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Comment by geff82 | Hacker News Reader

Will I be able to freely move between EU countries when I own such a company or will Germany tax 340% of the average profit of the last three years for doing so as they do now? People with German GmbH are essentially unable to move anywhere.

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I think you know the answer already. Another half-baked initiative. I can't imagine countries willingly losing their tax revenues.

half baked? disagree, doing EU is hard - it's a bunch of fully sovereign countries trying/having to agree, and we're still figuring out how that could work.

We'll need a bunch of steps like that, to get closer to the efficiencies we're hoping for.

You can move before you make a profit however ? Seems quite self defeating for Germany - all the companies that are about to break out will move out just before hitting profitability ?

Noice!

(I'm of course spitballing ;)

> tax 340% of the average profit of the last three years

Go into loss on purpose for 3 years, then move. If law is written literally, they will calculate negative tax and thus pay you for moving away.

This is a legal framework, not a fiscal one, so presumably no.

Unfortunately the foundational thinking behind this runs deep in German culture, stemming from the social upheaval of the early 1800s when a foreign colonizer introduced the (already natively sought) end of the estate system as a way to pit Germans against each other (and gain loyalists). The resulting loss of privileges agitated the heirs towards successful entrepreneurs: Labeling them as Traitors, Jews, and people that didn’t deserve it. As modern Anti-Semitism was born out of this so was the tendency to see success of others with contempt and failure with glee. Though things have improved, you can still notice it.

Apart from that: How is that de-facto locking in of individuals compatible with the EU‘s foundational freedom of movement?

the exact reason why I moved out of germany after leaving there for 4 years

> 340%

Holy crap.

> People with German GmbH are essentially unable to move anywhere.

Well, that's not entirely true, but I can see how it might complicate things considerably.

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