Old dinosaurs.
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.
They whined about having to take a haircut to the press and MP's and the coop had to sell off its family jewels to private equity vulture funds who are gong to screw over the holders of PIBS anyway
http://www.thelocal.es/20131112/spains-solar-police-to-kick-...
It must be one of the most anti-progress political moves I've seen.
OTOH "I love the music but I can't stand the scene."
Now if only those pesky humans and their idiosyncrasies would conform to the ideal behavior...
"crowdfunding" is completely unregulated, and just like other startups that decide regulation isn't a good idea (Mt Gox, airbnb, that unlicensed taxi thing, etc etc), things rarely end well.
For every 1 legitimate crowdfunding campaign, there's probably 100 that are just there to scam people out of money. And when people are increasingly scammed out of money, who will they look to to compensate them? Their government.
Honestly, there's no need whatsoever to regulate this whatsoever. The market will evolve of its own accord until it's "good enough." Regulation will be impotent at best and destructive at worst.
This is the exact same thing that happened with banks. People got angry because banks went bust, and the government stepped in to insure them with public dollars (i.e. take risks that no private citizen would take with their own money.) How did that turn out eh? 100 years down the track and people still fail to do their homework because they can trust the government will pay. And everyone loses.
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.
It is the best known proof that it works, that people can be heard when someone is ready to listen them. And they will give money for that.
And this, this will probably never happen in Spain.
Edit: > million (reason for this answer).
With one single rule, they've killed most chances of growing businesses locally.
There are only a couple considerations here: first, they do force you to pay this in any case or you can't do business at all. The rationale is that having health insurance / social security is not optional in Spain. Thus the illegality of doing business / working without paying that. I would leave this untouched.
The other consideration is that you have to pay this even if you have a salaried job and your employer is already collecting from your salary and doing the contributions for you. I would make it unnecessary to pay the extra 250 EUR/month in this case, it doesn't make sense, except for people with very low salary (for whom no social contribution is mandated for their employer), in which case I would keep the need of contributing separately, or it's a huge loophole to avoid contributing.
A socially-oriented state has some cost, you know. Having to pay 250 EUR/month when you do business is such a ridiculously low price to pay for near-universal health care.
A shame of law, however, since it's only meant to discourage small scale investing.
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.
Well, obviously they will known when you receive your funds for your project, else you will be tax avading if you don't report it.
In the past, people who have been hit by these scandals go to the government/financial regulator to claim their losses. If the government doesn't cover X% there tends to be a big backlash from left wing media and politicians.
All the government is doing is hedging their potential future loss in case some of these crowdfunding campaigns end up being "scams". Spain is very much a country that likes socialise private capital losses.
To regulate crowdfunding because of fiscal fraud is pure bullshit. The biggest fraudsters aren't the usual target of crowdfunding campaigns (lots of small contributions).
Also: taxes
Dude, by definition you are arguing that it's great for criminal uses.
However I think even there the idea of setting up a tech company with more than a million euros of illegal currency that can't appear on your books might be a little challenging.
When I worked for a big telecom JV it was an open secret that everyone thought that Telephonicas dominance in South America was not all above board
EDIT: I'm talking about new cars. I guess the used car market is mostly black, but I don't know as I never bought or sold a used car.
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.
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.
In fact, don't even bother with anything there.
And then when the economy is bad it's "big bad Germany's fault!"
Yawn
- 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.
Not that it changes the story a lot, but I just wanted to make that clear.
