
Spanish government limits crowdfunding to € 1M, donations capped at € 3000. - eLobato
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ArenaSource
For a spaniard it's going to be much more easy to create a company in UK and
launch the crowdfunding project with the UK company, and then, move the money
by the traditional ways (dividends, getting services from a spanish based
company, ...). You are not going to avoid taxed but get rid of those stupid
limits and obligations.

~~~
muyuu
No need to use the future tense. For a long time it has been a lot easier and
cheaper for a Spaniard to open a business in the UK than in his own country.

~~~
riffraff
as an italian and fellow southern european, this has been true for a long time
here too.

So now they added a new 20% tax on private bank transfers from UK bank
accounts to italian ones.

Just saying: be wary if your government gets inspired.

~~~
kybernetyk
This is even true for Germany. To form a GmbH here you need to invest at least
25.000 Euros and wait weeks until the paper work gets done.

In the UK you can get a Ltd. up and running within 24 Hours for what is
essentially pocket change.

The UK has exceptionally friendly laws and regulations concerning doing
business and I wish more European countries would imitate them.

~~~
Luc
> This is even true for Germany. To form a GmbH here you need to invest at
> least 25.000 Euros and wait weeks until the paper work gets done.

You only need to pay in half of that though (until your GmbH goes bust with
debts, that is). And since 2008 there's a mini-GmbH for 1 euro:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unternehmergesellschaft_%28haf...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unternehmergesellschaft_%28haftungsbeschr%C3%A4nkt%29)

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frankblizzard
Seriously, Spain being in an economic crisis since so long, they should work
on making it more attractive for people to open and run their business there
instead of adding new regulations and complicating things for founders.

~~~
omegant
All the new labor and economic laws created after the crisis have been done
thinking in the interest of big corporations and banks. If you are a small
entrepreneur you are basically screwed.. No that they don't help you, they are
actively trying to make you go bankrupt even before beginning.

In this case if you have a project that can go beyond 1mill € (I can't think
of any that could reach that quantity, but that's another question), you'll
have to be creative and create a company in the UK or USA to manage it.

Reading the article I realize that what they are trying to do with the new law
(that basically makes the crowd-founding unusable for startups), is to protect
the small investor. We've had several small investors scams (one of them by
Caja Madrid, a big savings bank), in all the cases, the regulators were
accused of being too little involved.

I have to agree that is a matter of time before there is a big scam with
crowd-founding in Spain. So the Spanish bureaucratic logic says you'd better
punish all of them(those dangerous crowd-founders) before a notorious crime is
committed. Sad

Edit: added the last paragraph. Edit2: readability and typos.

~~~
akumen
Spain is a horrible place to do business. First hand experience and official
data [http://www.doingbusiness.org](http://www.doingbusiness.org) confirm
that.

~~~
walshemj
And it doesn't even have a strong safety net and workers rights - the way
Spain implemented TUPE is a joke.

~~~
Kurtz79
I beg to differ (I completely agree with it being a horrible place to do
business, on the other hand).

Apart from having free healthcare (although they are trying to change that as
well), layoffs are regulated by law (companies must file a special
request,ERE, to the government in order to axe more than a percentage of
employees, which must be justified), workers are entitled to a severance
package of 30 days (it was 45 a few years ago) of pay for each year spent at
the company, and for each year working you accumulate three months worth of
unemployment benefits.

I'm sure that there are countries which offer better conditions, but I can't
say Spain has a weak safety net.

~~~
walshemj
Um I know how Spain treats TUPE which is to say you have no protection on
transfer of employer that is not the sign of a country that treats its
employees well.

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eLobato
The same bill mentions new crowdfunding platforms must have:

\- At least € 50000 on capital stock

\- A civil liability insurance that covers up to € 150000 per year.

Also individual donors must not donate:

\- More than a total of € 6000 per year on crowdfunding projects

\- More than € 3000 per year on a single crowdfunding project

Funnily enough, political parties in spain can:

\- Get donations from individuals for up to € 100.000 yearly.

\- Foundations or associations owned by political parties (think tanks) can
receive limitless donations.

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joaquindev
I'm born and breed in Spain and I couldn't agree more with im_dario23 talking
about the 70% and ArenaSource talking about protecting banks. In my honest
opinion, banks get too much protection in Spain (compared to countries of
northern Europe, which act in a more ethical way thinking more about the
citizen) and this smells like a new way for banks to kind of "take some profit
from crowdfounding". It seems that no sooner did the Spanish government
realize about the money from crowdfounding, they tried to made up a
tax/limitation for it (the thing itself shows how out-of-date Spanish
politicians are... that they try to create this limit now when crowfounding
it's been out there for some years now). That's so spaniard... but this is
just my opinion. I'd like to read more about yours and your regulations all
over the world. Great page news.ycombinator. Regards from Spain

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tehwalrus
Hmm, this sounds like the sort of regulation that should be considered, and
then not applied (i.e. make a law that prohibits these regulations), _at an EU
level_ , to protect Europe's collective interest in getting crowdfunding for
its projects.

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letzjuc
Anyone knows why anyone would impose these limits to crowdfunding?

