Why (or why not) to move your company to Amsterdam | Hacker News Reader

Why (or why not) to move your company to Amsterdam

startupjuncture.com

49 pointsinbys73 comments

So, although I found the article a little bit light, I'm fascinated to hear anybody's experience of Amsterdam for solo entrepreneurs and creatives. I've been considering it as a place to live, work and play for a while.

E.g. what are the pros/cons of moving there for 3–6 months, assuming there are no plans to raise funding, hire staff or rent an office?

Dutchman here. Depends on where your from. Trying to find an affordable place to live can be difficult. (Depending on what you feel is affordable). On the other hand, distance is nothing in Holland. You drive through the entire country in 3 hours. An affordable place to live just 30 min outside Amsterdam is a lot easier. Public transport is good, most of the time. Driving and parking in A'dam is expensive as well... Most people just drive a bike (not a motorbike). There's a ton of info over at http://appsterdam.rs/

Can you give a ballpark on rent figures?

Also on average 'take home pay' for jobs

Here's an overview with pictures and prices. Remember it's cheaper 30 min outslide of the city. http://www.funda.nl/huur/amsterdam/sorteer-huurprijs-op/p8/

Edit: What kind of jobs exactly?

Thanks for the link

This prices are not expensive

Ok, let me be more specific

- Sw developer makes how much, and that's how much after taxes?

- Senior Sw/Tech lead makes how much, takes how much home?

For reference, here's Dublin:

- Sw dev jobs pay around 3k to 5k per month, taking home btw 2k and 3k for that interval

- A small flat, city center, 1 bedroom can go between 600 to 900, if you go a little further you can have a better price per bedroom. (even get a house for 1400 in some locations)

If you take into account the 30% expat tax discount (which you should make sure you get at all costs) then here it's about 4 to 6k per month with take home of between 3k and 4.5k and a similar 1 bedroom apartment would be around 900 to 1200.

Here are a few jobs like that in Amsterdam: http://www.itjobboard.nl/IT-Jobs/Software%20Developer/Amster...

moving from dublin to amsterdam the housing is a nightmare in general. But once you get the ring of it, you will be okay. There is more freelance opportunities but you need dutch working with the tax system.

It a relaxed transient culture in amsterdam and it takes time to break into circles.

And in general the weather is better than ireland.

Very true: "but you need dutch working with the tax system." Hell, even I have help with the tax-system. A small tip regarding housing: Visit the neighbourhood of choice after/around eight o'clock to get a feel of the streets.

Weather is shit almost the entire time.

There are more shops selling weed than daily staples like bread and milk.

The rent and the taxes are both very high.

> Weather is shit almost the entire time.

I'll give you that one.

> There are more shops selling weed than daily staples like bread and milk.

In case you're not trolling; it seems like you're describing Amsterdam's inner city center which is mostly just a large tourist attraction.

Go a bit further out and a coffee shop will be a relatively rare sight and there will be an Albert Heijn on every corner.

> The rent and the taxes are both very high.

We have quite a generous 30% tax deduction for expats. It makes our tax rates quite competitive.

Very lively, internationally oriented, creative environment.

Very strong hacker community with excellent people who are unfortunately (still) undervalued and misunderstood by their government.

The article is probably wrong on one point:

I don't believe you ever get used to the weather.

The real question is of course "Is it better than Berlin?". I personally wouldn't bother with any European city with housing market problem, excluding London.

No. And contrary to what others have said, more Germans know english than Dutch know english, on a day to day basis. Though you can get by without knowing dutch in amsterdam with a little creativity.

Every educated Dutch person knows English. Even more than that - they willingly switch from Dutch to English when an international person joins the conversation. I can't say that I got the same impression about German people. They have very monolithic culture and it's not very open to foreigners.

So if you do not want to learn neither Dutch nor German you better move to Amsterdam than Berlin.

This is not what i experienced. I live in Germany, but i am quite often visiting the Netherlands. I was even able to speak to elderly people in English when i was lost in some small Dutch village.

Do you have any numbers to back that up? This site (http://www.nfia-india.com/why_english_speaking_society.html) says 62% vs 91% in favor of the Netherlands.

edit: seeing this guys profile/comments in this thread it's an obvious troll.

