[gndk]

As another German, I fully agree about the political landscape in Germany being FUBAR.

I'm an entrepreneur with a small business and the FDP is closest to my personal views in theory. In reality, they are just a bit lighter shade of green-socialism than the other parties. Lindner's paper is a joke. Germany needs much more radical changes than he proposed to ensure a prosperous future, but even his very tame suggestions now caused a government collapse.

My payment for public healthcare is also at the maximum around 1k€/month and similar wage taxes. A few days ago I used an unemployment payment / "Bürgergeld" calculator and found out that if I stopped working and instead just got married and had 1-2 kids, I'd have more income after taxes than now. This is completely unsustainable, but nobody in politics talks about it.

New elections won't make a difference, other than taking away some time and focus from the people in power to do more harm to the country. There simply is nobody sensible to vote for.

Germany, and all of the EU in general, needs to hit absolute rock bottom first for new and sensible political parties to emerge.

Personally, I don't want to be around for the ride down, so I'm preparing to leave the sinking ship. Unfortunately thats not easy with enormous exit taxes and much of the western world in a similarly bad state. The US honestly seems like the best option right now.

[blubberblase42]

> My payment for public healthcare is also at the maximum around 1k€/month and similar wage taxes [...]

> and found out that if I stopped working and instead just got married and had 1-2 kids, I'd have more income after taxes than now

That's not possible. Either you lied or didn't fill out the Bürgergeld calculator correctly.

If you make enough money to get to the Jahresarbeitsentgeltgrenze so you pay the maximum of 843.53€ for public healthcare, then you at least should get 3.213€ a month "auf die Hand". If you get you apartment payed and 563€ if you are alone or 506€ if you are married. Yes you get "extra" money if you have kids, but FUNFACT: Kids cost money.

All political landscape is FUBAR. But in part that because there are unlimited different opinions but only a handful of party's. I don't know how Cum-Ex Scholz could get Chancellor and I am ashamed of it, but with E-Fuel-Porsche Linder... You know his company before politics, which he ran into ground was funded in part by the KFW? He wasted more of our money than a village of people getting Bürgergeld.

Yeah sure, the german car industry will be great again with this E-Fuel bullshit and then with lesser taxes the profits will trickle down to everyone.

Have fun with more poverty and richer Billionaires.

[Phelinofist]

> Lindner's paper is a joke. Germany needs much more radical changes than he proposed to ensure a prosperous future, but even his very tame suggestions now caused a government collapse.

I wouldn't call it a joke, but rather a starting point. I agree that more radical changes are required. But then again, who will do them? Which party? Yeah, there is none

[tharkun__]

    enormous exit taxes

Huh? Can you speak more about that?

    much of the western world in a similarly bad state

That is the real crux. The only chance so to speak is to go to a western country that's in better state, though it's not necessarily gonna be a good state.

    The US honestly seems like the best option right now

That probably depends on various things. Are you a white male with the right job? Not too bad. Are you male and the wrong job or you might like other men? Much less good. Are you female or non-white? You may want to reconsider. Not that the AfD isn't gonna be problematic in those regards but the US is definitely going into a bad direction that way.

[marky1991]

"Are you male and the wrong job or you might like other men? Much less good. "

Could you explain what you're talking about here? "It sucks to be poor", that makes sense. But being gay doesn't matter imo and I fail to see how other (western) countries are much different.

I generally have similar feelings about your other points, but don't have personal experience there.

[tharkun__]

Donald Trump and especially the people that voted for him are not so sweet on gays (well I guess some might tolerate gay women on a porn site, but not so much living right next to them). It would absolutely not surprise me if after the repeal of abortion rights, gay marriage rights will be next. Now to be fair, some of the states did vote for better abortion rights after the repeal (and during this presidential election), so there's that. But the tendencies and what Trump stands for in general don't bode well. I wouldn't bet on it so to speak.

That said, we are talking about this in context of Germany, where you are correct in that women's rights are less enshrined than one might think of in such a country. And especially in AfD country you don't want to be seen going off to party at CSD. Being gay in the middle of Berlin I guess is akin to being gay in the middle of a metro city in California, while being gay in the middle of the Thuringian forest is like being gay in the middle of certain "flyover states".

[ywvcbk]

Most people aren’t moving into any of the red states, though (maybe Texas)?

And with the all states right thing that they are pushing hopefully Trump will be dead by them time they have enough political capital to restrict stuff on a Federal level.

[marky1991]

That's objectively not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Annual_population_growth_... .

Hoping someone is dead is very much in poor taste imo.

"And with the all states right thing that they are pushing hopefully Trump will be dead by them time they have enough political capital to restrict stuff on a Federal level."

This sentence doesn't make any sense to me, 'states rights' is a federalistic concept, it's inherently against adding new restrictions at the federal level.

[ywvcbk]

Did you paste the wrong link? That’s a population growth map, not immigration specifically? Also it’s from 2022…

I mean you might be right or wrong but declining population in California doesn’t mean that a lot of immigrants are moving there (and I of course wasn’t talking about all immigrants in general but rather people who might be on HN which aren’t exactly a random sample).

> Hoping someone is dead is very much in poor taste imo

Is it? Much more extreme rhetoric is perfectly normalized and accepted these days in the US these days..

[gndk]

> Huh? Can you speak more about that?

If you give up residency in Germany and own company shares over 1%, you are taxed as if you sold them at the current value.

For private companies, this value is calculated by the tax authority with a procedure called "Vereinfachtes Ertragswertfahren" ("simplified income approach"), where they basically take the average post-tax profit of the last three years and multiply it by 13,75.

The tax you pay on that varies based on your personal circumstances (personal tax rate, church tax etc) but is around 30%.

