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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

#771

Post by hnbad »

fxtentacle wrote: post #442

This article seems to be new, but the info in it appears to be very outdated. 1. Most startups now create an UG which has most of the GmbH benefits and protections, but only negligible cost. 2. The handelsregister website is deprecated. It's replacement is quite nice and fast. Their section 2b also doesn't apply for UG because it's so cheap there is no need for trickery. Their section about issues finding a bank seem…

It's also not mentioning that incorporating (or being an Einzelunternehmer exceeding €600k) means you need to do formal accounting (Bilanzierung) which is a lot more involved than what any non-expert should handle personally so you will need a tax adviser to avoid severe fines for easy bookkeeping mistakes.

That's another factor when deciding whether to go for a UG/GmbH or Einzelunternehmer. That said, the costs are based on revenue so you'll ease into it, it's just another cost to be aware of.

Oh, and if you hire anyone for any editorial or creative work and they're not doing it as a UG/GmbH, be aware of Künstlersozialkasse payments (which you have to handle yourself unprompted). You'll usually get a visit by the Deutsche Rentenkasse after about 3 years for an audit and they'll be very unhappy if you didn't pay your dues.

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

#772

Post by AmericanChopper »

miracle2k wrote: post #764
SeanLuke wrote: post #735

For those of you griping about German bureaucracy I urge you to come to Italy to learn just how good you have it. My wife is Italian and wanted to get married in her small home town. In order for her to get married to an American in her home town required paperwork that bordered on the Kafkaesque. We had to show up at the Italian embassy in Washington DC (fortunately we live there!) with proof and witnesses that I wa…

It's actually somewhat similar in Germany. You need a Ehefähigkeitszeugnis , essentially that document proving that you are not married yet. You would have needed to get this from the US. Because most countries don't have that sort of document (including the US), you then instead need to apply to your local Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court) for an exemption. All the way, any foreign government documents need…

> Because most countries don't have that sort of document (including the US)

They don’t? I thought this was a pretty standard sort of document to get…

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

#773

Post by hnbad »

Valodim wrote: post #659
throw__away7391 wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

FWIW Privatinsolvenz is not instant although the duration was shortened from the very excessive 7 years down to a more reasonable 3 years. During insolvency you're also prohibited from founding/owning companies or freelancing, though.

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

#774

Post by jonathanstrange »

Baguette5242 wrote: post #693
jonathanstrange wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly what I was referring to in my previous post: _I am tired of the pretentious western europe politics/administration point of view that immediately ranks everything (including good ideas) coming from Asia/global South as "not transposable to Europe" or just "not as good as our ways"._ Did you live in China as an immigrant, did you settle down there for several years, did you have to go through their immigration…

It's not pretentious to trust officially published statistics more than anecdotal opinions from random strangers on the internet, and since we're talking about a difference of several orders of magnitude no further arguments why the comparison makes no sense are needed in this case.

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

#775

Post by hobs »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #772
miracle2k wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually somewhat similar in Germany. You need a Ehefähigkeitszeugnis , essentially that document proving that you are not married yet. You would have needed to get this from the US. Because most countries don't have that sort of document (including the US), you then instead need to apply to your local Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court) for an exemption. All the way, any foreign government documents need…

> Because most countries don't have that sort of document (including the US) They don’t? I thought this was a pretty standard sort of document to get…

It is, the GP is wrong, its called a Statement Of No Marriage, many states can provide this.

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

#776

Post by vereinbar »

croes wrote: post #755
vereinbar wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tax Foundation simply presents the data collected by the OECD[1]. You don't have to trust them. >Social security and pesnions aren't financed by taxes, in Germany taxes are not earmarked for a specific purpose. This is wrong. Because the pension contributions are not enough to cover the payments, every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions. The German pension system is effectively bankrol…

> Because the pension contributions are not enough to cover the payments, every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions. Because the pension contributions are used for non-insurance benefits that should actually be paid for by all taxpayers, such as the mothers' pension or the equalization of pensions for retirees in East and West Germany. BTW "every year billions from the tax revenue is used t…

>If you want to compare you need the total costs of living not the tax burden. >Incredibly high taxes? Denmark has higher taxes.

Why would you compare total cost of living to find which country has the higher taxes? It doesn't make sense. Besides, you claimed Denmark had higher taxes. It has been proven that it was wrong.

>Tax burden is just leverage to help companies and harm workers.

I would like to hear how you reached this conclusion.

>just because it's a tax in Autralia you can't simply count it as a tax in Germany.

Yes you can, if your goal is to make a fair comparison between countries. The OECD uses it for measuring the tax burden on income. Especially because, the countries like Germany use 'creative labelling' to hide how much money they collect each year.

>Because the pension contributions are used for non-insurance benefits that should actually be paid for by all taxpayers, such as the mothers' pension or the equalization of pensions for retirees in East and West Germany. BTW "every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions" proves social security and pension contributions aren't taxes. Tax money is a subsidy not the main source.

You've just proven my point. Because the money can be easily shuffled around, in practice, it is no different than income tax.

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

#777

Post by hnbad »

imtringued wrote: post #510
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The duration for private bankruptcy was recently cut to 3 years so it's a bit faster now at least.

For corporations there's an entire process but in simple terms the company is handed over to an externally appointed handler who tries to generate liquidity by selling off all assets and contacting all debtors and creditors. The company might recover through the process (e.g. by finding an investor) but legally the corporation is frozen and substituted by a separate corporation that only exists to resolve its bankruptcy. If the corporation no longer has any assets, it can also be fast-tracked for being dissolved.

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

#779

Post by kome »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #741
SeanLuke wrote: post #735

For those of you griping about German bureaucracy I urge you to come to Italy to learn just how good you have it. My wife is Italian and wanted to get married in her small home town. In order for her to get married to an American in her home town required paperwork that bordered on the Kafkaesque. We had to show up at the Italian embassy in Washington DC (fortunately we live there!) with proof and witnesses that I wa…

> then even though I wrote the vows myself in Italian, just because I am American we had to have it translated by someone else back into English, by hand, just so I understood the vows I had myself written. We then had to contract someone to read the vows out loud in English at the ceremony so I understood my own words. I badly want to learn the historical reason for this insistence that non-Italian-speaking foreigne…

In Hungarian courts a contract that you cannot read is invalid, or at least, highly contestable in court. So translations are needed. I guess it must be the same in many other jurisdictions.

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

#780

Post by GrumpySloth »

askonomm wrote: post #747
GrumpySloth wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by that? Did Finland change location over time? Also, two Eastern European countries that I have first-hand knowledge of: Poland and Estonia are much more digitised and efficient at those things than Germany (and, from what GP wrote, it seems Finland as well?).

I don't know why does everyone on HN think that Estonia is Eastern Europe when it is actually Northern Europe ( https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe ). All of the Baltic countries are Northern.

A subset of Northern Europe is in Eastern Europe. They’re not disjoint. In particular all Baltic countries are in Eastern Europe (as is visible on the map in the article you linked to (CIA World Factbook)) Eastern Europe has been historically defined by the Iron Curtain. Other definitions are fairly arbitrarily just trying to put a line somewhere on the map without regard for history and its effects on culture and politics.
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