>Germany says that your company is in Germany because you work from there.
Forgive my ignorance, I have never really thought about this before and I may be missing something very obvious here.
Isn't that kind of true, though? For instance, if I am a citizen of Japan, live there, and run my remote business from there, but the business that I run exclusively makes money from people in Portugal and Brazil, it would be true that my revenue is being generated in those other countries, but in my own life, I am enjoying the benefits and protections of being a Japanese citizen. Right?
It isn't so much that I would want to be taxed in: Portugal, Brazil, and Japan, but rather that, the nature of how I am choosing to operate my business kind of makes the issue my own burden to bare. If I continue to live in Japan for whatever reasons that may tie me there (family, friends, children in school, business isn't stable enough, other commitments, etc.) it seems like there is a kind of debt to pay back some of my earnings to the Japanese government because they have provided me an environment to build and maintain that business within their country even though the profit made is exclusively outside of Japan. That is to say, the government may not have seen the money directly, but they provided me a safe and stable environment in which I was able to run and operate that business; isn't that kind of the fundamental role of government? I.e., to protect the nation and its citizens, so they may do as they will.
Put another way, suppose the top 1,000 richest people in the world all opted to all move to a tiny nation with very low taxes, and continued to run their businesses remotely from that place without being required to contribute anything back to that nation through taxes. That seems wrong to me. It seems good that they would be asked to pay back into the place that they live and reside, regardless of where their revenue is gotten. They have a home, and that home is ultimately defended and it's property rights upheld by the government that recognizes it.
I'd be interested to hear how others see it. Like I said, I haven't really thought about this too much before, and may be missing something more fundamental and obvious.
Isn't that more or less how it works? You pay tax where you live, with the justification being, as you say, that you are benefitting from the social structure there?
The big country that is an exception is the US. Their citizens have to pay tax regardless of them being elsewhere, and the difference is dealt with via various taxation treaties. I imagine the justification is something like "we help our citizens everywhere, so they owe us tax".
> I'd be interested to hear how others see it. Like I said, I haven't really thought about this too much before, and may be missing something more fundamental and obvious.
The big thing that's missing is corporations. They are imaginary entities, with a bunch of rules about what they are allowed to do, how they pay tax, etc. Once you create a corporation (or several), you can move profits around according to various accounting rules, which are often disconnected from how ordinary people interact with an entity. Are you buying coffee from Starbucks on Oxford Street, or Starbucks UK, or Starbucks Luxembourg? Most people don't think about that when they buy a coffee, but the accountants do.
You can also change what kind of tax you are paying. If you have a company, you can pay yourself a salary or a dividend. It's still money either way, but depending on jurisdiction taxed differently.
For Japan in specific, you’ll want to look into JCFC. Not a tax or legal advice, but IIRC it boils down to: if your company (assuming 100% ownership) is paying less taxes than a Japanese company would, and you’re a Japanese tax resident, you would need to pay the difference in Japan. It is probably similar in other jurisdictions that have CFC laws.
Also do read up on permanent establishment rules as well.
Ah, sorry. I was using Japan as an example of "living somewhere very far outside of the EU" to highlight the sense of distance between the two. I have listened to a little bit about how difficult it is to open a business in Japan (as a foreigner, at least) and how stressful tax time can be [1], but I'm not well versed in the specifics of how they do things.
Japan as an example of anything not specific to Japan is problematic.
Almost nothing is handled in a similar means or approach to Japanese standard practices, anywhere else.
Speaking as someone with 30+ years experience in both Japanese and non-Japanese business dealings and having had and being currently in the process of renewing work and residence permission in Japan under a different classification than before, and having visa sponsors who just finished 'Tax Season' there; the system is both at once extremely linear, and somehow opaque, and the actual paperwork is more easily measured in centimeters than in numbers of pages.
However; that being said, the actual costs of taxes and other fees including retaining the services of an administrative scrivener (not quite the same as a paralegal accountant) are very logical and reasonable for the resultant social/infrastructure outcomes.
But, if one is not already fully fluent in Japanese and does not have a driving requirement to reside and do business in Japan; the system is simply not designed for participation from the outside like the EU or US. When foreigners attempt to participate directly, even the Japanese know that the local system is complex in puzzling ways, and the most common comment I have personally observed is, "Why would you voluntarily do this; we all do it because we must, but if you don't have to, WHY?"
> For instance, if I am a citizen of Japan, live there, and run my remote business from there, but the business that I run exclusively makes money from people in Portugal and Brazil, it would be true that my revenue is being generated in those other countries
That really depends on the nature of your business. If you're hosting a web application in Japan then I'd argue you're still doing business in Japan. Same if you're a contractor for companies or individuals abroad. A grey area is if you host an application abroad. You technically do business abroad, but it's unlikely anybody will come after you for tax.
You clearly owe tax abroad if you operate legal entities that are incorporated abroad. Then we enter the vast and diverse field of how to (ab)use taxation and corporate law of different countries to structure your business to avoid as much tax and bureaucracy as possible. How much of that is morally appropriate according to the points you raised is a whole different question.