So, the tax authority values your small company with 100k€ average yearly profit at 1,37m€ and wants you to pay roughly 400k€ exit tax for the privilege of moving out of Germany.

You already paid around 50k€ corporate tax per year to get to that 100k€ post-tax profit. And to pay out the 100k€ as dividends from the company to yourself, you pay another 25% capital gains tax on it, being left with 75k€. So to afford the exit tax, you'd have to save 100% of your profits for roughly 5 years, or less if you are able to save something from your regular salary.

This is very hard to afford under most circumstances, even with installments, and means that Germany quickly becomes a prison for even mildly successful entrepreneurs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriation_tax#Germany https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vereinfachtes_Ertragswertverfa...

[tharkun__]

Thanks for the clarifications, since I don't think this is widely known (outside of entrepreneurial circles). That makes a lot of sense then.

So, as a "regular bloke" you can leave Germany for better pastures, no problem. But if you are "independently wealthy-ish", they really want to keep you there, to pay more taxes / employ people that pay taxes. Or take the money anyway, make sure they get their "capital gains taxes" so to speak?

25% capital gains tax is actually not that bad other than that Germany has no equivalent of an RRSP and TFSA. Capital gains are taxed as regular income in Canada for example. Your marginal tax rate is quite probably gonna be greater than 25%. To be fair, you only get taxed on half of the gains in many cases. Quoting https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/learn/capital-gains-tax-c...:

    As of June 25, 2024, however, you will be taxed on 50% of your annual capital gains up to $250,000. For any capital gains over $250,000, that ratio increases to two-thirds, or approximately 66.67%. Here’s how that would look in real life: Suppose one year you sell stocks for $300,000 more than you paid for them. 50% of the first $250,000 of those gains ($125,000) would be taxed as income. 66.67% of the remaining $50,000 ($33,335) would be taxed as well. So on the $300,000 gain, only $158,335 counts toward your taxable income.

    For corporations and trusts, there’s no such threshold: regardless of the total capital gains, 66.67% are taxable

Like, if I was to sell my investments and move to Germany from Canada :) and let's say I had your 5 year example worth of 100k profit i.e. capital gains, to dispose of, even if you made zero other money that year for example would mean you pay $113,685 of taxes that year (in Ontario, just to make an example). That's an average tax rate of ~22.75%, marginal rate of ~53.5%.

Like it does sound like Canadian departure tax basically. And it's not just about companies as the example above shows. That was just me owning stocks. Any Canadian leaving has to pay departure tax. Basically, when you leave Canada you have to pay tax on any of your investments. A "deemed disposition". Pay taxes as if you had sold, even if you keep ownership. Which if you think about it, makes some sense. For all the country knows, you've accumulated wealth without ever paying capital gains tax, because you never sold and now you leave the country (potentially never to come back but who knows?!), and sell shortly after leaving. Leaving to a country with no capital gains taxes. A year later you come back and retire in Canada like you always planned. Deemed disposition prevents that. Makes sense actually. If you do stay in the other country afterwards, that's none of Canada's business any longer.

The good thing here is that we do have the RRSP and TFSA. So hopefully before leaving Canada I would've paid myself dividends over the years, in a tax efficient way and put those into a TFSA to grow tax free and I won't have to pay departure tax on that (or anything in an RRSP). And an RRSP would AFAIK even be tax sheltered as a "retirement account" under Canada - Germany tax treaties.

(fun thought experiment to move from each of these countries to the other :) )

[gndk]

> Pay taxes as if you had sold, even if you keep ownership. Which if you think about it, makes some sense.

It does make some sense, yea. The draconic thing is taxing you on a fictitious sale. I wouldn't have a problem with it if it was delayed until you actually sell the shares. There are actually ways to delay it, but they require a collateral.

For example if you can reasonably prove that it is a temporary absence up to 7 years when moving outside the EU, you don't have to pay the exit tax, but need to have collateral.

If you move inside the EU, the exit tax actually clashes with the EU's free movement directive and I think there are pending court cases for this up to high levels.

So if you move within the EU, you can delay indefinitely without interest, but they will still require a collateral. And if you want to leave Germany, you'll usually also want to leave the EU for the same reasons...

Switzerland is an option because due to various bilateral agreements, it is treated similarly as other EU countries.

Its funny that you mention this Canadian departure tax on stock holdings. Because just a few weeks ago the German government actually enhanced the exit tax and it now also applies if you own more than 1% OR 500k€ in a _single_ investment fund.

Supposedly this is to close loopholes around creating family-owned investment funds to get around the exit tax.

But as we all know, once a new tax is there, it will never go away. Easy enough to lower the limit or apply it to all holdings in the future.

[tharkun__]

Not just stock holdings. Any investments. Except for your primary residence, if you sell it before leaving. So e.g. you're not safe just because you didn't own stock and instead created a real estate investment empire :) If you keep your primary residence and rent it out for example (presumably because you do want to come back and retire in Canada?), then capital gains will accrue from the date you leave Canada.

Fictitious sale = deemed disposition. Same thing. If you can't pay the tax from cash you have lying around you will have to actually sell some of the investments.

Now I do get that selling a business might not be as easy as selling (part of) a liquid stock. But take the real estate example again. Selling your real estate empire seems much harder than selling some of your NVDA shares to pay the tax. If you aren't prepared to sell your business though and you want to hold onto it, why would the government be inclined to believe that you really want to leave and never come back so to speak?

[gndk]

> If you aren't prepared to sell your business though and you want to hold onto it, why would the government be inclined to believe that you really want to leave and never come back so to speak?

No idea. And for a corporation (GmbH) in Germany, it would actually be trivial to track and control this, since the ownership transfer is only possible through a notary public and only becomes legal fact after its published in the public company register. So put a flag on it, and when that transfer shows up, just block it until the exit tax from when you left is paid.