Every time I see a news about my country, it is for bad things, and that makes me sad. But I made the right choice.
There were many reasons for this.
The most notable thing in my experience of moving to Japan is the shock when I actually discovered what freedom and a liberal economy means. I now seriously view my country as communist.
The taxes are insane. For example, if your company pays 2000 Euros for your work, 1000 Euros goes to taxes ("charges patronales", social security, pension and dozens of useless stuff that nobody understands)
Then you have city taxes are usually about half a month of salary
If you are a landlord, you have to pay a second tax to the city (about half a month of salary too)
Then you have the "impot sur le revenu" which is an annual tax that is roughly 1.5 month of salary for an average salary. The higher your salary is, the higher the tax percentage is (up to 75%).
There is a 20% VAT on almost everything, and there are hundreds of other different taxes on anything you could imagine ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_imp%C3%B4ts_et_taxes... ).
Public services are shitty.
Justice and security does not exist anymore.
There are so many dumb laws and regulations that is it very hard to innovate without doing something illegal.
There are hundreds of useless government entities that consumes millions of euros every year, and whose only activity seems to be to harass companies, entrepreneurs and rich people.
The standard of living in France is by far inferior to Japan in my experience (on almost every criteria).
There are tons of ways to (legally) avoid taxes in France. However, those ways are not applicable to regular workers. And that may be unfair...
You don’t want to pay the (ex-IFS) IFI tax? Doable: just make a real estate company. Want to pay even less tax when you have more than one house? Make two real estate companies and keep them under a holding company (consolidated accounting).
You want to pay less real estate income tax? Do the "Loi Pinel" stuff. Too lazy to manage physical real estate? Just buy some SCPI shares (taxes are the same!)
You want to make money with stocks without paying tax? Open a "PEA" brokerage account (up to 150k€, not including composed interests) or open an "Assurance Vie" and keep them at least 5/8 years.
You can avoid taxes in France. Unfortunately, that’s only for a small fraction of the French people.
Interesting, because we have something similar in Poland.
I am currently self-employed because not only does it give me the freedom to just invoice companies regardless of where they're headquartered but also because I can choose to have a flat 19% income tax rate and a pretty low, decoupled from my income pension contribution.
There's much more, but being self-employed is just this basic thing one usually starts with.
Every time I see a news about my country, it is for bad things, and that makes me sad. But I made the right choice.
There were many reasons for this.
The most notable thing in my experience of moving to Japan is the shock when I actually discovered what freedom and a liberal economy means. I now seriously view my country as communist.
The taxes are insane. For example, if your company pays 2000 Euros for your work, 1000 Euros goes to taxes ("charges patronales", social security, pension and dozens of useless stuff that nobody understands) Then you have city taxes are usually about half a month of salary If you are a landlord, you have to pay a second tax to the city (about half a month of salary too) Then you have the "impot sur le revenu" which is an annual tax that is roughly 1.5 month of salary for an average salary. The higher your salary is, the higher the tax percentage is (up to 75%). There is a 20% VAT on almost everything, and there are hundreds of other different taxes on anything you could imagine ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_imp%C3%B4ts_et_taxes... ).
Public services are shitty. Justice and security does not exist anymore. There are so many dumb laws and regulations that is it very hard to innovate without doing something illegal. There are hundreds of useless government entities that consumes millions of euros every year, and whose only activity seems to be to harass companies, entrepreneurs and rich people.
The standard of living in France is by far inferior to Japan in my experience (on almost every criteria).