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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

#231

Post by aleph_minus_one »

dpeckett wrote: post #203
freyfogle wrote: post #146

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…

> 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.

Honestly, as a native German this anecdote rather sounds like your girlfriend saw the good side of the German bureacracy (and life) (you likely haven't seen the bad side ... ;-) ): the girlfriend asked for something and got a direct honest answer. This is German directness, which I would rather consider a German virtue, but often confuses people from other countries where answers tend to be more sugar-coated.

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

#232

Post by pchangr »

dark-star wrote: post #210
miohtama wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have a friend who got married “on emergency” because her visa was expiring and she would have to get back to her country of origin if she didn’t find a job in a few weeks. So .. yeah.. could happen. And it’s also not just about the time .. it’s also about the amount of documents, forms and all the offices you need to contact.

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

#233

Post by gentleman11 »

hiq wrote: post #193
freyfogle wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I’m a full time software developer, the lead programmer actually, but I don’t have health care. I have important unfilled prescriptions because of lack of money. So how exactly does a lack of health care not affect people?

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

#234

Post by fabianholzer »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #206
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…

> 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 prose…

> This is the eperience from two dicatorships on German soil in the 20th century of which one ended less than 25 years ago

In comparison to the NSDAP and SED, I think calling the 15 years of CDU government under Helmut Kohl (which actually ended a bit over 25 years ago) a dictatorship is a bit too harsh... /s

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

#235

Post by callalex »

hariharan_uno wrote: post #160
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…

I completely agree. I have been living here for 8 years, and recently applied for a permanent settlement permit. My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months, while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel internationally, I won't be allowed entry back). Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were unanswered for…

From a USA perspective, I find that usually when a bureaucratic process is hopelessly broken, it is because a small portion of the population actively hates the people that would benefit from the process and want to harm them. However they cannot legally or popularly discriminate against them so instead they destroy the processes that benefit the hated group. Do you get that impression where you are too?

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

#236

Post by aleph_minus_one »

fabianholzer wrote: post #234
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 prose…

> This is the eperience from two dicatorships on German soil in the 20th century of which one ended less than 25 years ago In comparison to the NSDAP and SED, I think calling the 15 years of CDU government under Helmut Kohl (which actually ended a bit over 25 years ago) a dictatorship is a bit too harsh... /s

> I think calling the 15 years of CDU government under Helmut Kohl

I fixed my mistake. :-)

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

#237

Post by seabass-labrax »

pantalaimon wrote: post #165
yau8edq12i wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As explained in the article, if you don't have 25k€ of capital, then you open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship), not a GmbH (LLC). It's a much simpler process.

You can also create an UG (haftungsbeschränkt) which is basically a GmbH with the 25k€ requirement removed. The only drawback is that this can make the operation look less trustworthy, depending on whom you are dealing with. If you are selling Hot Dogs, nobody will bat an eye if it’s a UG, but if you apply for a big software contract, people might be wary.

Presumably the UG is still preferable to being a sole trader when dealing with much larger customers. Is that right? Or does providing services in your own name come across as more trustworthy to those parties?

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

#238

Post by pests »

freyfogle wrote: post #151
pests wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the wording was unclear as that's what I thought too, that "leaving" meant for good, and maybe there was a way back - hence the temporary part. A tax on simply exiting the country is a very foreign concept to Americans I would assume.

Hah! Americans have to file US tax whether they live in the US or not.

Only for higher income individuals. We get a Foreign Tax Credit for taxes already paid where we live/work.

Looks like the limit last year was $120k. Only 17% of Americans make more than $100k/year. Only ~5million Americans living abroad, or 1.5% of the population.

I'm sure those numbers are correlated, but I'll bet its under a few hundred thousand of people who are burdened with the tax. Even then, the benefits also are pretty nice.

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

#239

Post by tazjin »

chironjit wrote: post #207
whalesalad wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I wouldn't say that this comes anywhere close to many other countries in Germany. Societal coherence in e.g. Russia or Norway is much higher than in Germany.

I think it's rather the other way around: The countries you're comparing to might be exceptionally bad at it, and Germany is average.

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

#240

Post by physhster »

callalex wrote: post #235
hariharan_uno wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. I have been living here for 8 years, and recently applied for a permanent settlement permit. My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months, while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel internationally, I won't be allowed entry back). Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were unanswered for…

From a USA perspective, I find that usually when a bureaucratic process is hopelessly broken, it is because a small portion of the population actively hates the people that would benefit from the process and want to harm them. However they cannot legally or popularly discriminate against them so instead they destroy the processes that benefit the hated group. Do you get that impression where you are too?

Given the amount of immigrants in Europe in general and in Germany in particular, I don't think they are trying to deter people. Or if they are trying it's not working.

The incompetence is not confined to immigration, it's pretty much everywhere. Same goes for France actually.

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