It goes far beyond that. If you are in Italy and want to expand to Germany you need to hire german speaking people and that means opening a Sales Office in Germany, and dealing with different labour regulations etc.
Our software essentially is for registering and sending some official forms to the government. We're based in Norway but couldn't get access to Danish governmental systems for testing our because we had no physical presence in Denmark.
We couldn't just set up a PO box and get an org. number, apparently that wasn't enough.
So far one of our customers have been kind enough to lend us their credentials for testing, but yeah would have been nice to have our own.
In Sweden we spent almost two years after being done getting our software released there, as the officials required that the main UI was approved by them and it involved a ton of back-and-forth.
Not just that, but each major version change that altered the main UI would also have to be approved...
The Finnish are quite decent at spending money on their government IT systems it seems, so they're more up to date. However not all documentation is in English and while your average Norwegian can read Danish and Swedish just fine, Finnish is something else entirely.
And of course all the Scandinavian governments have completely different systems for this, even though the forms are essentially the same across the countries, so zero code sharing there. Heck the Danish even have two completely different systems depending on which form you send.
We're just dealing with the Scandinavian countries, I'm sure it's similar in the other EU countries.
If you need a Finnish-speaking person in Norway to help you with the Finnish documentation, shoot me a reply. I'm on the lookout for things on the side to do along with my main job.
And just to add to this, from a certain level (revenue) that's not that high (and depends on idividual states) you need a presence (VAT registration) and a business bank account in the country you're selling your services/goods in, even if you're not actually located there. E.g. a medium sized online shop based in the Czech Republic that is shipping to Hungary. Now imagine this if you're shipping to many EU states... not great.
Might have been true at some point, but nowdays even smaller payments are easy to send between EU banks. VAT payment is done in your home country, and you can deduct the VAT. The social aspect is harder; the amount of work to get a consistent revenue stream from another EU country can be enormous compared to doing buisness in another city in your own country.
There are people who specialize in sales between EU states, but for a small team without capital it was hard. That said most of the 100+ tech companies I know of have offices around EU to get talent from other countries.
Plain incorrect for consumer VAT. You have to charge VAT based on the origin of your customer. Different percentages, different ways to figure out the origin of your customer. For businesses you can do reverse VAT, and you’ll have to ask and check that.
Bank payments are easy yes, but credit cards are not ubiquitous, online payments are different in all countries, direct debit is not always supported across countries.
When trading between EU countries, although you have to calculate and charge VAT based on the location of your consumer customers, if your business only does a small amount[1] of goods trade with various EU countries, or if it's supplying services[2], or if it's supplying online services[3], or if it's supplying goods or services to other businesses[4], it isn't necessary to have a company presence in each individual country.
So for businesses expanding into new EU countries it's not as onerous as needing a local presence would be.
(Disclaimer: I'm not an accountant and may be wrong. I'll take it on the chin if so. This is just my understanding, having needed to look this stuff up occasionally.)
I do not see these things as a big problem though, payments are is a service we buy for our own country as well. The same service provider doesn't work everywhere but for us that is not a problem.
That's how our accountant handles it I'm no expert so I guess there is devils in the details. My view is that it's getting a lot easier, even if the progress is slow.
> you need a presence (VAT registration) and a business bank account in the country you're selling your services/goods in, even if you're not actually located there. E.g. a medium sized online shop based in the Czech Republic that is shipping to Hungary.
Alza (CZ) is slightly bigger than a medium sized online shop and they are using CZ VAT ID intentionally for intracomunitary B2B sales, even though they do have physical presence in other countries.
As EUropean living in a different country for work, is not that easy at all. Try to do your taxes in Swedish or German or French.. Or try to have a social life with people that while could speak English will probably switch to their own language when in more than 2-3 person. Yes of course you can learn the language, but dont think you can be proficient in a couple of year, especially if working 40h/week, and still you will be proficient in a country at max
> will probably switch to their own language when in more than 2-3 person.
That's just rude and why would you want to socialise with such people. I had some great experiences and even when I was the only person not speaking the local language, everyone spoke English in my presence. There is plenty of people that have standards and if you cannot find them at a given time, just focus on something else.
That's certainly an option, but moving to a different nation is a lot to ask for an employee. Despite both countries being in the EU it's still a massive change on an individual level.
