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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

#631

Post by piaste »

morkalork wrote: post #330
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Italy, getting something notarized costs $1-2k. As far as I know, the position is still passed down from parents to children.

Are there other officially hereditary jobs still out there?

It's not technically hereditary. But if the job licenses are a finite resource, and the licensee "owns" the license and is allowed to give/sell it to a person of their choice, and the job is reasonably pleasant/profitable... they're very likely to pass it on to their children, unless those children have other plans.

Pharmacies in Italy work much like notaries, although they obviously provide a much more useful service. My understanding is that in part of the US taxis work the same way, with limited # of "medallions" being treated as an investment.

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

#632

Post by miohtama »

Symbiote wrote: post #405
MrJohz wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is pure anecdata here, but as a foreigner who married a German, it took a while, but it was relatively little work. The biggest issue was that we needed one of my documents (the birth certificate) to have a seal of authenticity from my home country, which then all needed to be translated officially. That took longer than it needed to because we didn't realise it needed to be authenticated and so we got it ret…

Websites promoting weddings in Denmark start out saying birth certificates aren't needed. The marriage certificate is provided in 5 languages too. Hundreds of non-resident trees marry in Denmark every week. https://medium.com/@msosacordero/how-to-get-married-in-denma...

Also no translated documents or notaries needed. They can read English in Denmark, unlike in Germany.

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

#633

Post by egorfine »

niemandhier wrote: post #387
jamil7 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you gone through the process? The system wasn’t “designed” at all, it’s completely broken and chaotic. It is 100% the fault of this system and not that of the immigrants going through it. Some of the people involved can also be extremely unpleasant to deal with, even if you speak German.

I accompanied several friends through the process. My observation was that by simply changing the view on what is happening and extrapolating how to act based on that one can achieve quite a lot. I told people the following: 1. The person dealing with you is not there to help you, they are simply executing an act of governance. Rather than wanting them to help you, try to help them close their tickt. 2. You are the t…

So much this. As a ukrainian, I have been immensely helped by the government officer in Germany while applying for temporal protection - just by being nice and understanding.

Still took months with no success, because the German bureaucracy is in complete disrepair and is brain damaged.

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

#634

Post by samus »

data_maan wrote: post #464
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…

Don't mix cash with digitization. Japan is even more cash.bases than Germany, yet I'd say more advanced in terms of digitization.

Aren't they still faxing documents all over the place? (AFAIK, you might have to do that from time to time in Germany as well)

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

#635

Post by egorfine »

jajko wrote: post #488
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…

This happened to me recently in Switzerland (canton Geneve for insiders, that already explains a bit), but for 12 months . After being here for 10+ years straight, fully working. Existence of my whole family here and our whole life depended on it, yet I clealy hit a very incompetent (and completely unreachable) bureaucrat. My boss went through same process during mine, 3 weeks and done. The difference? He is from wes…

My friend has the same experience in Geneve.

He is living here for like 20 years and still has to fight every year or so for the permit extension.

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

#636

Post by rad_gruchalski »

yau8edq12i wrote: post #4
bouncing wrote: 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…

Unless you're opening companies on a daily basis to evade taxes or whatever, I fail to see why you would need the process to be that fast. Because with such short delays, nobody will have actually checked anything, so the only winners are fraudsters, in the end.

WireCard GmbH AG, thanks commenter from below.

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

#637

Post by egorfine »

kanbara wrote: post #256
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…

mine took like a few weeks and was very painless, even in berlin. anecdata ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It used to be painless indeed but only and solely in Berlin.

Perhaps too many software developers in the city government of Berlin broke the process to a point it now actually works.

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

#638

Post by nolist_policy »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #636
yau8edq12i wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're opening companies on a daily basis to evade taxes or whatever, I fail to see why you would need the process to be that fast. Because with such short delays, nobody will have actually checked anything, so the only winners are fraudsters, in the end.

WireCard GmbH AG, thanks commenter from below.

Come on. WireCard AG

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

#639

Post by fl7305 »

2rsf wrote: post #583
fl7305 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The concept of title insurance doesn't exist in Germany (Title insurance is where you must buy insurance when buying a house to guard against the risk that the house may have unknown liabilities or owners) It doesn't exist in Sweden either, because the ownership of houses is in a central register. You can't make a claim against a house if it is not registered. Funnily enough, there's no such register for condos in…

When I asked a real estate agent about buying a condo already owned by another they replied surprisingly "how can it happen? that would be illegal"

:) Yeah, nothing illegal ever happens.

Was this in Sweden? In that case, I have heard of cases where a condo that someone bought had an unknown bank loan taken out against it.

The bank loan is still attached to the condo even if it changes owners. The bank can force you to sell the condo to pay the loan back to the bank.

You can then turn around and sue the previous owner who took out the loan. Good luck with that.

I don't think this happens very often and usually the condo association knows which loans are taken out against which condos.

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

#640

Post by gambiting »

egorfine wrote: post #627
nixass wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks, you can travel outside of Germany for sure, as long as you stay inside Schengen.

Theoretically, yes. Practically, not anymore: there are block posts on main roads into Germany and they check passports.

Uhm, no - when did you try travelling last? I just crossed the border to Germany from Poland(both ways) and there is nothing there. And before that I drove over in January and there was a huge queue because of "checkpoints to combat illegal immigration" and that checkpoint was just a bunch of border guards standing there looking at cars passing by, they weren't checking passports or much of anything really, it's all just theatre.

Also did you forget flying?

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