Give small businesses in spain a chance

[Solwriter]

Originally Posted by mrypg9

No Government can provide a decent social wage unless it has sufficient tax receipts to fund it. But when there is distrust of government at all levels and daily reports of financial scandal at all levels, town, regional, national, it's not surprising that otherwise honest citizens will collude in the tax evasion or avoidance game.
There should be an urgent national public debate about reform of the sclerotic unworkable tax system. That reform in itself, if sensibly done, will assist the growth needed to seal with debt and deficit and promote recovery.

Although I agree with your assessment that there needs to be an urgent public debate which will bring workable solutions to the tax system, I do not think that the majority blame financial scandals for the reason they deal with, or work in the black economy.
I think it is more a case of 'that is the way things are done here'.

There is an expectation that you will pay in cash for most things - sometimes even major things - and many businesses do not have the means in place for payment by debit or credit card.
(Although I admit there is no reason they could not give a receipt....)

Changes in the traditional way of doing business here will be resisted by many, simply because of the cost of change.

[chrisnation]

Originally Posted by Muddy

I've been thinking about a move to Spain on and off for some years now. Feel very close to getting it done and dusted this year but I guess there will always be new problems. With recent events regarding residency and the issues with running a small business I'm 50/50 right now. I'm trying to keep motivated. Looking for jobs right now for example rather than running my own business which I've done for some years.
Hopefully it wont come to revolution with burning down the banks and the so called seats of power, but I can see it happening if honest, fair, common sense policy and action isn't given a voice very soon.
Greece voting out of the euro would be a start and a wakeup call for various governments to get their game in order ASAP or face the same.

Hope you make it! But if you don't make sure you tell the chap you can't buy his flat becuse of X, Y and Z and tell him to make sure the whole of Spain knows about it!

Thanks for the gee-up! Same to you. Your position matches my own very closely - except that I have absolutely no intention of giving myself repeated disappointment and grief by trying to get someone else to employ me. I'm 62 and nobody ever has, to date!

I agree that Greece telling the Franco-German 'United States of Europe' mob where they can stuff their fiscal union would be a good start. It might make the US of E faction finally twig that there are countries that just don't belong in their club. It's the Groucho Marx Effect, "I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member."

Britain and other countries decided on political grounds to stay out. The PIIGS should have been kept out on economic grounds but the Euromeisters reckoned that in this case, size counts. The amazingly forbearing German taxpayers are footing the bill.

Spain is bounded to the north by more successful economies. It is bounded to the south by much poorer economies. If, by trying to avoid shelling out benefits to people from their southern neighbours, they obstruct people from the north from injecting enterprise and increasing revenue, they are doing themselves down.

Spain, Greece and Portugal have the choice right now of sticking to the same old same old and sliding back 25-30 years or going for an economy based more closely on the northern European model. It doesn't mean they have to give up what makes Spain a culturally attractive country to live in. It does mean they have to give up the bureaucratic m.o. inherited from times when they were totalitarian states.

[Alcalaina]

Originally Posted by Muddy

I'm same as you but in UK at the moment, one-mad band etc. I want to set up a biz in Spain but the more I read the more it puts me off ....

Typo of the Day award!

[chrisnation]

Originally Posted by mrypg9

But no party contesting tomorrow's elections wants Greece to leave the eurozone.
What they all seem to want is to keep the euro, have even more debt written off and to scrap the austerity programme.

In other words, carry on as before with someone else picking up the tab.


The tax system in Spain is farcical and inhibits business start-ups. We all know that...the general question of tax and non-payment has been discussed on this Forum many times.
The complexity of the system and its obvious unfairness is an open invitation to ignore or circumvent it.
But just as in Greece, tax evasion at all levels here is a national pastime. How many times, when having some repair or other done, are you asked if you want a receipt?
How much work is done 'on the black'?
It's a vicious circle, clearly, but it's not just people trying to start a business who are innocently caught out. Every person who evades any tax whether on work or purchases is complicit.
I have discovered it's virtually impossible not to become complicit, however strong your views about this may be.
No Government can provide a decent social wage unless it has sufficient tax receipts to fund it. But when there is distrust of government at all levels and daily reports of financial scandal at all levels, town, regional, national, it's not surprising that otherwise honest citizens will collude in the tax evasion or avoidance game.
There should be an urgent national public debate about reform of the sclerotic unworkable tax system. Thatreform in itself, if sensibly done, will assist the growth needed to seal with debt and deficit and promote recovery.

Agree 100%. But I think there is something they need to do ahead of reforming the tax system and that is to reform the employment system - unless you had that included in 'the tax system' in mind.

Make it easier for people to do business and to be employed and the tax revenue will flow, given a fair economic wind. Then give them a fair, equitable and trustworthy tax system. I don't think it would work the other way around.

But anything would be better than nothing.

[Muddy]

Originally Posted by Alcalaina

Typo of the Day award!

I spotted that this morning and thought, what the heck, it's probably closer to the truth and left it LOL
I'm seriously dis-lex-sick! but I'll put that one down to my unconscious!

[baldilocks]

Originally Posted by mrypg9

No Government can provide a decent social wage unless it has sufficient tax receipts to fund it. But when there is distrust of government at all levels and daily reports of financial scandal at all levels, town, regional, national, it's not surprising that otherwise honest citizens will collude in the tax evasion or avoidance game.
There should be an urgent national public debate about reform of the sclerotic unworkable tax system. That reform in itself, if sensibly done, will assist the growth needed to seal with debt and deficit and promote recovery.

Perhaps that should also be addressed to Camoron, Clogg, and Osbin?