~~~
Jacqued
We are in talks to have the same kinds of limits in France.

I don't know about Spain but here it is essentially a need for people in
charge of the "digital economy" to somehow feel useful and show that they are
"regulating" something. In this case they must feel more justified because it
circumvents traditional actors (i.e. banks) and involves money.

It is kind of amusing because this is a sector where most EU countries enjoyed
a more liberal regulatory context before startups started to spawn in the US.
And now that there is a boom, regulations are added to prevent it from
developing, effectively removing any possible european competition to US
companies in the space.

I don't know if this will affect the likes of Kickstarter though, if they
don't have any physical presence in Spain I don't see how the government is
going to know about it.

~~~
johnchristopher
Are you implying the government sees funding money as taxable ? If so, on what
basis ? Incomes ?

~~~
gambiting
To be honest, in EU most things are taxable. Most EU countries will tax you on
your lottery winnings, which to me is just weird and unacceptable,but this is
how things work here.

~~~
DanBC
The trick is to know when the tax needs to be paid and what it needs to be
paid on.

This is why accountants are important. They know the system and paperwork and
words; they know how you can pay tax in one form cheaper and later instead of
expensive and now.

I don't think UK taxes lottery winnings.

~~~
polymatter
link showing DanBC is indeed correct ([http://www.national-
lottery.co.uk/player/p/help/playinginsto...](http://www.national-
lottery.co.uk/player/p/help/playinginstore/faqs.ftl))

though UK lottery winnings will still be taken into account for inheritance
tax if the winner dies within 7 years.

~~~
ArenaSource
that's for parents safety

------
qwerta
I have legal question:

If there is campaign organized on Kickstarter or similar site, who is legal
entity responsible for the campaign? This services usually collect the money
and do not pass it until some conditions are met. We could argue that
recipient is just subcontractor hired by Kickstarter.

~~~
iamwithnail
Depends on the T&C of the platform. I worked at a platform, and our legals
were very clear (and very cleverly constructed) to create a legal dependency
from donor to project owner. We were just the marketplace, all liability for
carrying out the project was on the project owner, and could (only) be
enforced by the donor.

~~~
qwerta
Legal responsibility for finishing the project and tax accountability could be
separated. Anyway this is going to be just another accountancy nightmare.

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logicchains
Seems like a great opportunity for Bitcoin, if Bitcoin can overcome the many
other hurdles it faces: anonymous crowdfunding, capable of circumventing
ridiculous laws like this.

~~~
logicallee
"capable of circumventing ridiculous laws like this"

Dude, by definition you are arguing that it's great for criminal uses.

~~~
eyko
When a law is ridiculous, the term legal is meaningless.

~~~
maninalift
No it's not

It's meaning is quite clear.

That's not to say you can't argue that it should be ignored but please have a
grown-up argument about it rather than resorting to rhetoric.

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kaoD
Beware! Spanish government wants to limit real crowdfunding, i.e., equity
crowdfunding, not Kickstarter-like funding.

Not that it changes the story a lot, but I just wanted to make that clear.

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rainmaking
Brain drain has come so far in Spain it is now self-reinforcing.

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rainmaking
... because you just can't trust income that's not silver bullion and was not
preceded by genocide.

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nirnira
Governments like this should just fuck off and let people take their own
risks. Jesus. If you're worried about people getting ripped off, why don't you
just run a campaign giving advice on how to choose to spot scams? Why not
treat people intelligently? Oh no, sorry, something scary and different that
you don't understand? Kill it!

Old dinosaurs.

~~~
gtirloni
Because most of that people will come running to the government institutions
when they get ripped off, will complain in the newspapers that the government
has allowed this to continue for far too long, etc, etc, etc.

To follow HN's mandatory analogy policy, it's like when PCs had too many
options and users were shooting themselves in the foot and then Apple came
along and simplified things by removing those options. Some are mad to this
day, others love how they aren't caught in difficult situations.

~~~
aragot
In your analogy, there's still competition between Linux and Apple. It's not
like a designers union passed a law that no more than 3 parameters per app
should be available to users.

~~~
_delirium
Within Schengen, there is increasingly competition between governments, too.
You can choose anything from a big-government state like Sweden to a small-
government state like Latvia, and differences on many other axes as well.
Especially true in tech, where things are getting pretty integrated and mobile
(and converging on English as the lingua franca).

~~~
pasiaj
The problematic part for the big-government states is that there is nothing
preventing the Swede from going to government paid school & university in
Sweden, making his millions in Latvia and retiring to Spain while still
getting his Swedish government pension.

~~~
nirnira
So Sweden's government will have to become more Latvian.

~~~
_delirium
Looking at the direction of net migration, I think Latvia is currently losing
that competition: people who attend university in Latvia go to pursue careers
in Sweden much more often than the reverse. In fact I would guess that the
"low-tax" strategy is partly motivated by an attempt to combat the brain
drain. If they weren't losing so badly, they could probably afford to be a
higher-tax, higher-service society, but right now they have to compete on
price.

