacker News Reader

I agree about the mentality problem, though I think it's mostly due ignorance in general and values that are often toward the wrong thing.

Regarding taxes, it's pretty ridiculous, I would never encourage people to open a business here if they can avoid it.

I'm moving to the US next year and I can't wait to stop paying the ridiculous amount of money (in proportion of what I earn) that I pay now as a consultant.

I think I can add another reason why doing startups is hard in Italy: finding a cofounder or team members. I've worked in one of the biggest startup incubator in Italy (h-farm), and I can say from experience that it's super hard to find talented people, and that makes a difference at the end of the day.

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Regarding taxes, I was surprised to read today that corportations in Italy, if they actually complied with every law, would be paying a 68.6% tax rate. Still not as bad as a few countries in Africa where the offical tax rates are well over 100%, though.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/ita...

That's part of the reason why they actually don't pay any of it. Tax evasion is widespread and in the open; the government periodically reacts with amnesties, which is the catholic thing to do, right? All is forgiven, let's try again! But what are you going to do, knowing there is going to be an amnesty sooner or later? You just don't pay, of course. So the State is not getting enough money, and they have to create a new tax to cover the shortfall, which will increase the official rate but that's ok, because almost nobody is paying it anyway, not even your main politician for 17 years, and he's fucking rich.

This makes the real tax rate between 5 and 20%, depending on the specific amnesty you're going to enjoy, how much you feel like paying, and how good is your accountant.

What's worse is that I never know exactly how much I'm going to pay (this is what my accountant tells me anyway).

I live in Austria and have to pay about 40 to 50% tax on any income. At least I know it's going towards things such as free universities, free healthcare, unemployment insurances for everyone. Makes the pill a bit easier to swallow.

Looks like very good compared to Brazil, where we pay around 40% and still have to pay for private healthcare and education because the public services are terrible.

It must suck to live in Italy and pay a lot of taxes, knowing it's going straight into the pockets of corrupt and populist politicians while social services are cut and the whole economy starts spiraling downwards.

> it's super hard to find talented people, and that makes a difference at the end of the day.

It's difficult pretty much anywhere. And even in areas where there are lots of good people (SV), you then have to pay a lot.

There are plenty of talented people in Italy, that is not what I would consider the major problem.

Italy has an education problem though. Only 1 in 10 have a higher education diploma. Among the 30-34 year olds, it's 20%, but this is still less than half what most northern European countries have (Ireland is top with 50%). [Source: IMF & Eurostat via my newspaper today.]

Italian university is... complicated. There are areas of excellence -- medicine, architecture, even engineering (!) -- but a lot of undergraduate courses are expected to run for more than 5 years, and that's a very long time for non-STEM stuff. The average length is much lower in other countries, and the format much more flexible.

And I say this as a serial drop-out who now lives abroad.

You have a point here, but due to the distribution of our (small) cities, we don't have many meetups here, for example. I love Italy's, just not for working.

Other European countries have similar urbanization levels/curves. And the most 'concentrated' country, the one with most of its people in cities, is, surprisingly, Australia. And they don't seem to have a ton of startups either...

I'm curious how many businesses have developed devoted to getting people through the bureaucracy.

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