[chrisnation]

Originally Posted by baldilocks

Perhaps that should also be addressed to Camoron, Clogg, and Osbin?

Very good malapropisms but if you are implying that UK is subject to 'distrust of government at all levels and daily reports of financial scandal at all levels, town, regional, national,', you are wrong - absurdly so.

Distrust of government is not the same as disagreeing with their policies. One may believe a government is doing the wrong thing but still believe that what they are doing is not based on mendacious deceit.

And I challenge you to come up with a report of a ' financial scandal at all levels, town, regional, national' in UK in recent years. Claiming parliamentary expenses for 'maintenance of duck house and weeding the lake' does not count. The fraudulent parliamentary expenses claims that were beyond the law have been dealt with by the courts and people, including a member or two of the House of Lords, are in prison as a result.

There is a cultural difference in civic integrity between UK and other northern European countries and Spain, Italy, Greece and other southern European countries. Spain's failings in this aspect of life is part of the problem that besets it now.

Rajoy has not only survived the benefits of colluding in the multi-million Euros gravy-train in Valencia Province but has risen to the highest office in the land, unscathed.

[Alcalaina]

Originally Posted by chrisnation

There is a cultural difference in civic integrity between UK and other northern European countries and Spain, Italy, Greece and other southern European countries. Spain's failings in this aspect of life is part of the problem that besets it now.

Rajoy has not only survived the benefits of colluding in the multi-million Euros gravy-train in Valencia Province but has risen to the highest office in the land, unscathed.

I think the real difference is that in the Northern European countries many underhand practices which would be called financial scandals in the south have been going on so long they have become legal and institutionalised. Hence companies like Tesco get to open supermarkets where they like and Vodafone gets let off its £4 bn tax bill.

Spain and Greece haven't had democracies for long enough to arrive at that stage. They haven't yet mastered the art of spin.

[mrypg9]

Originally Posted by Alcalaina

I think the real difference is that in the Northern European countries many underhand practices which would be called financial scandals in the south have been going on so long they have become legal and institutionalised. Hence companies like Tesco get to open supermarkets where they like and Vodafone gets let off its £4 bn tax bill.

Spain and Greece haven't had democracies for long enough to arrive at that stage. They haven't yet mastered the art of spin.

Chris is right. There is no comparison in either depth or magnitude between the malpractices of Northern European Governments and corporations and the theft, bribery and general corruption that categorises states like Greece, Spain, Portugal and the former Soviet bloc states.
All these states have one thing in common: they have been subject to dictatorships of the fascist or socialist variety. Civic society was ruthlessly oppressed and corruption was the norm. Because the state held power over every aspect of personal and commercial life, there was a scarcity of all kinds of goods and the 'little gift' was a way for the ordinary citizen to get access to what s/he needed, whether health care, a good school for one's children or a flat. Corruption became a way of life and also a two-fingered salute to the 'system'.
I remember taking a bottle of good malt whiskey on a visit to friends in pre-1989 Prague, to be asked if I minded it being given to my friend's mother's doctor as she needed a 'western' drug in short supply.
We Brits love to find faults in how we live and God knows there are many to find. Political systems, like everything, are run by humans for humans and humans are fallible.
But we in the UK not only are blessed with the capacity to be offended by public scandals but with the means to uncover and punish them. We have not got used to the idea that back-handers are a 'normal' part of everyday life. We have not experienced a socialist or fascist regime which has closed down our civil society. As for .mastering the art of spin'...well, there was no need for that under fascism or socialism.....'spin' was built into everyday life. In fact there was nothing but 'spin'....Big Brother was the answer to every question.

As for Tesco....I've been involved in planning wrangles for new Tesco stores and I can say without equivocation that they operate within the framework of planning law. Yes, they often work via 'sweetheart' deals...but if a community gets a sports centre in return for a Tesco out-of-town store....so be it.
People like Tesco and the majority welcome its arrival in town. Opposition is usually organised by the usual suspects who can afford to patronise dinky little local shops and boutiques.

[mrypg9]

Originally Posted by chrisnation

Agree 100%. But I think there is something they need to do ahead of reforming the tax system and that is to reform the employment system - unless you had that included in 'the tax system' in mind.

Make it easier for people to do business and to be employed and the tax revenue will flow, given a fair economic wind. Then give them a fair, equitable and trustworthy tax system. I don't think it would work the other way around.

But anything would be better than nothing.

The reforms relating to redundancy compensation still leave Spain with the third or fourth highest level in the EU.
Can't remember which but it can easiliy be googled.
Businesses experiencing a downturn can't afford to make posts redundant. Anyone who has run a business knows that there are times when you either cut hours or lose someone to save everyone's jobs. Canny German Mittelstand firms cut hours and kept trained employees in order to keep their businesses afloat, sensible workers accepted this in order to keep their jobs.
I help run a charity which has three employees. One is constantly 'off sick' and over the last few years has had a lot of time off, causing extra work and expense for an organisation which depends 100% on public donation. He has worked for us for seventeen years and we simply cannot afford to 'let him go'.
Last year we were taken to court by an employee who was incompetent and stole from us.
It cost us almost 6000 euros.
I think one of the problems in the UK at least is that far too many politicians are totally ignorant of the problems of the day-to-day running of small to medium-sized businesses. Labour politicians often have no experience of any life other than politics, the professions or work on the public payroll, Conservatives often have no experience of business other than that of the financial sector and no concept whatsoever of how 'ordinary' people live - although that could be said of most Labour politicians too.
Many on the Right sees all public spending as wasteful and many on the Left sees all private enterprise as intrinsically 'evil'.
We coulod learn a lot from the German Ordo-economic model...