62% of the pop of Germany is more than 91% of population of Netherlands

Lies, damned lies and statistics ;)

On my experience, everyone in the Netherlands speaks English. I had problems getting by in Berlin and I know some basic notions of German (had to use English when that wasn't enough), English does NOT cut it, you need at least some basic German (maybe 1 or 2 months of studying).

Some Dutch words look like English words, and a lot of Dutch words are similar to German. So if you're an English-speaking expat in Amsterdam, learn German instead of Dutch (Goethe Institut is on Herengracht). Then you'll understand a bit of Dutch (though you don't have to since everyone speaks English), and you'll be all set when you move to Berlin later.

Do they have some sort of startup visa in Netherlands? Something like UK's Tier 1 Entrepreneur perhaps?

Even better, according to the guys at Appsterdam there's this piece of law created after WW2 where anyone from the US can start their own company in Holland. USA citizens can apply for a Dutch residence permit to be self-employed or operate their business in the Netherlands. They can also sponsor their married partners and minor children for residence. http://www.expatlaw.nl/dutch_american_friendship_treaty.htm

And we also have a classic entrepreneurs visa, for which you'll be evaluated on education, experience and the innovativity & financial position of the company.

If you're a solid startup that should be fairly easy to pass, but it's not a done deal. Only about 300 people per year pass the criteria in practice.

You can find the criteria in Dutch here: https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/stcrt-2010-16617.htm... That URL breaks Google translate oddly enough though, so you'll have to copy and paste the content.

I'm guessing residents under this visa don't get any government benefits such as free healthcare, correct?

I think you just buy regular basic insurance like the rest. It costs about €99,-

If we can get the startup community in Amsterdam actively collaborating with each other I think Amsterdam could be as strong as any startup hub in Europe. Hence the mention of http://pitch.rs in the article.

Also factor in the time you're going to be spending learning Dutch. You'll probably get by with English alone since everyone will speak it with you, but it's certainly less than optimal.

Apart from London Amsterdam is probably the city where you can get by most easily speaking only English.

It will be hard to fully integrate into Dutch social life without learning proper Dutch of course, but professionally it will not be much of a problem and the expat community is so large that it is fairly easy to build a decent social life within it.

> Amsterdam is probably the only city, apart from London, where you can get by perfectly speaking only English.

You can get by perfectly speaking only English in most of Northern Europe.

Southern Europe is a different story.

Seeing that your from Copenhagen; how is the expat community there?

Here it feels very thriving, lively and well-functioning, but quite insular because on the one hand we make it so easy to get by with English alone but on the other hand we don't truly accept people into our social circles unless they speak Dutch.

Can you relate to that?

Yes and no - the Americans I know who live here are generally very happy with it. Some are so used to being able to speak English everywhere in Denmark that they live here for years without getting to know the language. But I would definitely recommend people who live here for a longer time (two or more years) to learn a little Danish. It's not that hard, and they can use their knowledge of Danish to easily learn similar languages like German, Swedish, etc.

That sounds very similar to here; although here learning the language usually starts closer to the 4 or 5 year mark.

Once again I'm forgetting Denmark as 'the other country that is so much like ours.'

Dublin? Everyone in Ireland (well 99.99%) speaks English as their first language. Some people even speak Irish ;)

Isn't Dublin a part of England though? ;)

But good catch... I meant countries where English is not already the native language.

Just for the record: No, it's not part of England ;-)

The Northern Ireland (its capital Belfast) is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, alongside with England, Scotland, and Wales.

Dublin is a capital of the Republic of Ireland, which is on the south, and is a separate country (TLD .ie :) which uses euro as the currency, contrary to the UK's pound.

I am being a bit pedantic with since the whole UK/Ireland story is still a pretty fresh wound and making such a mistake might get one some negative brownie points in the conversation :-)

Just for the record, I was being facetious. My apologies if I misjudged the freshness of the wound.

It's a bit like making a joke about Israel/Palestine.

In Northern Ireland at least, you had state-sponsored terrorism by the police, IRA blowing up civilians, thousands killed - the very worst sectarianism imaginable. Some of this continued into the 90s so yes, the wounds are still fresh.

That doesn't even delve into the long, brutal history between Ireland and England spanning centuries, a relationship that's only healing today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

My girlfriend is Irish, and we went for the 2-day "tour" to Belfast this Xmas.

The overall feeling was quite cautious and tense, and people looked at us as we walked around and sat in the bar.

