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Ask HN: Is it legal to barter or volunteer help in Western Europe?

8 points by forgotmypw17 ↗ HN
I recently read a comment which suggested that in many Western Europe countries it is illegal to voluntarily help someone who is not family or to barter services.[1]

I've been trying to find information to this with all sorts of search queries to no avail. It this actually a thing I can't find because my google-fu is not strong enough?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29144043

26 comments

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tgflynn
That seems extremely unlikely. I lived in France for over 10 years and I never heard of any law like that. It is however illegal NOT to help a "person in danger" there.
JPLeRouzic
I am French and yes it might be illegal under circumstances. For example if someone is paid for a service (however small the amount), and taxes are not paid then it is illegal [0].

It might looks quite easy to understand but it is not.

For example a local newspaper owner was handing out flyers at the entrance to a stadium. He asked two kids from his family to help him and give them some money. Two tax inspectors who happened to attend the sport event, issued a ticket of several thousand euros for "illegal work". Yet the newspaper owner had no such revenues. The "newspaper" was a just a hobby.

(I tried to find a link in the press but failed to find it)

[0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travail_ill%C3%A9gal

tgflynn
It sounds like there was some payment involved in that case.

The OP's statement included "it is illegal to voluntarily help someone who is not family", which would make it illegal to help a friend move furniture or paint their house (without remuneration).

mytailorisrich
That's different from the question, IMHO.

It's not illegal to "voluntarily help someone who is not family or to barter services" or even (obviously) to be paid for work. But any of that may give rise to various tax liabilities and not fulfilling them is illegal. I would think that this is pretty much the same everywhere in the world.

tgflynn
I don't think helping your neighbor move some furniture without compensation is going to create a tax liability.
raxxorrax
It is indeed true to some degree in Germany.

If you give your friend money for some help he provided you would need to pay taxes (otherwise people could always pretend to be friends and exchange money behind their back while not paying any tax because it wasn't a business exchange)

There is a low amount of such work that is free (pretty low, around 300$ per year).

In practice people often ignore it. If you give away your gaming console to your friend helping to renovate the house, you might theoretically need to pay taxes. But I think you only get into real trouble if you conduct real business or there simply isn't any enforcement possible anyway.

There are similar rules for gifting since it would equally enable you to evade paying tax by declaring mutual gifts instead of service and payment.

edit: I think the legal term is "Gefälligkeit", it would you net sources in German of course. The law is also defines claims for both parties. What if your friend painted your house blue, but you wanted it red? Who is responsible for the damage, etc. pp.

tgflynn
It sounds like you're talking about exchanges, which was only part of the OP's question, which also included the much more sweeping: "it is illegal to voluntarily help someone who is not family".
raxxorrax
It is restricted to that. If there is no exchange, the law wouldn't apply. No legal expert though and it could be different in other European countries. Of course it could also enable tax evasion when parties hide payments.
osivertsson
If it can be argued that it is done to avoid paying taxes, it is probably illegal for that reason, and you should look into local laws relating to business taxation.
dfxm12
If you have questions about what is or isn't legal in western Europe, your best bet is to ask a lawyer in that jurisdiction.
meheleventyone
Umm, no!? At least not in any way that is common place enough to actually be known about.

As others have said there are probably rules around taxes that kick in at some point which for the most part are ignored between friends. But I'd assume that's true almost everywhere.

One of the culture shock things about moving to Iceland was the amount of services that would offer to work under the counter in cash for a discount so they could avoid tax.

wly_cdgr
Legal or not, it's none of the government's business if you want to help someone, so do whatever you want as long as you can get away with it
s_dev
Ireland -- I've never heard of such nonsense. You can't help a friend do illegal things -- certainly not illegal to help a friend.
jasode
> it is illegal to voluntarily help someone who is not family or to barter services

Not sure why the previous thread commenter used the word "illegal".

It's legal to barter and help non-family members. It's simply about declaring income for tax purposes. The USA has similar laws about declaring "fair market value" of bartering. (Although people often ignore the law.)

So if the word "illegal" must be used: It's illegal to not declare fair-market-value of bartering as income to be taxed.

Tax authorities target bartering because they don't want it to be used as a loophole to evade taxes. But, if you help your neighbor move a sofa, nobody is going to report the neighbor as a tax evader for not counting your help as "income".

[1] https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420

tananaev
It might also be illegal if you don't have a proper work permission in a country.
captainmuon
There are restrictions about giving legal advice in many countries (like Germany). And as others have said, if you get something in return it might be considered unreported employment and tax evasion. But it is extremely unlikely to do this unintentionally.
jsiepkes
I doubt this is specific to western Europe but the case in all countries. Because in theory you can't "give" anything without paying taxes. Meaning you can't give a gift without paying taxes. There are some exceptions of course but overall if you "give" someone something it has a value. In theory the tax service will look at what the "value" of it is and you should pay taxes over it. It doesn't matter if "something" is a service, goods or whatever.

For example if someone cleans your house every week. Even if that person does it for charity, for fun or whatever it could be seen as a service with value. In theory you should pay taxes over such a thing.

It becomes even more of a gray area if for example someone cleans your house every week and you give them a bag of groceries in return.

Overall is a thousand shades gray thing but the gist of it is that in all countries you can't just give a gift without paying taxes. Otherwise it would be easy to dodge taxes. I could just "give" someone a car.

But thats just a very theoretical look at taxes. In practice this is never enforced.

sgt101
In the UK at least, if you volunteer for a charity then there is no tax liability. Issues will arise is there is some sort of benefit in kind granted for the voluntary work. For example - if by doing the house cleaning you are allowed to look at a book full of investment tips.
markmacardle
I think two things are conflated in the question: helping others for no money or only a token gesture of thanks (eg helping a friend paint their house for a beer), and doing a side job for cash (eg house painting for acquaintances on the weekend for cheap rates).

I'm pretty sure the first is totally fine in any country. Also pretty sure the second would be considered a tax-dodge in any country as it's just income you don't declare. In Ireland those doing jobs for cash like that is called a "nixer".

rosmax_1337
Laws where I live (in Western Europe) are arguably just guidelines anyway, it is always up to courts to make final judgement on any individual matter and the laws are written fuzzily enough that businesses trying to masquerade as friends helping eachother can be fined, and that friends can help eachother as much as they want and not have to worry about taxes.

I think people in general make too much of the laws. Laws are just a formalization of the actual culture in place, and neither replace nor create culture in themselves. The courts are made up of people too, as are the police, etc etc. The problem starts when you remove the "people" aspect of a judicial system, and it becomes paragraph-riding[1] tyranny.

Or when people themselves are bad, when the courts are bad it doesn't matter if you had the best judicial system in the world. It would still be bad.

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paragrafryttare, a word to describe someone who relies on texts and only texts, often to the point of ridiculousness and because they have something to gain out of only relying on the text. Often in terms of the judicial system.

mytailorisrich
> I recently read a comment which suggested that in many Western Europe countries it is illegal to voluntarily help someone who is not family or to barter services.

No, it's not illegal (I would have added 'obviously' but this very question shows that it may not be so obvious...)

But, as is the case everywhere, a transfer of money/property/work may give rise to various tax liabilities.