Best European Countries for Entrepreneurs

Summary

The video explores the advantages of starting a business in various European countries, focusing on Bulgaria, Italy, Romania, Serbia, and Albania. Bulgaria stands out with low taxes and talented tech professionals, making it attractive for entrepreneurs. In contrast, Italy presents higher financial thresholds for investments and bureaucratic challenges, despite its cultural allure. Romania and Serbia offer liberal investment requirements and tax incentives, with emerging tech scenes. Lastly, Albania provides low taxes and vibrant young professionals, appealing to companies relocating within Europe.

Highlights

• Bulgaria is enticing for its low taxes and thriving tech talent, perfect for startups! 💼
• Italy captivates with its cultural charm and gourmet industry, despite higher business costs. 🍝
• Romania's tech boom and business-friendly taxes make it ideal for innovation. 💻
• Serbia offers a balanced tax rate and skilled workforce, an entrepreneur's haven. 🤝
• Albania stands out with low operational costs and young, vibrant professionals. 🌟

Key Takeaways

• Bulgaria offers low corporate taxes and a talented tech workforce, making it a top choice for entrepreneurs. 🇧🇬
• Italy requires a substantial investment for startups but has a rich cultural scene and market opportunities in food and wine. 🇮🇹
• Romania provides tax incentives and a growing tech industry, making it attractive for tech startups. 🇷🇴
• Serbia offers a friendly tax environment and a multitude of skilled English-speaking professionals. 🇷🇸
• Albania, with its competitive taxes and regulations, is a rising star for European businesses. 🇦🇱

Overview

Bulgaria emerges as a beacon for entrepreneurs with its extremely low personal and corporate tax rates. Coupled with a burgeoning tech talent pool, it's no wonder entrepreneurs from across the Atlantic are taking notice. Imagine running a startup while only paying a fraction of your income in taxes and having access to some of the brightest tech minds Europe has to offer. Bulgaria's strategic location and appealing business environment make it a prime destination for business-minded individuals looking for a fresh start in Europe.

On the other hand, Italy presents a conundrum. While its rich culture, delectable cuisine, and luxury market segment are undeniably attractive, the financial and bureaucratic hurdles can deter even the most ambitious entrepreneurs. High investment thresholds like the €250,000 for startups can be off-putting. Nonetheless, for those invested in sectors like wine and cuisine, Italy's established markets might just provide the lucrative opportunities needed to thrive.

Meanwhile, the tech ambitions of Romania and Serbia can't be overlooked. Both nations boast of favorable tax regimes and flexible residency requirements. Romania, with its growing tech sector, offers a bright future for startups keen on innovation. Serbia attracts with a reasonable tax environment and skilled workforce, making it a viable choice for foreign investors. Likewise, Albania, despite being outside the EU, offers low taxes and costs, appealing to many European businesses seeking competitive advantages.

