As a person from a country similar to Romania, I can empathize with him. When you lose trust in the state and how they spend your money, even a 1% tax is too much.
I think the countries where you actually get your money's worth when it comes to taxes is very small, and even then, it's not clear whether it's due to good policy or merely luck and riding off previous successes that are being eroded by short-sightedness, stupidity/incompetence or corruption (also known as "lobbying" in the West).
The problem for me is not having to pay that tax. The problem is that we as Romanian citizens never see anything good done with them. And that's why I feel the need to complain.
We're out of communism for more than 30 years but the mentality of officials has barely changed. People are dying in dirty hospitals of infections that they didn't have before getting there (see Colectiv 2015). Analphabetism is higher than in previous years. You will choke and get lung pain if you want to take a walk on the street in most villages because of the coal being burned by poor people.
Education and healthcare are in dire need of money, and we're always on a tight budget and raising taxes.
If the tax rate is so low, it's no surprise there's no money for education and health care - given that Romania isn't Switzerland. Sure there will be corruption but it can't all go to corruption.
I am puzzled how little people know outside of CEE region. Of course it can. CEE is not high trust society it's been decimated by years of communism and the oligarchy got reinforced with the coming of western european investments.
CEE politicians are crooks that believe cattle (the voters) are to be exploited and they cant compete with the developed world anyway.
3m out of 20m of romanians have left the country and there's no way investments in education and health care would make a dent in this.
I'm sure there is corruption but I don't think it's so black. Where did all the smart Romanian emigrants I know go to school? How come there's 10x more fibre internet than in Germany? Things definitely could be better, but I don't think it's all bad in Romania and all great in say Germany.
Dont picture schools in Romania or anywhere else in CEE as backwards places where gopniks teach about loving mother Russia. That's far from it. CEE education system is not bad especially when it comes to hard sciences. Investment in education in CEE basically means renovating buildings, buying more modern equipment, paying teachers well and establishing more international cooperation.
When it comes to internet it's kinda the result of deregulation compared to Germany and it's relatively simple business that brings monthly recurring revenue.
It's not all that bad in Romania and all great in Germany but then again you can't really compare them. As I said a lot of wealth in Germany is built on the foundations in the old industries where German companies (and the people) hold the added value. It's impossible for Romanian companies to capture this value in construction, banking, pharmacy, insurance, consumer goods.
> At least 13 of the victims that died in hospitals were killed by bacteria, probably because the disinfectant used was diluted by the manufacturer to save money.
(From Wikipedia.) That's so sad to read, considering they had actually survived the fire.
Btw, Ceausescu was executed on this very day, December 25, thirty-four years ago. I was in the 3rd grade and our very distressed primary school teacher told us that some bad people in Romania have overthrown the Communist Party rule! That was the first political information session I ever was put into, and, luckily, there weren't much more of them later due to the dissolution of the USSR.
Yeah. Start a BV (privately owned company) here and the tax calculation is similar, if not worse, in complexity and you get to hand over ~40% of your money... in a country with vastly higher CoL
It should be noted that for Europeans other alternatives exist, as you can freely shop any EU country to incorporate a business. Many of my tech friends have set a company in Estonia for tax planning once they have hit a certain revenue (and 0% corporate income tax).
You will still need to pay taxes once you take any money out of that company; whether it's payroll tax or capital gains tax. And there's also health insurance and pensions insurance.
Not really, that was a wild extrapolation on my part. But I did have at least 2 other companies waiting for me to be available on other projects, so in my specific case it would have been possible to continue working like that for the full year.
I do consulting work sometimes - I cap it at 10hr/month and charge $250/hr. That’s a good way of ensuring random jobs don’t take over your life. And yes; there’s always more work.
Poor eastern-European countries cannot compete easily for investments. Bad infrastructure, brain drain, small working population, judicial system, etc. Taxes is one of few things that they can use to attract investors.
