Not really. Taxes are so high because people get a lot of things for cheap/free like Healthcare and education. In countries where this isn't the case (USA for example) you'd easily pay 2 to 3 times the salary to get the same developer.
In this case even only paying the main dev a US wage would be more than the taxes on everything.
Maybe I'm too European, but ~5K out of ~44K total per month doesn't seem too bad. It's also based on what they earn, rather than a static sum, so seems totally OK for what you get back from it.
We're paying taxes on our employees, they're paid like regular French employees and therefore the employer is taxed accordingly. This is not income tax on our donations or swag sales.
I would prefer if the non-profit in France were "employer-taxed" less than for-profit companies, but no one seems to care.
… Absolutely yes? Governments are amoral entities, and this particular relationship is based entirely on power (pay us or else), not mutual respect or any of the other things that characterize human social relationships.
If we must anthropomorphize them anyways, then they have paid back in taxes many times more than they were given to start. Any such "implicit" debt was long since paid, so they could move with a clear conscience.
You do get back a lot from the taxes you're paying, at least in many European countries, where healthcare is widely available to all. I don't feel bad paying what an American would consider "a lot of taxes" because I know it could (but doesn't always) go to helping my neighbor who maybe wouldn't be able to pay for a hospital visit if not. I also use all the built infrastructure every single day, and maintaining it costs money, obviously.
How much money were they given to start? I looked around for the numbers but I couldn't find it, but seems you were able to, could you share the full number you found?
Not to take this conversation too far off track, but the reverse argument could just as easily be made. Companies are amoral entities, existing only to deliver whatever value their owners wish to extract. Governments, meanwhile, are just the manifestation of the will of the people who live in a place. Even currency itself is just a creation of the people by way of the government; no business has any particular right to it.
No, because they would have to pay on the open market for the things those taxes provide for. The tax they’re paying is insignificant compared to their costs.
You’ll note their developer costs are a fraction of what they would be in the US.
If they lived in the US, they probably would have needed to draw a double or triple salary? So not sure if they really are paying that much more for being in France in the end.
In this case even only paying the main dev a US wage would be more than the taxes on everything.