Best European Countries for Entrepreneurs Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 in today's video we're going to be discussing several European countries where you can start a business we're going to be talking about taxes companies to start some of the pros and cons of the individual countries we're discussing in today's video the first country we wanted to discuss is Bulgaria a country located in Eastern Europe where a lot of entrepreneurs from America and Canada have recently moved to they have Incorporated businesses in Bulgaria utilizing Bulgaria's trade
• 00:30 - 01:00 representative office Visa that gives citizens from abroad the privilege to open up a trade representative office and obtain residence permits for the owners of the companies now one of the interesting things about this visa and it's actually a requirement for you to have an existing business abroad so your business must have been established for a number of years for the Bulgarian authorities to consider your application if you want to apply for this visa and
• 01:00 - 01:30 Bulgaria is probably one of the best countries to incorporate a business and live for a number of reasons first of all the taxes in Bulgaria are really low you're looking at a maximum personal income tax rate of just 10% making it one of the lowest personal income tax rates across the entire European Union yes there are certain countries in the European Union where you can pay even less in taxes and these countries are considered tax Havens they exist but
• 01:30 - 02:00 overall Bulgaria has one of the lowest personal income tax rates across the European Union and the same is also true for corporate taxation in Bulgaria it is low and it is among the lowest in whole Europe to start a trade representative office to get a trade representative office Visa in Bulgaria you must first of all fulfill the foreign entity requirements like I have stated early on you must have your business abroad and it must have been Incorporated for a number of years affordable Bulgarian
• 02:00 - 02:30 authorities to consider your application second you must have the intention of starting a new business in Bulgaria this is part of the deal okay you must do this and the application must be filed abroad through a consulate or embassy of Bulgaria ideally in your home country wherever you are citizen or resident in a limited number of circumstances you may find yourself eligible applying for the trade representative office Visa in a country where you're not a resident or
• 02:30 - 03:00 citizen an exemption may be granted under certain circumstances however the majority of people they have to apply at the country they are resident or citizen why should you move to Bulgaria this is another important question that people are asking a lot so we've talked about the tax incentives and it being relatively easy for an offshore entrepreneur looking to incorporate a business in Bulgaria so Bulgaria really checks a lot of boxes on top of that Bulgaria is home to some of the most Talent ented tech people in whole Europe
• 03:00 - 03:30 plus the median salary in Bulgaria is among the lowest in whole Europe and I believe the lowest or second lowest in the entire European Union making Bulgaria an ideal destination for startup entrepreneurs looking to hire Tech talent for their companies and projects the next country we wanted to discuss is Italy and I'm here with Enzo mareo Someone who lived in Italy for some time he studied in Italy he has a
• 03:30 - 04:00 master's degree in politics and economics from the University of bologa and Italy and I wanted to get your opinion because you've lived in Italy obviously there are pros and cons everywhere but just talk to us about before we even get into the Visa options for Italy I want to hear from your firstand experience do you think it's worth investing in Italy or would you rather suggest people looking elsewhere well I think nowadays investing in Italy is a risky bet the Italian market is has already been developed for for many many
• 04:00 - 04:30 years and uh breaking through to this Market is going to be very hard and very expensive although Italy offers some advantages like uh the population they have a quite a few bucks to spend on whatever product so you are targeting a highend consumer market so that's one of the benefits but but I say there are better opportunities elsewhere particularly non-developed Nations where there's still a lot to do a lot to create I just don't see the the attractiveness of Italy nowadays in terms of investment as Eno suggested
• 04:30 - 05:00 Italy is just not one of the most competitive countries in the 21st century it's not and we had a discussion with Senator L of Paraguay and he pointed out how European nations aren't really good at much these days except for the production of wine and bom bombs but other than that unfortunately Europe has lost its competitiveness not just last year but a couple decades ago If we're honest about it if you want to immigrate to Italy and you want to spend
• 05:00 - 05:30 time there to invest and maybe you find living in Italy very attractive what you can do is you can invest €250,000 into an approved startup this process can be accomplished by investing in a startup the government has approved so there's a website you have to visit and you can scroll through the available options and it must be an Italian startup it cannot be an offshore company it cannot be a company located in any other country in the European Union the company must be
• 05:30 - 06:00 incorporated and approved in Italy this option has gotten some attraction in recent years some people do see value in investing in Italy and uh we have a little bit of a hard time understanding why but it may make sense to invest in certain companies in Italy you know especially if the companies are related to food and wine I I think this could make sense and you have some experience doing uh some investing in Winery and stuff so there are some things you may want to consider investing in the amount
• 06:00 - 06:30 is €250,000 that must be actively put at risk you must actively invest $250,000 in Italy so the money can't just be sitting in a bank account it can be used for like payroll so paying your employees obviously expenses working capital like but you have to put the money at risk now that's an option if you want to immigrate to Italy and say you want to spend more money there are other options too you can invest about $2 million into government bonds and