Less than a week after we came back, there were "issues" - aka some confrontation between the opposing sides.

It felt really strange. You do not expect this in the north of Europe.

I hope it gets better and calmer and the common sense prevails. Belfast is a beautiful place to visit.

(+1 for enriching my vocabulary with a new word :)

I can't tell if you are joking, but no, Dublin is not a part of England. It hasn't been for over 90 years.

> I meant countries where English is not already the native language.

English isn't the native language in the Scandinavian countries or Finland, and yet most of us speak English fluently :)

There is a high availability of Dutch courses for expats, though, and if you know English and/or German already, you actually have quite a good start.

Exactly my point. It's going to be possible to get by, but hard to integrate into dutch society and social life. That's just how it is in every country. Let's be realistic here.

Take Norway for instance, everybody loves to speak English but you'd really need to learn Norwegian to fully enjoy living there for years on end.

Actually quite difficult to learn Dutch. Just about everybody will start to talk English to you when they notice you're from UK/US.

The few people I know who have spent time in Amsterdam also had the same comment. To the point that it was a running joke.

The real question of course is 'move from where?'. Should you move your company from Silicon Valley to Amsterdam? Probably not. Should you move it from somewhere else in Europe? Maybe.

You should not move your company to Amsterdam because every employee can smoke pot legally :)

Better add Colorado and Washington state to that list.

And maybe we should move all of our companies to Saudia Arabia since employees can drink legally everywhere else.

So?

How easy is it to move or at least move a business over to Amsterdam, from the US?

Any links to finding more information on moving from Asia?

If you run a successful business in holland, and pay yourself a salary out of it, your tax rate is over %70! And on top of that, you have %20 VAT. And this isn't even going into the manifold fees and other types of taxes you are subjected to.

-------------------------------

This comment is not spam. It had a nice positive score until the socialists arrived. Of course, socialists being unable to deal with reality (or history!) must censor those who point out simple facts that undermine their ideology. And so this comment has been downvoted to obscurity (-15 at this moment) to make it less likely others would be made aware of the high tax rates in holland.

This kind of dishonesty and censorship is why you can't have fruitful discussion on hacker news. The site is overrun by ideologues and moderated by ideologues and anything that doesn't strictly toe to the fascist modern ideology gets the boot.

Ok, just accept, though, that you're anti-intellectual in a very profound way.

When you can't tolerate people stating inconvenient facts, it's time to admit you're an intellectual coward.

Frankly, I think you're all shit. You've elected a guy who claims he has the right to kill any american with a drone strike, in america, without any due process.

And you're so proud of it! It's astounding. You should be ashamed. Profoundly ashamed.

But know this, it is your cowardice and intellectual dishonesty that caused the state of affairs we find ourselves in. Run away to amsterdam if you like, see how long it remains nice.

20% of your net income, so it's half as bad :)

Plus, if your cool startup should not succeed and you get ill: Don't worry, everything will be fine :)

Milton Friedman did a study of healthcare in the USA, and found that the government "help" had driven up the cost 26fold and driven down availability. Or put another way, the reason people could get bankrupted by an illness is socialized medicine, and it's also the reason they might not be able to find care when they need it. Contrary to what Obama says, socialism doesn't work, and if you think you'll get better healthcare in the NL than in the USA, you'll have a very rude awakening... but of course you won't be alive to post your mea culpas here on HN. Frankly, even assuming this shows a profound ignorance of both history and economics.

You, my friend, seem to be having mental health issues.

We have an excellent support system for that in the Netherlands if you're interested...

Let's add a little balance: Health care in the us can be excellent and yes, better than in the Netherlands. (I'm Dutch by the way and have friends who have flown to the us specifically for healt-related issues. There are stories in the media here about communities saving for sick kids so they can get help in the US. The US is at the forefront of health).

However this excellent care is only available for people who can afford it. In the Netherlands they'll help anyone and they won't ask you for your credit card. No one goes bankrupt because they got ill and needed an operation. Downside of this is they can't help everyone right away and you need to wait some time before it's your turn. I had a nice talk about this with a surgeon for about two hours as he and his team were inserting four big metal tubes in my eye,draind all the fluid before puming it back up again with air and freezing the tissue back together again from the inside. At the end of the year I paid about $350 bucks and got my eysight back. The 350 bucks included all my ckeckup visits.

