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

eidel.io

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

#651
post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you usually have to move to the other EU country, or at least live there for half the year and many people still like to live in Germany. Optimizing taxes might not be the main goal in life.

But there are plenty of companies that provide substance

What do you mean?

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

#652
post #558

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…

BTW, congrats on the funding ;-)

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

#653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that depends on the city and the procedure, but I had to replace my DNI last summer and it took me less than 30 minutes, and they gave me the new one on the spot. In comparison I also had to renew my Japanese foreign card and later my ID card, and both procedures were a royal PITA, and in both cases I had to wait a month to get the new card.

Yeah had a close person getting passport after marriage, took years, they made a mistake, another 1.5 years. Took over 5 years in the end. Lawyers making mistakes, civil cervants making mistakes, making mistakes themselves. Big mess. They are actually breaking EU law while doing these things.

That actually was very interesting for me, living in Spain, how extremely common mistakes were in data entry, generally. If anyone hands you a form to check your details, you can almost guarantee to find some issue. I've never noticed this living in any other country yet.

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

#654
post #648

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).

These are the cases which Germany wants to avoid: "Scheinehe", where people get paid to marry and give the other person an "Aufenthalts- und Arbeitserlaubnis" -> allowed to stay and work in Germany. There is quite a business around this.

Lets combat marriage fraud by making it a kafkaesque ordeal to get married in the first place.

Big brain move, how many innocent couples get caught in the net, versus how many fraudsters can you realistically catch (organized crime has figured out how to game the bureaucracy, no doubt).

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

#655
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…

From the examples, I can only fully appreciate the marriage part. When a foreigner wants to get married in germany, they need to prove they aren't married in their home country yet. Getting these documents can be a huge hassle or even impossible. This made a few international couples I know go to denmark to get married.

Any process around immigration seems pretty awful, just based on the overwhelmed and (often) unhelpful offices (based on reports from the former friends again).

On the other hand, buying and registering a car was quite easy and possible online, besides picking up the car at least. (With some caveats though. Wanting an electric license plate at the time needed me to go by in person to show them the certificate of the car.)

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

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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" There is some weird notion in populace that if we cut the funding, the public services will "get handle of themselves" and become more cost efficient. That's what a reasonable individual would do in tougher times. What happens in r…

Whereas if funding is increased, that same nepotist core will suddenly discover their spirit of public service and ensure the money is spent on better delivery, instead of further enriching themselves? Honestly, the whole funding debate for public services is often so facile and ideologically entrenched. Both sides are right: Public services _are_ invariably inefficient, and cutting funding _does_ invariably do littl…

> Public services _are_ invariably inefficient

The NHS used to be very efficient, when it was managed largely by clinical staff. Now it has as many professional managers as clinical staff, and they all have to be paid...

Also an awful lot of the NHS fuctionality is now farmed-out to private healthcare companies, who need their rake-off.

As far as "professional managers" is concerned, these guys are mostly NHS managers, not the kind of managers that could easily transfer into a private company. Their expertise is in some obscure corner of the NHS.

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

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start with a "Einzelunternehmung". Registering that takes 15 to 30 minutes at your local mayors office and costs 30 Euro. From there on you can make something like 20k Euro turnover per year, if you grow out of that, you can still "invest" in a GmbH or whatever suits your needs best. On the other hand, if you are sure that you're building the next Facebook, getting the money for a GmbH together on day -1 should be no…

That 22k limit is only for the small business rule, which allows the choice of not collecting VAT on sales (but on the flip side cannot deduct it on purchases). Up to a yearly revenue of 0.6M one can also use a simplified profit calculation method for taxes.

Ah yes, you're right. I'm still not that settled in on the rules... :-D

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

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As the other user said, this is just the conspiracy politcs obsessed partisan weirdos would like for you to believe. After all, if their side is so benevolent and immigrant loving, why haven't they pushed any genuine immigration system reforms instead of just creating a captive subclass in the form of illegal immigrants? For instance, if Republicans are really so hateful of certain minorities, why do they not properl…

In the US, there is a path for PhD holders, to my knowledge, it's called EB-2.

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

#659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea here is that you can't just "declare bankruptcy" in Germany, it's a Process with checks and balances.

The US concept of bankruptcy is basically unimaginable in most (all?) of Europe. There's an old movie, The Edukators, where one of the protagonist is effectively broke and working a low wage job but has spent years already and has many years more left to pay off a debt she incurred by accidentally crashing into an expensive car without insurance. This situation is basically impossible in the US where the term "uncoll…

I don't know about other countries, but in Germany there is Privatinsolvenz which is a personal bankruptcy that would resolve this exact scenario.

Of course it would first be covered by mandatory insurance you have to have when driving a car (if you're not legally allowed to drive a car, well, you're on your own)

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

#660
My primary concern with establishing a company in Germany isn't the bureaucracy—it's the unreasonable exit tax. This tax feels like a trap because it's levied on the company's valuation, not its revenue, effectively anchoring businesses to Germany. I'm curious about the preferred destinations for entrepreneurs looking to avoid this issue. Do most opt for the Netherlands or Ireland, or is there another popular choice?
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