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Comment by phendrenad2 | Hacker News Reader

As a non-European, it seems like these raids happen regularly to large companies' offices in Europe (mostly US companies). Maybe some Europeans can chime in and answer something that's been bothering me: Does this happen to smaller companies, too? Is it a serious problem to getting work done, not knowing if regulators are going to shut you down and rifle through your filing cabinets?

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Getting raided can happen to companies of any size, Mullvad comes to mind as an example of a company that's small, European and got raided, but it is incredibly rare. It's hard to overstate how exceptional it is, you need to either be on the police radar with a serious issue, or breaking the tax law considerably, or etc. I think the main reason you see this happen to a lot of American companies is that they expand to Europe, but try to do business the same way they did back home. Both the legal landscape and the moral landscape wrt it are very different in Europe, and trying to willingly evade taxes for example is tended to with a very heavy hand. If I'm not mistaken, that's what's happened to Netflix here: they already got caught evading taxes once, and now there's a suspicion that they're doing it again/still.

Large multinational companies are accustomed to openly breaking the law and getting away with it in the USA; when they try to do the same in Europe they are very surprised when the law actually comes after them.

They also raid anyone else they don't like, such as people who run Tor exit nodes... but random small businesses are not in that group.

Maybe this explains why the US is out ahead in GDP, income, and is doing much better pre and post covid than Europe.

It's not so much breaking laws, but unnecessary restrictions and harassment by Europeans states.

The US is business friendly. It's industry friendly. We don't needlessly harass the business of sovereign individuals, and the state apparatus isn't being used as an excuse as to exert power or influence over the population. Not to the same paternalistic extent of Europe.

In Europe the liberal state apparatus that replaced the monarchies are acting an awful lot like the monarchies.

You call a tax fraud investigation "needlessly harassing the business of sovereign individuals?"

You're right, the U.S. is very business and industry friendly, which explains why the American people have been getting poorer and poorer while corporations and their shareholders get richer and richer.

Americans have been getting richer and richer according to most recent studies. At the same time, other socialist countries are getting, on average, poorer. I think you may be confusing social inequality with overall wealth.

The Average American is getting richer and richer, especially compared to European wage stagnation. I don’t think non-Americans understand how rich middle class americans are.

Only 50% of Americans have Passports. 80% in Europe.

We understand it, because we travel there on, our paid, vacations.

My last time in America I went to San Francisco, lots of money, I have not seen a worst place to live in my life.

Americans don't understand the quality of life other places have.

And other places don’t understand the sheer amount of wealth and freedom other people have. "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap" and San Francisco spends billions to look that cheap btw.

Especially Europe. Europeans don’t even seem to understand how large America is, which is why so few have passports.

America, the land of the free... the place where I could not even walk at night because the streets were full of homless people.

Just carry a gun.

Self-defense is an absolute right unlike other places.

Carrying weapons for self defense was a think people had to do around here in the Middle ages.

And in a free societies the people themselves are the enforcers and protectors. That's why we even have a jury system in place.

In America the people are responsible, not the government or their enlightened bureaucrats.

As an American surrounded by Superfund sites I would like some of these unnecessary restrictions and harassment by the state. The US is so beholden to private interests we can't even repair the roads or mandate healthcare without making it into a market.

A raid is a lot of work and only happens when you know you find something.

For 99,9% of companies, you get audited every 5—25 years by getting a visit from your local tax authority.

Remember: Small/medium companies have comparable companies and you can easily spot the tax dodgers. Or tax dodging is unofficially tolerated to some degree — think restaurants only accepting cash.

Most companies are not as blatantly illegal as Uber..

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