Milton Friedman is so full of corporate interest, you can probably make two senators out of him.

Seriously, explain how health care in any other 'socialist country' is way cheaper than in the US if government investment drives prices up. I dare you.

You can't just add percentages like that...

Tax rates in continental Europe can indeed be steep compared to UK and US. In the Netherlands the top rate is 'only' 52%, not 70%. Most people, especially company owners, pay much less.

Yep. And only the income above ~ €56,491 will be taxed by 52% so your average tax rate will be much lower

Especially since the rent on your mortgage is deductible. Adding to that, expats have extra tax discounts (30% ruling).

Why would you include corp taxes in that.

I looked at Amsterdam as a move and it was about the same as the UK and other European states, and as I have the max years in for the uk pension scheme I was temped to move to Holland to buildup a second pension there.

The lack of a VCT's, CGT exemption and taper relief is an issue for smaller investors - Seems to me that the ducth have a lot of german style Mittelstand companies and cgt/taxsystems is trageted at that .

and the 30% rule ie 30% of you salary is disregarded for 10 years for migrant workers is an amazing tax break(http://www.expatax.nl/30ruling.php#.UTnYdjfRqE8)

Ok, so you don't pay %50 on 1/3rd of your salary for 10 years. I wouldn't exactly call that "an amazing tax break". You're still paying way too much in taxes.

Depends on what you get in return...

um you do know how to calculate % do you this is effectively adding 30% tax free to the base you do not get taxed at 52% on all the rest you still have the tired tax rates as well as the 30%

And by that time id have moved back to the UK :-)

Also, if you're Dutch, entrepreneurial and working in IT you will usually be a freelancer.

That means that you get to deduct expenses on working equipments, business lunches, hosting, travel costs, etc.

On top of that if you're in an innovative industry you'll get another €20k or so tax deduction (WBSO & RDA.)

In general that means that for innovative entrepreneurs it's fairly easy to get to an effective tax rate of about 10%.

Let's not make up numbers... Income tax is high here (not 70%) but you know, you get what you pay for. If you're American the 30% rule kicks in as long as you are here on a dutch american treaty visa or sponsored by a company. Any American can start a company here and get a 1 year visa. That's a pretty low barrier or entry compared to most countries. Corporate tax is also incredibly low, with a ton of benefits for the first 3 years you are a b.v. (dutch corp)

Those aren't made up numbers. I actually did the math based on my income. How about you stop being a dishonest coward who characterizes your opponent, rather than making an argument, hmm?

You don't get what you pay for, of course, if you bothered to actually add up what you really do pay, and what you really do get, but then that is the essential swindle isn't it? You and all the rest of the thieves like to pretend like it's better to pay government $20,000 a year for services the free market would happily deliver for $20. And then you act as if those of us who point out we're getting ripped off are "greedy", or in your case-- dishonest.

Well, if you have to lie to make an argument, that tells me even you know your argument is the suck.

Would you be interested in posting the numbers you used for your calculations? I appreciate it is confidential information, but I find it very difficult to believe your tax rate is 70%.

If you are in fact paying 70% of your income in taxes, I can recommend an accountant who can advise on a more efficient tax strategy.

I would prefer it if you didn't reply and call me a socialist, or complain that I am dishonest - I have no horse in this race, I am merely pointing out that if you are in fact paying 70% tax, you could save a lot of money by talking to an accountant who specialises in tax efficiency.

> How about you stop being a dishonest coward who characterizes your opponent

Ahem.

You don't to be American to qualify for 30% rule. You have to be an expat who qualifies as a Knowledge Worker, and was recruited to Netherlands for that purpose (if you were already living in the Netherlands when you got the job, you don't qualify). You can avail of the 30% rule for 10 years.

http://www.expatica.com/nl/finance_business/tax/The-Dutch-30...

You should learn what a marginal tax rate is.

You should learn to think.

Why all the hostility? People are asking you where you got your numbers, which is reasonable considering your comment provided two percentages and nothing else. Your unwillingness to back up your opinions with facts that we can check and verify marks you as an intellectual coward as well. Stop calling the commenters names and engage in the conversation, please.

I'd also like to know where your numbers are coming from, since I'm in the middle of deciding where to found my first company and any information that strays away from what is popular tends to get my attention.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com