Government Destroys Young Entrepreneur's Enterprise

Yes, "overregulation" and bureaucracy is indeed an entrepreneurial nightmare. I'm from Denmark. Establishing a business here is nothing short of a paper nightmare. I'm sure it kills a lot of initiative.

I want to follow up on the previous post. Recently, there was a story on the news about a housebuilder. He had spent his free time building a summerhouse for his family on a peace of land that he owned. It was real nice, and they were very happy with it. His joy ended one day, when he received a letter from the county authorities. The county ordered him to pay taxes on the work he had performed for himself. The county's line of reasoning was probably that they had lost a tax income, that they would have otherwise received had another builder built the house. In my opinion this is BS! The guy had bought all the materials (which include 25% VAT on each material), and simply spent his OWN FREE time building the house. Why should he be punished for that? I mean, he's creating value for society. (In Denmark, one has to pay a yearly tax if you own your own house...sort of like 0.15% value of the house.) But I guess that wasn't enough for the authorities. There may be twisted theoretical arguments for demanding tax of work performed for yourself, but it just doesn't seem fair. I'm sure it kills more value than it creates.

Anyways, nuff said about that. Let's all just keep on rollin' :) Can't let bureaucracy get you down!