Disclaimer: I'm neither a lawyer nor a tax advisor.
Thanks for the reply. I also saw some other replies stating much of the same thing. I apologize that I didn't give you more benefit of the doubt. To get a bit personal for a second: I've been having a rough go of things job-wise. There have been a lot of issues trying to find work with how competitive the job market has become with mass layoffs & the overuse of LLMs in everything. The few outlets that I've have had to try and escape those concerns have also been facing a lot of controversies with LLM-related content, too. It just feels like there's no real escape from a very negative mindset, and I chalked your project up to being "Yet another thing to be mad over." It was stupid of me.
To clarify: I was pretty torn when I had seen the video of your project; I hadn't played a round because of the queue. I was sitting there and thinking, "Well, if you have the idea of spreading between areas over a top-down static map, and you want any kind of modern weaponry in it...how do you not end up looking like OpenFront or some variation of 4x games?" I think the answer is essentially that...you don't. It's just kind of how it ends up looking.
I think I was a little bit more suspicious of your project in particular because the UI layout looks/looked exceptionally close to OpenFront's. But again, it's kind of a standard expectation thing. "Where should we put chat? Well, probably off to one side. Where do you put notifications? In that same area, I guess?" Etc. There's a natural progression of similarities.
Basically, I was wavering a bit, but jumped the gun because I was angry about things that had nothing to do with you or your work. I am sorry about that! I hope your project does well.
I would like to offer a similar, but somewhat different opinion on one aspect of what you talked about regarding "revshare":
If I notice and issue on my own, and it bothers me enough / I feel that other users would benefit from it, I have no issue providing that information to the source maintainer for free.
If however, I am contacted by the maintainer in anyway requesting feedback, suggestions, or input (i.e. "Rate us on the app store!", "Email us with any problems you have.", etc.) I except any feedback I provide to be worth more than an unprompted message, and in turn, I expect something like a lower bill, a discounted rate on their store front, a credit in their auth page, or some other kind of material gain from it.
Basically, if I am being solicited and prompted to do something, it wasn't my idea in the firsr place, so it ought to be worth my time to do so. They have already gone to the effort of asking, so they (presumably) find value in it. I ought be compensated for that value.
Using Google as an example: one of the few products of theirs I like is Opinion Rewards. They actually pay you (in store credit) for responding to their surveys. It's a fair trade off. They ask me basic habits related to shopping, etc. I get a 25 cents or so every time I respond.
Interested to know: when you experience that, have you addressed it directly and said that you have an issue with it, and want them to stop? If so, do they try to pretend they aren't doing it? Or do they apologize and own up to it? Or what? I've been on the interviewer-side, but haven't run into that. I would absolutely see that kind of thing as an ethics violation; like paying someone else to pretend to be you for the interview process.
Personally, any time I have ever been the interviewee, I write up notes for things to cover during an interview, or list a few common problems, etc. I've dealt with in the past, but I would strongly prefer to share my screen with them so they can see I'm not getting "assistance" from an LLM or whatever. I just personally get very, very stressed when I interview for a job. Having a simple set of notes helps keep me on track with covering XYZ.
I have not addressed it in the call, expecting the interviewee to just say "no I'm not!" I have asked my HR department to state clearly that any usage of AI during an interview is an instant fail, and I think I'm going to start my future interviews with the same.
I'm now leaning heavily on recommendations from existing resources as my preferred interview strategy
I explicitly make it so I cannot regain access to my computer in the event that my memory becomes faulty.
I would be in an impaired state, and cannot function in way that would be conducive to either work or pleasure in terms of computer use.
That is to say, the entire reason why I have password security at all is to keep out people who do not know the password. If someone does not know the password, they should not be able to access the system. That obviously and clearly applies to myself as much as any other person. "If you do not know it, then you do not need it."
I agree in broad strokes. If I am incapacitated, that is when things like durable power-of-attorney, medical advance directives, and living trusts come into play.
The important thing is to ensuring your computer is not a single point of failure. Instead of losing a password, you could have theft, flood, fire, etc. Or for online accounts, you are one vendor move away from losing things. None of these should be precious and impossible to replace. I've been on the other side of this, and I think the better flow is to terminate or transfer accounts, and wipe and recycle personal devices.
A better use of your time is to set up a disaster-recovery plan you can write down and share with people you trust. Distribute copies of important data to make a resilient archive. This could include confidential records, but shouldn't really need to include authentication "secrets".
Don't expect others to "impersonate" you. Delegate them proper access via technical and/or legal methods, as appropriate. Get some basic legal advice and put your affairs in order. Write down instructions for your wishes and the "treasure map" to help your survivors or caregivers figure out how to use the properly delegated authority.
Well see, that's why I keep my "password" memory stored snugly next to "breathing" and other such. If I'm walking around conscious, then I must still know my password.
I must have missed that option in the character creation part of being born (along with choosing my parents). For the record, human memory doesn't actually work in practice. It's unbelievably uncommon, but TBI have weird effects.
