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In Ukraine, IT Freelancing Under Threat
An anonymous reader writes "According to the new tax law (Google translation; Russian original) that is being developed now and should take effect on January 1, 2011, it will not be possible for a private Ukrainian entrepreneur to provide any services to foreign companies without becoming a full-fledged company with a dedicated bookkeeper. Currently it is possible to perform such services and pay the equivalent of $25 in tax. Instead of raising the tax (which is overall welcomed by the community), the legislators plan to outlaw ISP, e-commerce, and Internet-based services — along with any services provided to foreign entities — for individual entrepreneurs. So starting in 2011, freelancers in Ukraine will have several choices: stop doing freelance work, start working illegally, become a full-fledged company subject to multiple cumbersome rules for taxation, or leave the country."
As a ukrainian I can easily guess which option my fellow citizens will choose. And I'm not proud of it...
May Peace Prevail On Earth
The man is killing the country so he can kiss Putin's ass. Kills me. :(
not to knock Germany, but you don't have lots of freelancers compared to Ukraine.
I hire Ukrainians all the time. I've never hired a German. (and I'm of German descent.) I've never even had a German freelancer bid on my projects @ 99designs, elance, guru, etc.
Most of EU still has not realized that high taxes kill entrepreneurship, and thus kill the economy. lowering taxes grows the economy and thus increases the tax base -- but having a sizeable tax base is not nearly as important as having a sizeable economy, so better to err on the side of caution and cut taxes and entitlements where possible.
To be fair to Germany (I'm half German), I rent about 10 servers in German datacenters, but that's in a big datacenter company. It's harder to find the sort of one-person shops (like mine) that are common in low-tax countries and/or rapidly growing countries like India and Ukraine. If Ukraine does this, it's to their overall detriment, I can assure you. If anything, they should CUT freelancer taxes to encourage foreign investment and create more jobs. If my price goes up, guess what... I just won't hire any more Ukrainians -- there are plenty of other hungrier people in hungry countries.
This is reality. This is business. If government stifles business, business leaves (as it should) and the economy shrinks and hopefully those idiots get voted out. If government invites business, economy grows, people get jobs, and (almost) everyone is happy. It's either a positive cycle or a negative one. Business needs government -- but government need business.
Too bad I can't hire my own government services (or not, as I choose and can afford). I'd probably hire more polite public servants. It'd be great if there were cooperatives I could join (or not, if I chose not to) that would provide roads, schools, security, libraries, etc. Even better if those cooperatives competed with each other for my business. Kind of like a Home Owner's Association in the U.S. or something like that.
If you follow MY ideas to the ultimate conclusion, then you'd have a working economy that could not be destroyed by state money manipulation and you'd have no wars that are funded by states that only benefit the largest players while destroying lives of people and nations.
I am not an anarchist, I am not interested in Somalia. I believe states have one real purpose: justice system, a court system and a punishment system to punish transgressions, such as harm done to individuals and to public property and environment.
In my world no company would get any public funding at all. There would be no income tax at all. There would be sales tax, which means that consumption is not encouraged, but production is and that is the real wealth, not fiat money.
In my world states would not have money to run wars of opportunity. In my world businesses could not own governments because governments would have very limited function: justice and punishment, which is much easier to control than all of the stuff governments do now.
In my world there would be no regulations against business, but in my world any business or individual hurting other individuals or public property (environment) would be punished severely both materially and criminally.
What do I do to live by my principles? My affairs are spread out between countries, bank accounts are where it suits me best, business is where it suits me best while I make any purchases again, in places that suit me best. It's about optimizing the life to get out of being a state slave.
You can't handle the truth.
Have fun with that. Good thing it only exists inside your crazy little head.
- oh, you are wrong, not that my head is that big, but you are wrong that corporations do not own the governments today in a way that they couldn't tell government to fuck off today.
You will see how BP, who is getting funded by governments of the world, who got to be the monopoly it is by getting help from UK and US governments even in such things are killing off democratically elected government of Iran in the 1953 I believe, that company will end up telling the US government to fuck off and rightfully so. Government that treats oil as if it is heroin, setting liability limits for companies that can do massive damage (75 million? that is the FUCK OFF) Government that pays hundreds of billions to such companies in contracts while getting almost no royalties? That IS the FUCK OFF.
Government that literally has people having sex with BP personnel, taking bribes, having drug parties together? That is the FUCK OFF.
Government will bend over and take it in the ass while talking smack. Individuals in government will not go against large corporations, they know not to bite the hand that feeds them.
At the same time the corporations like BP provide better security nets for people who have pensions in such companies than governments. Of-course in this year BP will have some trouble, but trouble will go away in a year or two, they'll manage.
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Governments are owned by the banks. They are owned by the military industrial complex. They are owned by manufacturing complex. They are owned by mining companies. They are owned by medical/pharma companies and they are owned by Insurance companies etc.
All of this is precisely because governments' hands are in all of these pies through 'regulations' and various tax schemes.
Governments are slave owners and people are the slaves. Get over it and do something about it not to be one.
You can't handle the truth.