• 06:30 - 07:00 there are also two lower tier options available where you can invest 500,000 and a million EUR into the Italian economy if you have passive income and you want to invest in Italy say you want to purchase real estate you may qualify for a retirement Visa in Italy Italy has this reciprocity Clause where only people from reciprocal countries can purchase real estate in Italy and qualify for a long-term Visa AKA residence permit now Italy is one of the
• 07:00 - 07:30 few countries in the world that has that where Italy says you can invest in our country you can purchase property land Apartments houses whatever you interested in but there's a contingency in place where it only works for people from countries where Italians can do the same it's called Italy's reciprocity rule I honestly think that all countries should operate by this rule if you're an Italian and you can buy real estate in the United States of America then US citizens should also be allowed to purchase real estate in United States of
• 07:30 - 08:00 America I think every country should follow Italy's footsteps on this one I think this is a very fair concept because there are certain Geographic locations where you as a Paraguay or I as an EU citizen I can go there and purchase land but the citizens of those countries they can go to our countries and purchase land it's a double standard that should be revoked immediately in my humble opinion next up we wanted to talk with you about Romania Romania is an interesting country for startup entrepreneurs like bulgar area Romania
• 08:00 - 08:30 has an interesting and fairly large Tech poll where you can hire people at reasonable rates even though hiring people in Romania is definitely more expensive than in Bulgaria it is still very competitive it's a very competitive country and if you answer can tell us more about it please yeah so Romania is having a big push in Tech they are very interested in all that has to do with uh emerging Technologies especially on the green energy sector and yeah they have a substantial tax incentives for companies to start
• 08:30 - 09:00 Tech startups in Romania we've seen that some electric car companies are already investing there and especially Chinese companies are investing strongly in this country and the future looks bright for Romania it is a place where salaries are not that expensive are not that high taxes are not that high either and yeah the future looks right for Romania Romania has several residence permits available to Nationals who come to Romania from outside the European Union
• 09:00 - 09:30 and Romania probably makes it one of the easiest in the entire European Union other countries like Germany Austria or Northern countries that just make it a lot harder for you to get residency in Romania you can invest as little as 50,000 into a business and obtain residency so this approach by Romania is is very liberal you know the Eastern European countries generally they have much lower taxes than their Western European counterparts making an investment a lot more sensible other countries like in Italy you have to
• 09:30 - 10:00 invest €250,000 that's the lowest tier option that you have in Romania it's 25% of that right so you're saving 80% of your money plus you're investing in an economy and country that has more potential in my opinion with less regulation much lower taxes less um bureaucracy so in my opinion Romania would just be more investable than a country like Italy now in terms of quality of life I I don't think you can compare the two countries I mean the quality of life the food quality everything in Italy is definitely much
• 10:00 - 10:30 better than probably in any Eastern European country so everything in life is a trade-off but since we're talking about investing in a business in Europe and finding the most lucrative options which of course includes taxes bureaucracy I think these two countries right Bulgaria and Romania are just a lot more sensible there has been a change in Romanian politics if you can please tell us what happened there well yes there has been a recent shift in Romanian politics there's presidential elections coming and it has been particularly interesting because one of
• 10:30 - 11:00 the candidates which is gesu so Romanian politics have seen a recent shift uh there's there's been an upset right so this uh right-wing guy Jesu he won the first runoff election against lasone which is a pro-european candidate and uh the interesting thing about Jesco is that he is a right-wing candidate and that he is also very pro- Russia which is uh noteworthy and we have to pay attention to this right-wing politics is
• 11:00 - 11:30 dominating European politics these days I mean the same happened in Holland in Austria it's about to happen in Germany Romania and all the other countries follow naturally now so I'm not surprised by this shift at all Serbia is another country you might want to consider investing in as an entrepreneur there have been many entrepreneurs from North America relocating to Serbia and other Eastern European countries non Eastern European countries to have more freedom and enjoy lower tax taxes well
• 11:30 - 12:00 Serbia is not exactly a tax Haven it is a tax friendly country or tax friendlier country than other nations and we talked about how the personal income tax rate in fact income tax rates in Serbia range from 10 to 20% depending on the type of income you generated during a given tax year like looking at whole Europe This is not particularly bad it's not ideal either you know there are certain countries where you pay even less in taxes and but there like most countries are much worse most countries in Europe like if you reach the highest income tax
• 12:00 - 12:30 bracket you're going to pay 55% of course that's not going to be all of your income but if you have a tremendous amount of income you're going to reach much higher tax brackets and obviously these countries the EU countries they are applying progressive tax rates in Serbia it's relatively reasonable to start a business to pay taxes and I always think that it's good to have your income taxed somewhere at a low rate than to never have it tax anywhere and have all your money in a tax Haven
