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Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

paolino.me

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Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

#171

Post by earcar »

eqvinox wrote: post #161
earcar wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are specialized lawyers that maintain a pool of freshly founded GmbH's for you to buy It doesn't sound easy nor cheap to buy a company and change the company name. UG & Co. KG has a couple of advantages and while it did add some money and time to the table, it doesn't change the story. Notaries in the US are the price of a dinner. Many people have waited up to 6 months to receive their VAT ID from Berlin.

> from Berlin That's your problem right there. If you live in Berlin, take the 2 hours and go to Hamburg or Leipzig before doing anything that needs a working bureaucracy.

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe there was an issue with the "place of effective management" or perhaps the company address not being in your federal state.

Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

#172

Post by weinzierl »

flopbob wrote: post #133
weinzierl wrote: post #126

Not to defend German bureaucracy but if you are serious and want results this is not how you do it. If you want a GmbH quickly there are specialized lawyers that maintain a pool of freshly founded GmbH's for you to buy. Everything is set up for you to start. If you don't like certain things like the company name, you can always change it later. That being said, I know plenty of people who founded their GmbH themselve…

Especially the combination of UG & Co KG. Never heard that one!

Yes, my suspicion is that OP went to a lawyer and said: "I want to minimize my risk as much as possible, what do I do?"

And of course, lawyers being lawyers, answered you need to wear both a belt and suspenders. This is the answer you'd expect from a lawyer. It is your responsibility as a founder to do the risk assessment. The fact that almost no one wears both a belt and suspenders might have been a hint.

Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

#173

Post by carlosjobim »

VadimPR wrote: post #8

Before Europe gets lumped in as one country, founding a company in Netherlands and Sweden, speaking from personal experience, is a breeze. Although Sweden is a bit strange in the fact that banks have as much equal say as the government authority does in you starting a company, and if they don't want you as a customer, they can simply deny the right for your company to start!

Legally, the banks in Sweden have no right to deny anybody as a customer. This is explicit in the law as a requirement for the bank to be covered by government depositors insurance.

In practice banks will deny anybody to open an account, for no reason at all, because they are above the law in Sweden. The country has for a long time been owned by a few powerful banker families.

Edit: Down voters might first want to look at Wikipedia for the Wallenberg family. This is as much part of Swedish culture as IKEA or meatballs.

I challenge anybody to find a country in modern history which is more owned and controlled by bankers than Sweden.

Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

#174

Post by noosphr »

When these threads show up it is always funny that Germans are shocked anyone expects anything else and everyone is shocked at Germany.

Luckily with how the current German economy is doing this is a problem that will solve itself. It's like the last half a dozen German governments look at the Morgenthau Plan plan and thought it was an amazing idea they must implement.

Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

#175

Post by farbklang »

"To some clients, 'UG' reads as 'not serious.'" -> more of a sales isssue

Consulting or dev work doesn't need deep capital. we're insured for X if Y happens. A UG is fine. The "not serious" label only sticks because founders keep caving to it.

Let the client adapt to your setup, not the reverse. If their compliance department doesn't get it, that's a gap to close, evry time you stand your ground, you normalize the UG for the next founder.

Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

#176

Post by MEMORYC_RRUPTED »

yoavm wrote: post #74
VadimPR wrote: post #8

Before Europe gets lumped in as one country, founding a company in Netherlands and Sweden, speaking from personal experience, is a breeze. Although Sweden is a bit strange in the fact that banks have as much equal say as the government authority does in you starting a company, and if they don't want you as a customer, they can simply deny the right for your company to start!

I've also done it both in Sweden and the Netherlands. Sweden is a breeze if you have BankID, sure (and as you said, if the bank likes you). The Netherlands wasn't exactly a breeze — I had to book a face-to-face appointment with KVK and all the slots in Amsterdam were taken, so I took the train about an hour away.

Unsure how long ago this was, but I recently registered with KvK and didn't have to show up at all, just pay 80-ish euros.

Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

#178

Post by Medowar »

earcar wrote: post #109
robtro wrote: post #65

Germany is one of the worst countries when it comes to bureaucracy nothing is fast here if you go the legal path and stay within the law (which is mostly for small people big players have different ways) and as you see everything costs a lot so if you are founding a pure online business do yourself a favor and incorporate somewhere else and if you still live in Germany look into licensing or subcontracting yourself t…

I have yet to find the mythical efficiency everyone was talking about. Trains, Berlin Brandenburg Airport, this. It's rules and adherence to rules, more than efficiency, that I've found in my experience.

The efficiency is a thing of the past, an mainly when dealing with manufacturing, which we were really good at.

The world got faster, but german industries and politics never got the memo.

Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

#179

Post by earcar »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #167

> My first company, Freshflow, is valuable enough that walking out of Germany would trigger a massive six-figure exit tax, on gains I have not even realised, purely for the privilege of leaving. Without this "exit tax", every founder of a successful business would have a huge incentive to leave and to realize the gains elsewhere. It's not a tax for the privilige of leaving, but for the privilege of building a company…

It should be possible to move within Europe, then when the liquidity event happens tax me from the countries where I've lived, proportionally to the time I've lived there.

If you want to move out of Europe, you get the exit tax as before.

Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice

#180

Post by arethuza »

rob74 wrote: post #165

> Which leaves the only real question. Why 25,000 at all? It is my company and my risk. If I want to start with nothing, that is my call, not a toll the state collects before it will let me try. And the cheap door has a price of its own: to some clients, “UG” reads as “not serious,” and they would rather deal with a GmbH. The structure built to let me in quietly marks me for using it. The 25,000 is there to make sure…

When I co-founded a company in the UK in 1995 there were two £1 shares - one for each founder. Mind you it was an off the shelf company - but the process couldn't really be much simpler back then - and its probably a lot simpler now.
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