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

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201–210 of 1001 posts

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

#201
post #2

Not to brag, but there are so few things to actually feel some civic pride for in America, and business registration is one of them, so I guess we have that. I can get an IRS EIN (tax ID), register an LLC, obtain a sales tax license (only required for selling stuff), and open a business checking account in about 2 hours in Colorado. Someone who knows what they’re doing and doesn’t spend time researching banking optio…

Important to realize: A GmbH is much closer to a Delaware C-Corp than to an LLC.

Yes, a GmbH is a corporation and mostly dissimilar to an LLC. In Germany, there's no such thing as an LLC, except for some professions. So if you want limited liability, you're only option is to incorporate.

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

#202
post #104

There is also a brutal and inflexible exit tax. Should you decide to leave Germany, even temporarily, you will be faced with a tax of ~30% of the current valuation of your worldwide shareholdings (in companies in which you have >1% ownership). I commented on this in more detail in another post a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39786934#39788110 In the author's case, because he is using a holding comp…

There may be something new now:

https://winheller.com/blog/en/no-more-immediate-german-exit-...

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

#203
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that it is overdone. It's bad everywhere, and it's much worse in Berlin. If you've experienced anything like a modern bureaucracy, Germany is infuriatingly backwards. The article is painfully accurate down to the minute detail.

I have lived/worked/banked in four countries (UK, US, ES, DE). Germany is not at the cutting edge, but it is far from the worse. The interactions I have had with bureaucratic systems in Thüringen have all been entirely fine. Friendly people, clear process, done quickly. Obviously that is only an n=1. It is a rural area that is not overloaded as Berlin is. Which country would you consider "modern"? My experiences: In…

I can confirm that moving out into the bacon belt of Brandenburg drastically improved the quality of my public services interactions (as an immigrant). Getting an anmeldung done didn't require a 3 hour ordeal and the local Ausländerbehörde answers their emails.

My favorite Berlin anecdote is when my wife (then girlfriend) and I first arrived in Germany, she was unemployed for the better part of a year as no-one would give her a chance. She actually got quite depressed about it, and reached out about state sponsored integration courses as the language lessons she was taking were expensive and she wanted to do something more holistic. The authorities told her in no uncertain terms that they didn't care and that there were no places available.

My biggest bugbear with Germany is that the state intrudes extensively in your affairs, most of the time they are being benevolent but that intrusion brings in a tremendous amount a bureaucratic baggage. And that baggage is slow, paper based, and becomes a significant barrier for doing anything. In many countries the kind of paperwork you have to slave over here just doesn't exist in the first place.

FWIW my wife and I got married in Denmark. It was impossible for my wife to provide an up-to-date (less than six months old) translated copy of her Chinese birth certificate. Theoretically she could have traveled back to china (in the middle of the pandemic) and begged her backwaters local police authority to print a new copy but they weren't obliged to issue her one. Denmark was happy with her passport and some declarations from the local authorities in Germany.

Some days I really wonder why I continue to put up with the hassle, probably just sunk cost at this point and stubbornness. Wouldn't recommend Germany for anyone with a low frustration tolerance.

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

#204
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK but how is it that other countries get by without them for founding LLCs? Are there countless scams going on in the UK surrounding limited company for example since you don't need a notary there? There's often lots of post hoc justifications in Germany for "why it is that way" (and has to be that way). But nobody ever seems to stop and think: ok but the rest of the world seems to get by OK without these reams and…

I now have a German GmbH and had a UK Ltd in the past for 10 years. Definitely there is more seriousness/trustworthiness to a GmbH. I am not sure there are "countless" scams in the UK, but yes, in 10 years of commercial operation did come across a few oddities. Example - a customer (UK Ltd) who declared bankruptcy owing us a money and then then next day founded a new Ltd company and tried to act like he didn't owe us…

> I have not come across this kind of thing in Germany.

Oh, it does exist :)

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a difference between "some vocal people" and "the majority of people".

And there's a difference between being vocal and actually walking the walk and doing anything about it.

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

#206
post #109
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from the UK to Germany in 1996 and back then the banking & payment was just sooo backwards. Some stores were incredibly anachronistic (Lerche springs to mind - since closed down) Sorry to hear it's still the same.

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…

> 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.

Exactly.

This is the eperience from two dicatorships on German soil in the 20th century of which one ended less than 35 years ago (many of its crimes still have not been prosecuted). There still exist lots of contemporary witnesses who can tell you what being potentially be surveilled means in the day-to-day life.

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

#207
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…

What are the redeeming qualities of Germany?

The best I'd say is a sense of collectiveness that is somewhat higher than other countries.

It's not nationalism. Rather, there is some amount of willingness to give up personal comfort for some sort of general/societal greater good.

This is really something I've noticed compared to say the UK, Australia, certain asian countries, etc.

Not sure why it hasn't translated to improving bureaucracy.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lived/worked/banked in four countries (UK, US, ES, DE). Germany is not at the cutting edge, but it is far from the worse. The interactions I have had with bureaucratic systems in Thüringen have all been entirely fine. Friendly people, clear process, done quickly. Obviously that is only an n=1. It is a rural area that is not overloaded as Berlin is. Which country would you consider "modern"? My experiences: In…

I can confirm that moving out into the bacon belt of Brandenburg drastically improved the quality of my public services interactions (as an immigrant). Getting an anmeldung done didn't require a 3 hour ordeal and the local Ausländerbehörde answers their emails. My favorite Berlin anecdote is when my wife (then girlfriend) and I first arrived in Germany, she was unemployed for the better part of a year as no-one would…

Interesting, so this means you can go to another country just to get married there? There's no requirement that one of you have some kind of tie to the country (working, or resident, etc.)?

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

#209
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've worked in both, plus the Netherlands. France has one forgiving element: usually some room for the human element. Germans civil servants seem happy to apply rules and procedures, even if they are clearly suboptimal. French civil servants would agree it's ridiculous and are more inclined to help you get unstuck if you can show them that you are. France also seemed further along digitizing things. Total duration is…

The digitization in france in making things worse on the edge though, the system are buggy and now you no longer have that human you can talk to fix things.

I remember not being able to create an account because the website password validation regex was buggy, I wrote an email about it and it's probably still not fixed. I've had to read the "compiled" js of the website to understand what was wrong to begin with.

I've had administrative processes slightly deviate from the happy path and getting stuck. When you talk to a human now. it's sorry can't do anything it's all online even when you explain that yes you tried other possible contact channels phone,email,in person, etc (email seems to go to /dev/null or get a canned response that clearly didn't read your message).

"Computer says no" is more and more of a thing now here in france. it's faster when you on the common happy path but if you aren't you better pray. Also the different services still seem unable to talk to each other even when they are in the same building / same administration but different department. Hopefully they'll improve that in 20 years.

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

#210
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…

Get married in Denmark: This not a joke, but my friends did it (German woman, Indian husband). It Germany it would have taken two weeks. In Denmark you get it done in an hour (minus the booking of the time at the civil registry).

I fail to imagine a scenario where "getting married fast" is a requirement. I mean you've supposedly been living together for a few years already at that point, so why is 2 weeks too much?
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