• 12:30 - 13:00 because if at any point in the future you want to transfer the money out they're going to ask you where did you pay your taxes show us your tax return and then people say oh you can fake this I wouldn't fake it but it's good if your money has been taxed somewhere even if it's at a very low tax rate I think that's better than never having paid any income taxes at all that raises a lot of red flags now what's important to know about Serbia can you tell us about the political situation in Serbia yes uh so Serbia has been having the same president for over 6 years he is called
• 13:00 - 13:30 president vuic so he's on the first year of his second term well this guy has been labeled by opposition as a populist trying to become a dictator he's a very agile man on geopolitics he works with China he works with Russia he works with the US and he works with a European Union he's a political Mastermind let's say but he has had his shares of controversy in the past for example he has called for the uh for he has called for violence before he used to be the minister of propaganda back in
• 13:30 - 14:00 Yugoslavia times so that's not good Optics let's say and yeah he's uh been constantly accused of amassing power in the in all branches of government in the media and uh it's just worrying that the situation might escalate again and we will have another Putin is woring but other than that it's his last term we'll see if he stays I don't think he will stay he's has pressure from all sides but it's a country to pay attention to definitely Serbia has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in in whole Europe
• 14:00 - 14:30 it's 10% not bad not the best but not bad either the other countries as we've talked about Bulgaria has all a very low corporate tax rate Romania has very low corporate tax rates and a couple other countries that might be interesting too like Cyprus has kind of like a low corporate tax rate and Serbia is not part of the European Union it's not part of shenen and as Enzo pointed out Serbia is really working towards relationships or has been working toward relationships just with more parties you know the
• 14:30 - 15:00 European Union at some point they might want to join the European Union for obvious benefits but at the same time they don't want to killed the relationship they have with Russia you know Serbia and Russia have a prolonged history as much as other non-eu Eastern European countries have this extensive history with Russia however it will be interesting to see how Serbian politics may or may not affect tax rates in the foreseeable future like Bulgaria and Romania Serbia offers one of the best tech Talent pools in whole Europe it's
• 15:00 - 15:30 incredible how many talented English-speaking people there are in Serbia and we haven't really talked about Paraguay or South America to see how the countries on this side of the world compare to the non-eu Eastern countries right one of the key advantages that Eastern Europe has over Latin America is that there's just a higher percentile of people that speak English in Eastern Europe versus here in Latin America I would say probably in Argentina you have the highest percentage also in Panama so if you really want to hire on this side of the
• 15:30 - 16:00 world you probably have to go to Argentina or Panama in Paraguay it's hard we're doing it it's hard so Eastern Europe especially the non-eu Eastern countries you know they have their benefits another country I wanted to touch on very briefly a country where I have quite a bit of experience hiring is Albania Albania is also a non-eu country it's not part of the European Union it is located in the Balkans it probably won't be joining the European Union anytime soon but so many companies from
• 16:00 - 16:30 Western Europe have moved into Albania for a lot of the same reasons that we already talked about the lower taxes the median salaries are just that much lower it's just a much more competitive country right so a lot of the airlines for instance the German airlines the Western European airlines they move their offices there their call centers a lot of them are now located in Albania to be fair a lot of people go into the Philippines but that's kind of like a stretch in a lot of ways right so Albania is just a great country and Albania has one one of the lowest median
• 16:30 - 17:00 ages in entire Europe so this is just another great benefit that you get to enjoy when hiring in Albania and also salaries are very low it's a very competitive country taxes are relatively low and the ease of doing business is also present there's less regulation in places like Albania Serbia Montenegro Bulgaria Romania than say Austria Italy Spain France it's just a nightmare to start a business in those Western European countries that are part of the European Union another reason why you might want to consider incorporating a
• 17:00 - 17:30 business and getting residency in Europe is because of the proximity to Europe obviously a lot of companies want to go into Asia some of them want to go maybe into Africa Africa offers very much the same time zone right so there's no difference but if you go with your company into Asia often times you can't have full Company ownership so you must start a business with a local partner giving them 51% of your company in Eastern Europe you don't have to do that you can retain full foreign Company
• 17:30 - 18:00 ownership which is an advantage we have we haven't even talked about but it's a big one because you don't want to hand your business to someone you don't know and you want to be in a jurisdiction and under a jurisdictional Authority where you're still protected or more protected than in other countries so I think from this point of view it also makes sense to go into say a Bulgaria a Romania a Serbia an Albania it makes a lot of sense if you're interested in incorporating a business into a non-eu country that's located in Eastern Europe you can contact us or if you're
• 18:00 - 18:30 interested in incorporating a business in Romania Bulgaria you're also welcome to contact us you should see our website displayed on the screen we would love to work with you and help you start a business in Europe and also obtain your residence permit thank you so much for watching we appreciate you and we see you on the next video