Maybe saying something like this would make things clearer:
> His directed intention was to disrupt communication. He did not explicitly target EMS calls, however, his actions impacted EMS communications because of his intentions to disrupt communications.
Example:
If I poison the water for a city, my directed intention may be, "to lower pollution in the region". I am not specifically targeting children, however, a consequence of my intentions of poisoning the water will cause the death of children.
This fellow intentionally took a disruptive action. The consequences of those directed disruptions may have caused (had caused?) catastrophic consequences - that is part of why what he did was illegal. In breaking that law, he became culpable for the outcome for all of the harm caused, targeted or otherwise. Ultimately, it was an intention which presupposed, "My personal opinion supersedes all others." It's an self-centered obscenity without regard to others.
What kind of Robot Vacuum did you have? I had mine map the house once downstairs, and once upstairs and it's been fine navigating around stuff ever since. It comes into the kitchen area while I'm cooking and will eventually just come around for a second pass after my feet are out of the way. I have the roborock Q5+.
The only complaints that I have are:
1) I have mine set to notify me when it's done cleaning. Sometimes it will do it immediately after it's done, while other times the notification might come two or three hours after the fact. Still other times, not at all.
2) I have to clean the vacuum more frequently than I would like. That means: cutting out hairs from the "side brush" on the front of it, cutting hairs out of the "main brush" that sucks up most of the debris, and wiping the sensors clean. In fairness, I'd probably have to do the same sorts of thing with the rollers on a normal vacuum cleaner after a while too, though.
3) There's been a handful of times over a 2-ish year period where it'll go to the other room to start cleaning, and while a normal trip might take 15-20 minutes, it'll claim to be done in about 5 minutes. I suspect that blankets may have fallen on the ground or something, so it became too "blocked" to be able to clean properly, but it could be some kind of software error.
> 1) I have mine set to notify me when it's done cleaning. Sometimes it will do it immediately after it's done, while other times the notification might come two or three hours after the fact. Still other times, not at all.
Check your mobile's app settings/battery optimisation? Sounds like the app doesn't keep running properly in the background
Kinesis Advantage360 SmartSet. If you need an ergonomic keyboard for any reason, do not use Kinesis. RSI is preferable to interacting with the arrogant twits who work there.
Now, to their credit: The keyboard itself is of a reasonable build quality, aside from the fact that it will just occasionally completely die on me until I unplug it for a few minutes and try again.
On the other hand, their customer service was not only unhelpful but actively antagonistic and rude towards me. I gave basic feedback once or twice, and asked for an updated technical manual on the keyboard I purchased and I was treated like I shit on their cat.
---
"Hello, I can only find (this) and (that) manual regarding the 360 SmartSet. One document appears to be an outdated version of the other, and the more up-to-date version is no longer accurate. Do you have an up-to-date manual I can work off of? I was able to parse out some other functions like XYZ by looking at manuals for (devices that are no longer for sale) but I think I'm still missing some crucial information."
"It's on the site, but since you can't find it yourself, here you go." (It's the more outdated manual that I already referenced by name and included already.)
---
"Hello, I noticed it occasionally has issues when I use it with my KVM. Is this a known problem, or should I perform an RMA?"
"Well, that's why we say don't use a KVM!" (Take a wild guess at what information was not listed on any page of their website in regards to the 360 SmartSet.)
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"Hi, some of the marketing material on your site on (this page) is inaccurate. It would be good to update it to reflect how this thing work now. I've provided a few points to consider updating. (Two or so changes)"
"Too many people have complained about this! This issue is closed now!!" (The entire page is subsequently deleted, making it even less clear how things are intended to work, what future customers will be paying for, giving even less information about their products.)
---
To be clear, I know that some times people will overstate things and make it sound much worse than it actually are, but I really am just trying to tell things as they were. If anything, I've probably understated how rude some of their responses have been. I have never had a positive experience interacting with any person at that company.
Moral of the story is: Never buy from Kinesis, even if it causes you physical pain.
> We share similar struggles, though I recognize that Turkey's situation involves much less external interference than Iran's... ours is mostly our own doing.
Can you explain what you mean by Turkey having issues "of it's own doing"? Do you mean something like corruption, or some other factor? I know very little about Turkey or the issues it faces, other than some cataclysmic earthquakes.
I don't know much about Turkey, but I assume they are referring to Erdogan. Turkey was a pretty solid democracy and he turned it into an authoritarian regime.
Erdogan also has some interesting ideas about the economy. A quote from his Wikipedia article: "He has pushed the theory that inflation is caused by high interest rates, an idea universally rejected by economists. This, along with other factors such as excessive current account deficit and foreign-currency debt, in combination with Erdoğan's increasing authoritarianism, caused an economic crisis starting from 2018, leading to large depreciation of the Turkish lira and very high inflation."
Erdoğan is not the first person to mess up the economy of the country, but extreme deep corruption and antidemocratic playbook were never experienced before. If you ask his base, everything's fine though.
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