Originally Posted by
Big Tudor
Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is a very different thing.
It is tax evasion if you do it... As I see, many "startups" are/were "employing" contractors (eg RYR), but as they were growing, employment contracts were handed out. Once they grew to a noticeable size, these companies started to do "tax optimalization" so pilots could stop tax evasion....
(side note: taxes are needed, but in many countries in the EU this will amount to 50%+ deductions for income tax, social sec and the like. Once you have that money, VAT (=taxes) is around 20% - meaning that around 60% of your salary is taken as tax - not talking about the employer's contribution. I am not saying that tax evasion is the way to go, but working 12 days out of 20 just to pay the taxes is hardly fair either...)