markvdb

To state the obvious, it's not about taking away the right to eat red meat, right? It's about trying to convince people to adopt a diet that is:

- healthier

- tasty

- cheaper

- a small contribution to keeping the planet livable for their children

- as a sign of respect for $DEITY/the planet/...

Many people will see some sense in at least one of the above arguments at one point in life.

I once was in a train making an unscheduled stop in the middle of the fields. The driver picked up a colleague who stood waving next to the rails...

A negative tax wants carbon negative processes to exist. That clear direction is more important than whether these processes currently exist.

Experimental olivine based carbon capture looks promising to this uneducated bystander, but what do I know?

In any case, I'm not expecting climate action. Many either don't know how to even start fixing this mess. Others would rather have their own children boil than to potentially give up some material conveniences.

Price elasticity definitely is a thing, but I'd argue not in the way you see it.

Have a somewhat competitive energy market and falling production prices like we have for carbon neutral energy. What do you think will happen? The market will gobble up any and all production.

Look at what we currently have even with largely fossil energy. The substantial US/EU delta in energy price and energy consumption. Notice how similar the deltas are?

CO2 capture can be carbon negative, even if it consumes energy.

Just replacing expensive fossil energy with cheap renewables and storage doesn't help. The problem is Jevons paradox. Cheaper energy means more consumption.

A sensible global policy could be:

- Tax carbon positive energy consumption to death. I.e. coal, oil or natural gas.

- Tax (close to) carbon neutral energy consumption at a fixed high rate, e.g. solar, hydro, nuclear or wind. Tax nuclear separately because of its other side effects if you want.

- Use the proceeds to negatively tax carbon negative energy consumption only.

Not that I have any illusions of any policy even remotely like this ever getting enacted. Zero consensus on earth and too many dangerous and selfish idiots.

Our children will be boiling frogs and angry.

By EU standards, that is expensive and low power for balcony power. It this US regulatory capture, China import rates, something else, all of the above?

- There is no "we", but it would take "we" to fix this.

- There is a global scale issue, but no consensus on this being a problem. Not at the global, continental, local or individual level. FFS, there are idiots proudly rolling coal.

- Leadership - in the rare places on earth where it is somewhat accountable - reflects this lack of consensus.

- Acknowledging the problem does not equal acting even on an individual level.

- There's lots of cognitive dissonance. Why am I even flying to the other side of the world next week?

We are cooked. Not so much us old farts, but the children.

Not necessarily. At least in Flanders (northern ~half of Belgium), this was shifted onto consumers by making them pay for peak quarter consumption. Using more than 2.5kW for 15 minutes in a row on average means you pay a lot more for your fixed grid cost.

The core of the EU system is much more elegant. It sets a day-ahead production price per 15 minutes at auction. In EU countries with reasonable distribution cost, dynamic rates are a quite popular way to shift consumption to when cheap electricity is abundant.

Conserving energy makes sense regardless of nearby data center electricity consumption.

Same here.

This holds for Belgium too. The notary class here are overpaid self-dealing monopolists selling you mediocre service at best. We were just required to pay 801€ for a bog standard piece of paper. A web form would have served us better and more quickly. At least they've recently become a bit less hereditary than the last 200 years.

Of my many many acquaintances with Belgian CIT liable companies, exactly one used to do their own taxes. They still outsourced salary payment though. That is even trickier than taxes. There's an entire sector specialising in wage administration...

Substance would be real activity happening in Estonia: - Where are the decisions made? - Where is the work being done?

Why would I otherwise pay 66% in taxes in Belgium when I could just set up an Estonian ltd, get limited liability and pay 0 until I take anything out?

You mean German CIT and German PIT I assume. How happy would the US IRS be with that?

Belgium mandates peppol for b2b transactions since January 1st.

This at least carries the potential of simplifying things for honest businesses.

OECD CFC rules have become much stricter in this regard...

...and move to Ireland.

> If you think about starting a company, spend some time to think through what it would mean for you to be a Delaware C Corp or an Estoinian one. It will increase your chances of success as you can focus on what matters.

Moving to Estonia or - even bigger hurdles- the US is not without its distractions either....

Substance in Estonia is usually required. A rented address does not suffice for that.

Not incorporating would be very fiscally suboptimal here (.be) for anything tech related. Your marginal tax+ social security contributions rate would be ~66% starting from 50k€ gross...

> If you can file all of the taxes and other legally required paperwork yourself, you can be set up in a week or two.

Is realistic in the Netherlands to try and fulfill all formal paperwork requirements?

In my native Belgian city, outsourcing that be from ~3k€ excluding VAT/year for the very simplest CIT liable structure. That's excluding 409.3€ corporate social security contribution and 148€ provincial tax. That makes for about 300€ ex. VAT before you can start to earn anything at all. Unless you can fulfill all accounting yourself.

Of course not. They'll just claim your llc needs to pay local corporate income taxe, VAT, pay local social security, dividend withholding tax, ... on top of whatever needs to happen to keep US authorities happy.

> You'll never get waste management below about 300 years with fission, because that's basically what you get from the fission products.

That's at least one and probably more like five wars over the reactor territory.

I'm mildly optimistic about fusion's potential...

If I set up a US llc as a Belgian while residing in Belgium, Belgian tax authorities will claim the center of control is in Belgium and claim it is a Belgian company.

He mentioned German exit tax is keeping him from doing that.

Yes. Can't just emigrate. No substance in the US meaning your llc would be liable for tax as if it were an llc in the country where you reside. You'd basicly double the liabilities and administration for no good reason.

3 to 4 months is standard procedure in Belgium.

The real problem becomes substance in Estonia? Residence, local director, office, ...