I’m a bit surprised he pays taxes on revenue. I’ve run a similar type of single person company (different country, still EU) and I paid taxes on revenue less expenses. There were also no such thing as “keeping money in the company”, but I could expense the ticket and buy it with pre-tax money as a company or not expense it and buy it with post tax money as an individual. Sounds like he wants his cake and tax deduct it too.
If he really can’t expense stuff, why does he even have a business card?
I don't really get the problem here, either you're going there privately, because you're interested in the topic, and pay the lower amount. Or you go there as a business trip and pay the higher amount. Why would they allow you to go there as a business while paying the lower amount, just because your business is only yourself?
They think they don't need to pay taxes. I cannot think of any other reason for this rant. I guess it's refreshing to have a libertarian kind of ethos in the Rust community in addition to the typical quite-far-left-of-center kind.
I totally get it. When you get into the flow of routing expenses through your business, it feels extra bad when you're disallowed doing that.
This is exactly the kind of person I wouldn't want coming to a conf. Turns a small mistake into a big drama inside his bubble of ppl who think he's famous. And by the end of his post he's making threats in the name of the rust community as if he speaks for it. Yuck
Does Europe really need to have the VAT? Usually here (Canada) you give it if you want to tell the business selling you something not to charge you sale tax. If you dont, you just claim the sales taxes at the end or the fiscal year instead.
Reclaiming VAT across borders, even within the EU, is incredibly annoying (at least last I checked - and AFAIK it can be flat out impossible too.) It's still an "export" for VAT purposes, so it's functionally akin to speaking to a customs agent on leaving the country of sale.
Why would you need to reclaim VAT? If you are a business and have a VAT ID, the seller should invoice you with 0% if it's a cross border sale and you need to report it to your government (reverse charge).
Much ado about nothing: you absolutely do not need a VAT number on an invoice. And there is zero chance an invoice for a Rust conference would be requalified as "non-business related expense" during a tax audit...
From my experience as a sole proprietor in the EU, yes... you very much need invoices issued with your VAT number for any business expense, or else you get in big trouble. (Also many invoices in EU are e-invoices, which means the tax authorities get updated in real-time, so your tax account gets updated automatically, so you don't have to file taxes -- you just see a balance of what you owe and from what transaction...)
Also... the author's main point is that policies should make sense, not that the loophole is difficult or risky to exploit.
Depends where in the EU maybe? Also depends on the transaction. If the VAT number is on your business expense, you can sometimes avoid paying VAT upfront. Else you can often get your VAT reimbursed later, depending on whether it's a national purchase or an international purchase.
It's sometimes worth it to mention your VAT number as it can save money and/or effort, but I've not heard of it being mandatory, at least not in the Netherlands.
WARNING: UNEDUCATED AND POTENTIALLY IRRELEVANT AMERO-CENTRIC OPINIONS BELOW
I tend to agree with the other commenter, this guy should have registered as an individual without his VAT number and just use whatever receipt they gave him to claim the expense. I'm far too lazy to deep dive into French tax but a quick skim of [0] indicates that you can submit a "receipt" in addition to an invoice. Sure you can get audited but I would bet (and seriously, I'd love to take this bet at any reasonable set of odds, Author DM me) that no French tax auditor is going to be like "SACRE BLEU, clearly you're trying to deduct your super luxurious vacation to the programming language conference ILLEGALLY!" I'm sure 20 minute conversation would clarify any outstanding concerns they might have about this specific issue.
And I honestly find it kind of hard to fault the Conference organizers for this one. True, they clearly failed to account for this " Entreprise Individuelle" (we call it Sole Proprietorship in the states) case when defining the company/not company ticket scheme, but if you pushed me I'd categorize EI as a company too. It's sort of a non-company company, but they clearly think that people who are attending in direct relation to their business are willing to pay more.
tl;dr just ask them to remove your VAT ID and reissue the ticket.
Having a business in Europe is significantly more complicated than in the US with lots of rules to follow. France seems to be especially strict if your business expenses need to be on a separate accout, that isn't the case in other EU countries. However, it's worth noting that with a VAT ID the ticket also becomes cheaper because the 20% VAT for France doesn't get added.
If he really can’t expense stuff, why does he even have a business card?
I’m on the conference side on this matter.