[mrweasel]

The current EU laws (especially tax laws) aren't helpful for businesses. If you want to do business in every EU country you basically have to register a business in each of them.

Sure, you can sell goods for €10.000 - €20.000 to another EU country without much trouble, beyond that you need to setup a business in each country, sometimes you even need employees or at least an office in a country to be able to do so. I worked for a company that shipped to a number of EU countries, from an EU country. It has taken them 15 years to expand from shipping to three countries to nine. Every time they want to enter a "new market" it is years of planning and insane fees or doing business in a supposed "single market".

The current situation is better than before the EU, but it's by no means good. Certainly no where as good as a Nebraska company wanting to sell their product in New Mexico. EU business will never grow to the size of American companies if they cannot bootstrap themself in a true single EU market. An American business immediately have a potential customer base of 350 million consumer, an EU business have at most 80 million if they start in Germany and will have to add an insane bureaucracy if they want to expand.

EDIT: My information is out of date: In 2021 a solution was introduced where you can pay your VAT locally, and the tax authority in your own country will handle the transfer of VAT to the other EU countries.

There are still some taxes (e.g. taxes on tobacco or alcohol) you may need to handle for each country, and to do some you may need to be a registered business.

[Etheryte]

This is just straight up not true. You need a legal body in a country if you want to hire someone on payroll there, you most definitely do not need one just to sell your goods and services, that's the entire point of the single market. It sounds like you've misunderstood a second hand recollection of someone else's struggles?

[dsign]

> You need a legal body in a country if you want to hire someone on payroll there

Even this is not strictly true. One can often just register a foreign company with the local tax agency for a direct hire. The most frequent scenario is that a foreign hire comes through their own legal entity, as a hired contractor. Now, the sad part of that statement is that often a hire comes as a hired contractor not because of cross-border taxation, but because of tax management reasons. In some EU countries, high value employees cost three euros in taxes for every two euros paid after taxes. A lot of people prefer to set up a corporation that allows them to better manage that majority of their income that goes to the tax office.

[maccard]

That's not employing someone in a different country though, that's contracting. And it's the same arrangement you can use to hire someone in the US from the EU.

[Zanfa]

> One can often just register a foreign company with the local tax agency for a direct hire.

This is the non-contracting employment part of GPs comment. I don’t think it’s frequently used, but it is possible.

[cbg0]

> If you want to do business in every EU country you basically have to register a business in each of them.

This is false. Some types of business that are more heavily regulated do require you to set up a local branch.

[mfld]

Really? Most companies I know have just a single representative or billing endpoint in the EU.