It’s a a long time I want to write something about how difficult is to open and mantain an agency in Italy.
I experienced the first anomaly in the 2007 when I founded PlaySys. That time I had to open a bank position for the studio, based on my agency legal registration. The problem was that to open the activity I must had a bank account for it. So the funny question was “how can i have a bank account for PlaySys if I must have PlaySys to open a bank account for it?“. This reminded me a little the egg and citcken dilemma: who came first? or other computer related troubles like the missing network driver on the old Windows XP, and the computer that asks to connect to internet to find a driver. Who experienced this problem can understand my frustration in that period. 🙂
The second Italian really “cool thing” is what we call Studi di Settore (business studies), and is what I wanna talk about in this post.
This problem is based on a supposition of our State: “If you open an activity in Italy, this mean that you will steal money from me, the State!“
I know this is a non-sense sentence, and there are no tricks or indirect psicology strategy, that’s a non-sense!
So what can do a State to avoid your stealing in cashes? Our politicians invented the Studi di Settore strategy, in poor words, they fix a presumption of money you have to move with your business in a year.
Let’s do an example, I use casual numbers to explain better:
1. You open an import-export company
2. The State automatically presumes that in a year you have to move 1.000.000 €. This presumption is based on national fees, other companies studies and so on…of course this will be a presumption, hard to quantificate and not suitable for your activity because we know, we are all different and so are our business.
3. Now you work for an year and manage your business: you work hard, during weekends, during nights in free time you think about your agency and so on.
4. At the end of the fiscal year, the State comes to you to see how was your business.
5. Let’s say you gained 800.000 € because of global crysis, because you spent some month in hospital, or because of other serious motivations.
6. The State says “what?! only 800.000 €?! I presumed you must be 1.000.000!!!”
7. Now a word about taxes: here in Italy the sum of ALL the taxes, fees, and other things is around the 61%
8. The State says “Now you must pay your taxes, and I want ’em based on your presumed business”, so you have to pay 610.000 € on 800.000!
9. The State, before going away adds “You did less money than my presumption, for sure this is because you stealed in my cashes…now I’ll start an inqusition on your activity”.
10. Some days after you’ll find police at the door, that requests to come inside and look everywere in your business, to discover where you stole.
What does this mean?
This means that here in Italy is really difficult to mantain an activity;
This means that here in Italy you must work 120 to gain 100, and the State requests x>61% of them;
This means that in a year of 365 days, you work for 223 for the State and 142 for you and for people you love and mantain, and this is not bad, because if you live with other people you must produce for them all;
This explains why lot of Italians are unhappy and why they become immigrants world wide;
This reveals a big trouble:
To gain money you must steal somewere, if you are polite and do your business, you will close your activity soon. So where to steal? not with the State of course, the better way is to steal to clients, and to abuse of dependants! And of course this is not correct!!
And this what means?
That clients become more and more aggressive and closed in themselves and dependants becomes more unhappy. The consequence is a really difficult market for everyone 🙁
And so?
Being an amministrator is really cool, but very frustrating for theese things. In my opinion theese Studi di Settore kills the market, and no one gains something on this fact, expecially the State.
