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Comment by olieidel | Hacker News Reader

Also:

- A printer (the most important equipment of any German startup founder)

- Envelopes for letters

- A stamp with your company name (some companies and agencies you deal with require you to stamp things, because a stamp obviously proves, beyond any doubt, that you are acting on behalf of your company, because obviously no one would be able to create a similar stamp with your company's name on it, right)

- A virtual office address at a coworking space (because you're receiving physical mail, and also there are weird tax reasons not to register your company at your home address)

- A mail-scanning service (because you don't want to walk to the coworking space every few days to pick up your physical mail)

- A mail-forwarding service (so that the mail gets forwarded from your virtual office address, which now has exactly no purpose at all, to your mail-scanning service)

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A good one! I remember I needed a stamp when I started a business in Poland as well! I've never used it and never was asked to so I guess the regulations no longer apply.

Poland is pretty good at digitalizing bureaucracy as well. You can do most things online including talking to the tax office and solving problems with your tax declarations.

Taxes are reasonable but I am still bitter about cap gain tax as it's a form of a wealth tax for someone that invest in equities - at some point moving to more tax friendly jurisdiction saves enough that you can fund your comfortable life and save 100% of your income.

I also think tax burden is going to increase significantly there in coming years.

Given that this kind of thing seems to be widely reported, are there any significant efforts to reduce the friction all this causes?

Pretty much all political parties loudly announce that they'll reduce bureaucracy, but, judging by the outcomes, not much has happened so far.

That being said, it's probably overly simplistic to blame political parties for this - there's a lot of e.g. county/state-level bureaucracy in Germany which gets in the way of making any sort of constructive changes. It's a bit like blaming the CEO of a bloated company for not making it "agile" in a short period of time. Sure, leadership is important, but the reality is, it's.. complicated.

> Pretty much all political parties loudly announce that they'll reduce bureaucracy, but, judging by the outcomes, not much has happened so far.

I do not believe that this will be possible in our lifetimes. Germany cannot function without a very high degree of bureaucracy. It's like asking fish to breathe out of water.

for comparison in china stamps completely replace the signature. but then, digital signatures that are not cryptograpically signed are no better.

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