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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

#551

Post by alibarber »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #541
anewhnaccount2 wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Renewing your passport is quick and relatively painless in the UK. Founding a company is also reasonably easy. This reads like you have some chip on your shoulder about "austerity" and are needlessly bringing it up here.

It is strange because as a Brit living in Finland there are a for sure a lot of things better in Finland when it comes to public services but renewing ID documents and setting up companies absolutely aren’t.

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

#552

Post by chinathrow »

fl7305 wrote: post #58
leononame wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, tell me about it. I'm in the process of closing one and have been for 1.5 years now. I think we're close, but who knows. I certainly don't

In Sweden you can sell your company to a specialized company that will dissolve it for you (for example this one: https://www.standardbolag.com/services/liquidation ). This can be done in a matter of 1-2 weeks. In Sweden, you can of course also choose to dissolve it yourself, but nobody does that since it takes years, and it's pretty cheap to let someone else take care of it for you. It sounds like the same service i…

I don't get that service. How are they able to do it much faster than yourself?

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

#553

Post by jonathanstrange »

Baguette5242 wrote: post #547
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 lived in France, in China and now in Germany. I would say that somehow, France and Germany are quite similar, it's just that one suck more than another on specific areas and vice-versa. The net salary is somehow higher in Germany but the amount of subsidies you can get from the state is lower also so it's pretty much the same. I prefer the decentralized aspect of Germany (unlike France where everything is just cent…

China has 0.07%, France 10.3%, and Germany 18% immigrants. It's obvious how this explains the difference and why no lessons can be learned from Chinese bureaucracy about how to deal with immigrants.

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

#554

Post by fransje26 »

blueflow wrote: post #525
Loveaway wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orderly, rational people. Hard working, rich country, despite no natural wealth. No cutting corners, one of the reasons bureaucracy is so horrid. You are expected to have your shit together, still people are as lenient as they can be. Things work, you can trust people. Low crime, clean streets. Good sense of morality. Country is capable of much more, still holds itself back a lot, preference in humbleness. Things are…

> clean streets Living here, i disagree. Just on my way to the train station i saw at least 10 cigarette butts on the ground. And its like that across the whole city.

I just had some friends visit on the way to their home country, after spending 4 months traveling through Spain.

They liked Spain a lot, but the first comment they made when we went for a walk was how clean the streets and the surroundings where.

Your cleanliness mileage may vary per Land, I guess.

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

#555

Post by nic547 »

generic92034 wrote: post #495
rcbdev wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can really feel that Kafka was an Austrian in his writings.

Is that a correct assignment? Austria-Hungary was a thing back then, but someone born and mostly living in Prague I would not call Austrian today.

AFAIK Prague (and Bohemia) had a sizeable german speaking minority until the end of WW2 when they got expelled, so Prague not feeling Austrian today isn't surprising.

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

#556

Post by jonathanstrange »

dewey wrote: post #533

I was talking with a friend yesterday who asked me about "de-mail" and "gmx.de", both words I haven't heard in many years. Apparently if you want to contact the pension insurance (Rentenversicherung) and you don't want to call them (Maybe because you don't speak german), or send a paper letter you'll have to sign up for this "secure email, but not really email" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Mail ) service. It co…

Addendum for others who read your comment, gmx.de is just a free email provider like gmail that is very popular in Germany.

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

#557

Post by thejohnconway »

somenameforme wrote: post #509
anewhnaccount2 wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Fr…

A combination of Covid, and the security situation with Ukraine and Russia perhaps.

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

#558

Post by brancz »

Having gone through this a couple of times, I'll say that all of this is true, but in practice, I find the actual founding process not very complicated with neo-banks that understand the founding process well. I just founded a new GmbH last week, and it took 2 days in total.

One more thing I'd recommend doing before going to a notary though is get a "Vorabstellungnahme" from IHK to ensure that they won't reject your company name which would create delays and additional notary cost. It costs some money, but is worth ensuring it doesn't cause chaos afterwards.

1. Get "Vorabstellungnahme" from IHK, takes a few hours.

2. E-mail notary (yes I've worked with them a couple times, that might speed up their response time), get pre-fab founding docs within a few hours, appointment next day. Digital version of the founding docs will be available within a few hours.

3. Create account with Qonto or something equivalent, there's an explicit configuration for your notary email, so they will take care of providing proof of the starting capital.

4. Transfer starting capital.

5. Notary hands in Handelsregisteranmeldung, sends you a copy and upload it to your bank.

In practice, I find the founding process not complicated, but the day-to-day operation, bookkeeping, taxes, etc. way more painful.

Founding a GmbH wholly owned by a Delaware C-Corp, however, is intensely painful, practically no bank wants to work with you, and notaries aren't enough, you need to work with apostilles (international notaries). I highly recommend working with a law firm to set this up correctly but expect easily upwards of $10k between lawyer, apostille, and bank account costs.

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

#559

Post by sofixa »

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…

> It was impossible for my wife to provide an up-to-date (less than six months old) translated copy of her Chinese birth certificate

I find this hilarious. It's the same in France, you need an up to date "original" of your birth certificate. But why? It's just saying you (full names) were born in XXX on a specific date. There's nothing about it that could change, really. In the country I'm from, your parents get one original on birth, and you can ask for copies from the town hall. But in France multiple administrations were extremely bothered that they weren't "original" (because they say DUPLICATA on them, and in French you get a shitty A4 with a stamped signature one can print at home, but they insist on an original) and weren't in French.

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

#560

Post by dewey »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #556
dewey wrote: post #533

I was talking with a friend yesterday who asked me about "de-mail" and "gmx.de", both words I haven't heard in many years. Apparently if you want to contact the pension insurance (Rentenversicherung) and you don't want to call them (Maybe because you don't speak german), or send a paper letter you'll have to sign up for this "secure email, but not really email" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Mail ) service. It co…

Addendum for others who read your comment, gmx.de is just a free email provider like gmail that is very popular in Germany.

At least it _was_ very popular many years ago, when I created my first e-mail address in school for MSN and because they had 10 free SMS every month.
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