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How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

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Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#191

Post by miohtama »

AndroTux wrote: post #164
artemonster wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you know how in such cases salaries works? i.e. founder and employees are german and the company is in Estonia. Do they work as contractors? I thought to be a normal salaried employee you had to have the company also registered in germany too.

No, you don’t necessarily. Estonia has an e-Residency program targeted exactly at this scenario: Having a company in Estonia but living abroad. However, Germany being Germany, you will still have to deal with the Finanzamt and all the nice stuff that comes with it. So while you can run an Estonian company from Germany and be employed by it, I doubt you will gain much freedom from it. There’s really no escaping German…

In theory, it should be possible for any EU citizen to work in any EU country.

In practice, it is not possible because you need to register to a local tax office of the worker. Spanish employee -> need to register your company with the Spanish tax office.

Good luck unless you can afford expensive legal services that do this for you. Does not make a sense unless you are planning to hire in quantity (>20 workers).

The alternative is that every remote worker is a subcontractor and takes care of their own taxes.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#192

Post by jeffrallen »

nickpp wrote: post #182
zettabomb wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh hey there! I've just moved to Germany from the US (not Berlin but hey, easy enough to apply the general knowledge elsewhere) and your site has been fantastic. Obviously I did not move because I valued bureaucracy, but I'm willing to put up with it partly for a fantastic job, and partly to escape the horror that is modern America. Thank you so much!

I am curious: what specific horror of modern America are you escaping?

I'm European because of US healthcare, insecurity, inequality, bad food culture, urban planning, and danger from natural and man made disasters, quality and cost of education.

Every single one of those things is better in my new European home.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#193

Post by hiq »

freyfogle wrote: post #180
nicbou wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest gripes, summed up: - The requirements are arbitrary, undocumented, and largely depend on how the case worker feels on a given day. Common wisdom is to bring far more documents than asked for, just in case. - Everything is paper-based. You are expected to act as a transport layer between offices that won't talk to each other. Everything is mailed, because digital communications are distrusted and digitalisa…

Oh for sure it could be much better in Germany, and I hope that rapidly becomes the case. Definitely digitization needs to come faster. My complaint is simply people imagining it is perfect elsewhere. Really that is not the case, no where is perfect. All the people chiming in about the US being so easy, yes, wonderful. Now let's talk about healthcare and how your health insurance is tied to your employer. Everyone wh…

To your counterexamples: if you move to the US or the UK for a job, you don't really suffer directly from Brexit or healthcare being tied to your unemployment. Sure, these could make things worse in certain cases (let's say you get laid off while in the US and end up having to get your own healthcare for a while).

The thing with bureaucracy is that it's part of normal life, there's no way around it. You can assume there's a 20% chance you'd get laid off in the US and that it would be bad, but there's a 100% chance you'll have to get a work or residence permit or something else in Germany, and it seems that the default is a painful process (reading the comments here).

> The point is there are major pains absolutely everywhere.

There are still places such as Switzerland where things are better though.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#194

Post by aleph_minus_one »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #162
Biganon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to believe it is worse than France. I trust the Germans to at least be somewhat efficient.

>I trust the Germans to at least be somewhat efficient. They're eficient at creating more bureaucracy as a universal solution to all problems. Having dealt with Germany I have come to realize that excessive bureaucracy is basically a jobs program and a way for people to cover their ass whenever the shit hits the fan. Something goes wrong and you're the big boss? Add more bureaucracy as your attempt to "fix" the probl…

> They're [The Germans are] eficient at creating more bureaucracy as a universal solution to all problems.

Never ever confuse Germans with the German government (except if you are looking for trouble :-) ). It is well-known that what are "lawyer jokes" in the USA are "politicians jokes" in Germany.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#195

Post by lrem »

fleshmonad wrote: post #184
whalesalad wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the redeeming qualities of Germany?

Note that I am a German. I would say there are few. Bad education, especially in schools, a broken railway and public transport system, as well as incredibly high taxes. You may say "free healthcare" and a point can be made here, but when you take a look at the high taxes you have to pay, it's not worth it, if your income is above average. All in all it's a mess and I haven't even begun speaking about German people a…

Looks like you really want to move to Switzerland :D

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#196

Post by Rinzler89 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #194
Rinzler89 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I trust the Germans to at least be somewhat efficient. They're eficient at creating more bureaucracy as a universal solution to all problems. Having dealt with Germany I have come to realize that excessive bureaucracy is basically a jobs program and a way for people to cover their ass whenever the shit hits the fan. Something goes wrong and you're the big boss? Add more bureaucracy as your attempt to "fix" the probl…

> They're [The Germans are] eficient at creating more bureaucracy as a universal solution to all problems. Never ever confuse Germans with the German government (except if you are looking for trouble :-) ). It is well-known that what are "lawyer jokes" in the USA are "politicians jokes" in Germany.

I didn't confuse anything I meant exactly what I said. To whit:

1. German companies are equally as bureaucratic because the people and society in general are culturally so into it.

2. German government is formed by German people voted by other German people, they aren't ruled by some aliens that came from of the sky, therefore are representative for them.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#198

Post by aleph_minus_one »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #167
mk89 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany and "digital" payments have a history due to old reasons. We don't appreciate its meaning anymore, but cash is literally the only anonymous payment method you can have in this lifetime, and people in Germany tend NOT to trust any entity/company/government holding your data for no particular purpose. The downside of this is the split brain problem that you have with distributed systems: a state knows something…

N'ah mate, the main reason is tax fraud, not trust in data holding entities, otherwise nobody in Germany would use Google/Instagram/TikTok if they cared so much about their data privacy. Being free to dodge the tax man is incredibly valuable for small business and individuals in Germany as a lot of wealth is built on tax fraud. That's the kind of privacy people mean.

> N'ah mate, the main reason is tax fraud, not trust in data holding entities, otherwise nobody in Germany would use Google/Instagram/TikTok if they cared so much about their data privacy.

The people who are very vocal about (data) privacy in Germany (which are quite some people, though not all) indeed typically try to avoid such services.

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#199

Post by bradhe »

nicbou wrote: post #114

I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting married, having a child, buying a car - is mired in slow, paper-based bureaucracy. It is a constant, significant impediment to life in the country. Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark. I cannot overstate how terribl…

Just wanted to say thanks for your awesome work! allaboutberlin.com was a massive help when I moved here—and continues to be, whenever a new paperwork hurdle presents itself :). You’re doing great work!

Re: How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain

#200

Post by chironjit »

freyfogle wrote: post #180
nicbou wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest gripes, summed up: - The requirements are arbitrary, undocumented, and largely depend on how the case worker feels on a given day. Common wisdom is to bring far more documents than asked for, just in case. - Everything is paper-based. You are expected to act as a transport layer between offices that won't talk to each other. Everything is mailed, because digital communications are distrusted and digitalisa…

Oh for sure it could be much better in Germany, and I hope that rapidly becomes the case. Definitely digitization needs to come faster. My complaint is simply people imagining it is perfect elsewhere. Really that is not the case, no where is perfect. All the people chiming in about the US being so easy, yes, wonderful. Now let's talk about healthcare and how your health insurance is tied to your employer. Everyone wh…

You're missing the point here. It's bad, and it affects people's lives. It also fuels populist sentiment because people blame immigrants for problems not entirely related to them.

Worse still, if a german says fuck it and wants to run his business in Estonia, the org still has to pay taxes in germany

The only silver lining to all this are Spaniards, Greeks, etc say the system here is better than in their country, but I think you should strive to benchmark up and not down

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