Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

eidel.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 1001 posts

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

#501

Post by mk89 »

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.

This looks like the typical black or white view about things.

Germany has 80+ million people. Having nobody on Instagram/Tiktok would be unthinkable.

However, historically speaking, this hesitation to have privacy over "convenience" is implemented still everywhere.

You can't just minimize it with "people want to evade tax", although it's also true.

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

#502

Post by throwaway220033 »

redrove wrote: post #498
throwaway220033 wrote: post #456

Germany is a cult, not country. The whole system is designed for slavery. Never question anything here, just obey the rules, give up your individuality and live without a soul. The new European way of freedom is not building your own life; you must let government take care of you, and in return you do what they ask. The best part is they think they are free and afraid of their privacy. If freedom is not thinking for…

While I wholeheartedly agree with your points about being forced to remain a wage slave for pennies (in comparison to say the US) and people relying on the government way too much— these are right on the money — I do think casually slipping in “orgies” lessens the validity of your claim in the reader’s mind. Also I don’t think it’s fair to claim immigrants are being set on fire (with no citations) like it’s just regu…

It’s probably because you graduated from a university? :)

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

#503

Post by redrove »

throwaway220033 wrote: post #502
redrove wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I wholeheartedly agree with your points about being forced to remain a wage slave for pennies (in comparison to say the US) and people relying on the government way too much— these are right on the money — I do think casually slipping in “orgies” lessens the validity of your claim in the reader’s mind. Also I don’t think it’s fair to claim immigrants are being set on fire (with no citations) like it’s just regu…

It’s probably because you graduated from a university? :)

I in fact did not ;)

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

#504

Post by lifestyleguru »

makeitdouble wrote: post #321
barbazoo wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other countries that see immigration as an opportunity have systems that are far far superior to that of Germany. In Germany it's often not clear what status a process is in and no way to get updates. There often is no web portal or anything like that, it's nuts. For instance you submit an application for the retention of your German passport and then basically wait 2+ years for the answer to come back. No one answer…

Yes, the country needs to be both competent and strongly willing to court new comers and permanent residents in the first place. On your experience, it really feels like a PITA. It won't help, but Japan and France are basically the same. You'll see procedures listed as typically taking 2~3 months, check back every now and then, and low and behold a year and half later you have absolutely no idea of what's going on, i…

The contrast to red carped rolled out for Arab, Chinese, or Russian billionaires is staggering.

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

#505

Post by alibarber »

rand846633 wrote: post #443
usr1106 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am familiar with both German and Finnish bureaucracy. German bureaucracy is (in)famous for paperwork and using faxes. Citizens/residents have no unique identifier (more and more weakened recently) and need to present documentation for everything. If you have no paper birth certificate you are not born... Finland has had much higher digitalization for decades. You have a person number and authorities store everythin…

Anyone know more about this? Find this really interesting and surprising!

As someone who was advised to wait 6-12 months for a tax refund in Finland (not a standard payroll/prepaid tax) [1] I'd say it's because 'the system' is still the old system from the past that hasn't entirely kept up with the fact that in this day and age:

- A limited company is not always a giant manufacturing concern

- An ever increasing amount of the population will not have been born in and will not be living their whole lives in Finland.

IT is a nice frontend for it and can serve you in many languages and with the latest and greatest UX - but the actual processes and decisions are not keeping pace. Changing these is a high-friction, low-reward endeavour for politicians.

[1] https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/contact-us/processing-times-...

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

#506

Post by danielbln »

niemandhier wrote: post #378
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…

My sympathy for your troubles, but please keep in mind: Everybody is processing Ukranians and Arabs. The system was never meant for such a rapid influx of people. The people working on immigration are not lazy or unmotivated, they are exhausted.

It was already a shit show 10 years ago, so while the influx surely didn't help, it isn't like it wasn't broken already.

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

#507

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

lnsru wrote: post #489
i_am_a_peasant wrote: post #432

Literally the only good thing about germany are the salaries compared to the rest of europe but even that is becoming less great nowadays.

€120k salary does not make you a king. And prices compared to pre pandemic ones also skyrocketed. Germany was once nice average salary/low living cost country. Now only average salary left. But it’s ok when one is already inside. Not recommended for newcomers though.

100K is damn hard to break into if you're on the strictly technical path nowadays, but maybe it's just my line of work (embedded). I've been trying to learn some web stuff and go and C# to maybe expand my job options a bit.

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

#508

Post by csomar »

hnhg wrote: 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…

This is the new modern version of the Berlin wall; trying to hold hostage the productive tax payers because you can't create or attract new ones. It didn't work for the Soviet Union and it's not going to work for Germany.

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

#509

Post by somenameforme »

anewhnaccount2 wrote: post #471
usr1106 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am familiar with both German and Finnish bureaucracy. German bureaucracy is (in)famous for paperwork and using faxes. Citizens/residents have no unique identifier (more and more weakened recently) and need to present documentation for everything. If you have no paper birth certificate you are not born... Finland has had much higher digitalization for decades. You have a person number and authorities store everythin…

The degradation comes from waves of austerity politics by right wing governments. These services are expensive and require staff to keep things going. Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease since this will cause the public sector to "make do and mend" and end up running more efficiently, rather than having a knock on effect and decr…

I know basically nothing about Finland, and was curious about your comment as I find government spending an interesting topic. So the first thing I did was look up the government budget trends in Finland. [1] As an outsider it just seems that the Finnish budget is growing at an exponential pace? From 2010 to 2019 the budget went from ~50bn to 55bn per year, nearly managing to even create a balanced budget in 2018. From 2019 to to 2024 it seems to have grown to 90bn/year and is continuing to rapidly grow. There's certainly some expectation of an increased budget during COVID times, but it doesn't seem to be coming down, at all?

[1] - https://vm.fi/en/the-budget

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

#510

Post by imtringued »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #313
freyfogle wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 the money because it was a new entity. That is... how bankruptcy works? He literally didn't owe you money anymore. Obviously you shouldn't extend his new company credit, but extinguishing old debts is the exact purpose of bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy in Germany requires you to attempt to pay off your debts within six years. Any remaining debt gets canceled after those six years pass. This is... not how bankruptcy works in Germany.

For a GmbH and other limited liability companiee there are minimum equity requirements instead.

Post reply on HN