Well, create a company in Ireland. 5 days, €300 and you can send your invoices.
Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
271–280 of 789 posts
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't incorporate somewhere else it will only lead to disaster. The company will end up being German tax resident anyways due to management and control being in Germany as you live in Germany . Then you have to be compliant in 2 jurisdictions (file forms/balance sheets in both countries etc..) and worst case you could become subject to double taxation (if there is no agreement). The optimal solution is just to leave…
Can't you just incorporate a Wyoming LLC (zero corporate tax + federal tax because you're non-resident in the US) then just open a Wise account? Wyoming LLC gives passthrough taxation, and because you're in Germany, you'll be subject to German corporate and personal taxes alone, I presume? