New member from Finland. Am I the first finnish member here?

[Zetta]

My name is Sami and I am from Finland. I am 20 years old and I live in small city near Helsinki. By the way, am I the first guy here who is from Finland? At least it looks like it, so it is my job to put Finland in the map then :groove:

I graduated couple years ago as an something unspeakable and from there I have made my livings by playing internet poker. In the beginning of this year I started to read a lot of books such as (richest man in babylon, poor dad rich dad, Fastlane etc). Now I am reading books like People Follow You, People buy you, Pitch Anything etc. I never believed I become such a book reader but people change. I realised inside of the books there is huge amount of value so it became pretty obvious choice for me to start reading books in order to learn. I was living in Spain back then but than I started my first business so I decided to move back to Finland.

My first business creates websites & videos to companies but I am going to ditch this business soon and move on another ones. I builded this one by hiring freelancers from Asia that would do the work for me and then using finnish people to translating all the materials to finnish language. I usually just hired hot finnish girls from my facebook friend list in order to get quality and trust worthy people to work for me. The finnish translators that I hired via sites such as elance sucked so be careful when hiring somebody to translate stuff for you even if they are from Finland. I am also able to hire finnish people to do different jobs for me because of my great student contacts. Good country when you want to get high price from your products/services but not ideal country when is tax day but still I have never paid taxes. Poker is tax free for finnish people and this kind of online businesses can easily be set up remotely in countries like Belize and invoice can be sent via paypal to clients (this way they never will know that the money is wired to countries like Latvia and even big companies are willing to work with you) and receive the money to offshore bank accounts that you have also opened up remotely. I would also be able to hire cheap a$$ virtual assistents that speaks at least Finnish/english languages and in some cases swedish language too. This will be handy in the future but anyways this business was just an learning experience for me and very good one.

Skills that I learned during my first business:
- How to create high converting websites/landing pages
- Creating high converting sales videos
- Branding
- How to hire cheap a$$ pros from Asia (people assessment skill + how to use elance, freelancer.com type of sites)
- Outsourcing
- Facebook marketing
- only little bit about SEO
- Direct Mail letters, Cold Calling
- negotiating, communication + leading skills
- Taxes and Offshore banking
- and some other not so high valuable skills...

So right now. I am still working on that business, I also play poker and studying. Reading books, articles and forums. Also watching videos and talking with people. Networking. I am surrounded by poker players and business people but most of them are still slowlaners. I also have a side project going on.

My side project:
I am backing poker players to play poker with my money and I take a share of their winnings.
I also provide coaching for my players. I have outsourced that too.
I am building up a forum and my goal is to make it very valuable so I can someday charge for the membership and get passive income via that. But for now it is exclusive for my players and my coaches only.

Skills that will be developed during this project:
- Leading skills, Communication skills. BOSS skills.
- People assessment skills
- How to build forums that are full of value

and again... tax free income (I hate taxes and I don´t know how to pay taxes )

Future
I am planning to move to malta (because of taxes again) and because it is an european country so I don´t need to fight with visas and no need for a lot of paper work. And the country has no winter/snow

I am studying different topics atm such as importing/exporting from Asia.

Non business stuff:
I pick up chicks always when possible. Not just for sex but to meet new people and to have fun.
Fitness. Building up my ideal body. "Adonis body". I want to be in good shape, looking good and feeling good like winners do.
Spiritual stuff. Fulfilment. I want to be happy and not slave of my brain. I meditate everyday to keep my head clear. I educate myself about different topics in order to grow as human being.
I listen a lot of different music, lately I have been preferring chill step type of music because it takes me into good mood always.

I want to be a millionaire before I turn 25 years old and multi millionaire before I turn 30. I spend all day long educating myself about these stuff and taking constant action so this will be just a matter of time because what we focus/think about we will become, right?

I want to have freedom in my life. I dont want to work for money. I want money to work for me. I want to be a boss. A champion. Great friend, great husband etc. I want to travel all around the world. Live in beautiful/exotic countries, houses/flats and driving sport cars, F*ck hot girls in exotic places, extreme sports such as skydiving, base jumping. Also want to learn to surf and scuba dive. I want to experience a lot of stuff. Simple, I want to succeed in life. But more than success I want to be valuable. I want to be a man of value. This is one of my principles.

I think that´s it. This fish will be reading actively this forum now on and let´s see if it makes me a business shark.

gl

[video=youtube;lkazf4nMYwU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkazf4nMYwU[/video]

 

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[Gale4rc]

Good read, sounds definitely like you're on your way to success.

 

[poro78]

No offense, Sami, but sounds like you're going to get in deep shit with our tax bureau sooner or later.
I mean there's no such thing as tax free business in this country - and if you live here most of the year, you must pay taxes here.
(Ok, small poker incomes are considered as lottery, so they are practically tax free...)

