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Comment by bgnn | Hacker News Reader

This here is the problem for most of EU countries.

We Dutch are proud how easy it is to do business here. Maybe, compared to some other countries. But starting a BV here and 1 month later finding a representative of a trade union (metal sector, which somehow semiconductors fall under together with car garages, petrol stations, steel factories..) and asking me to come to their office in person to explain what we do, and calculate how much their cut will be was weird at first. Of course being extremely busy with actual business, I forgot, and got a letter with an 100k Euros invoice attached. Apparently they assumed 15 employees with 45k gross salary, and thought this is a fair trade union contribution! When I didn't respond to that, while discussing it with our lawyers, they sent a fine over this invoice which made it 140k. This is all within 3-4 months of registering mind you! At the end the lawyers handled that, but yeah, what the hell..

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These trade unions are notorious for that. I worked as a labor legal advisor and especially the unions for temporary employment agency start 'barking' and demand loads of money (even from years back). Sometimes it's not even clear which union is applicable.

You probably have all the info right now, but make sure everything is 'in line'. I mean, have your company codes at the tax authority match the applicable union match the actual things that your company does. Depending on the jobs of the employees, it might be smart to split the company into multiple legal entities.

All in all you can be happy that this happened within a couple of months. Finding this out when you're years underway and then having to pay millions... I've seen plenty of these cases.

Want to start a business in The Netherlands? Make sure to do a 'CAO check' first, think about how to structure your company (one entity? multiple entities? what job goes where?), and do these checks again once you pivot or make certain changes to the actual work that your company does.

The rationale for this is also pretty simple: somebody got to pay for all this nice social security. They say it's part of the risk of being an entrepreneur.

Yeah our case was strange because we develop chips and design software related to it. Belastingdienst categorized us wrongly as metalelektro, and we got this guys (Cometec) within two weeks of that. In the meantime we have applied this sector assignment to be corrected, which eventually happened while we were getting threatened into bankruptcy by these guys.

What I don't understand is, we got a lot of help from RVO, Belastingdienst etc before and during incorporation. Nobody talked about this! We got sone numbers from Belastingdienst about social security contributions per sector, but like 15% cut per employee wasn't mentioned once. To this date I don't know what legal basis do they have to ask for this amount of contribution. Nobody mentioned any law, or a decision by ministery of social affairs. Very strange to deal with this, because it's literally someone showing up and asking for money without telling even based on what.. It gave very strong gang vibes, which was surprising for me as I was always a member of a trade union.

Yeah, that stuff can be scary, I understand. It might almost feel extortionate. You had labor lawyers look at the applicable CAO and pension rules?

I quickly checked their website and it's a little unclear (so don't consider this legal advise), but their legal basis is probably the CAO. If that particular CAO has been made mandatory by law (which happens for certain industries that need tighter control from government, like temporary employment agencies), than it automatically applies to companies doing the exact work that's described in the CAO ('werkingssfeer').

It's a shame that RVO and Belastingdienst did not warn you correctly. The Netherlands does not want entrepreneurs, they want everybody cozy at their jobs at some big company.

Do you happen to be in or around Nijmegen with your chip development?

> The Netherlands does not want entrepreneurs, they want everybody cozy at their jobs at some big company.

Totally agreed. Those big companies in return get a lot of benefits from the government. Most investment in semiconductors for example are going into the already big, and let's be honest, not do competitive companies to keep the alive.

We're in the Randstad. Nijmegen is nice but together with old Philips its semiconductor ecosystem has declined quite a bit.

> finding a representative of a trade union

> how much their cut will be

Did you have any employees yet? I guess so. Isn't it the employees' responsibility pay for their union membership?

> Isn't it the employees' responsibility pay for their union membership?

No, contributions are handled by the employer/company

Individuals pay like 25-30 Euronth contribution, which is tax deductible. Employers can pay a lot, like 10% or more, which is often going to a social security fund.

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