Guess why all our F1 drivers are living in Monaco and spending time here in Finland only now and then?
And why some big names in ice hockey don't play the whole season (which lasts over 6 months) here?
That's right, if they live (or even spend their time) here most of the year, they lose enormous amount of money, because of - surprise, surprise - taxes.

And of course, when running a business in this lovely country of ours, you have also the earnings-related pension scheme payments and all other crap to pay.
The tax bureau doesn't care if you didn't know how to pay taxes, when (yeah, that's right, "when" not "if") they find out that you haven't reported your incomes correctly, they'll just make you pay your taxes you own and hit you with a penalty on top of that to remind how the system works.
(Fancy a little lock up time to increase your street cred?)

If you don't want to pay taxes, this is wrong country to live, because even those "tax paradise businesses" can get you in trouble if you live here. (Not even the big names are safe, for example Jorma Ollila has a case currently under investigation.)
I hope you have the ticket to Malta in your pocket already.

Anyway, I just meant to say: Good luck in your pursuit, but don't get into trouble chasing your dreams.

 

[Zetta]

I agree with you Poro with the tax situation in Finland and that is exactly the reason I am moving to Malta soon. But I got nothing to worry about with my business for now. Next steps can´t be made before I have moved to Malta and made things official and purely legal. Thanks for the warning tho.

"small" poker incomes? It does not matter if you win 200k or 20k it is tax free income. You just need to be aware what sites you play poker because it has to have EU license. But if you travel to vegas and win there it will be taxed. If you travel to Spain and win 200k in local casino tax free. At least that is what me and my friends have been doing until now and will keep doing. But as an example somebody who has nationality in united states have to pay taxes from his poker winnings almost no matter what.

But Thanks guys and for sure I am not here to risk my freedom in order to pay less taxes. I don´t want to make any stupid things that can risk my freedom but I will be working on the grey area a lot.

 

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[poro78]

I've been scared to death with all the taxes, payments and the rest of the ultimate evil things of the tax bureau, so bear with me.

What I meant was that if your main income source is poker, then the bureau might put you under income tax, while the actual winning is still tax free (= no lottery tax), but income (which is actually the same thing as your winnings) will be taxed.
But I think/hope you know this territory better than me, I don't have field experience on this matter, I'm just following the theories.

Another little speculation - your side project is on danger zone too, because by giving and receiving money from the players you might step out of the tax free poker income zone.
You give money for player, player gives part of the profit for you - making you employer (you pay him to do stuff) and the player employee (he makes profit for you), meaning you're having a business, meaning taxes.
Speculation and worst case scenario, but still possible with our Finnish taxing and business laws and regulations.

At least that is what me and my friends have been doing until now and will keep doing.

I hope your friends have asked what the tax bureau's or some professional lawyer's view is.
Just saying because there's a difference in what can be done and what is suitable to do.
If it's grey area and you're safe and feeling comfortable, then it's ok.
But continuing something you just think is ok and if you afterwards learn that you should had known that it wasn't, will just dig the hole deeper.
Better be sure than sorry, when dealing with the ugly, greedy, nasty tax bureau.

For me the grey area is the area I scare most. It's too obscure for me, but what ever suits your style.
I like my risks without any coloring.

 

[Zetta]

Ya, it is something we all should be very careful with. Especially when the amount of money starts to be +6figs.
For me freedom is more important than making the most amount of money possible so this is very important for me to know.

Poker winnings inside of ETA are tax free for poker players with Finnish nationality. It also means no income tax for players that are classed as self-employed/professional poker pros. This is just for Finnish people. If I remember right swedish people have the same advantage but I am not sure about them. This is a topic widely discussed in poker world. This is also something bureau will try to change in the future but for now it goes like this. If your winnings comes outside of ETA you gotta pay taxes but there is multiple ways to skip those too but legally you gotta pay taxes on the winnings outside of ETA.

About the side project you are right. This one is a topic I don´t have knowledge about taxes yet but will have soon. This is something I am going to talk with my tax consultant. For now I run it small and unofficial. The project is still in beta version (we have a forum, 6 players, 1 coach atm). After I move to Malta going to make it official and educate myself about the tax part on this particular case. The more we expand the more money will be involved and the more money the more official business it has to be.

I can assume taxing my side project will work similar than normal business. My official address in Malta, Business set up in a country where Tax % is 0. Offshore bank accounts + internet wallets + pokersites to transfer money and everything is legal and the profit margins are great. This is just an assumption. Going to confirm this from multiple trustworthy source.

For sure this is a topic to deal with extreme caution no matter what type of business you are managing.

Poro78
"But continuing something you just think is ok and if you afterwards learn that you should had known that it wasn't, will just dig the hole deeper." - true dat my fellow country man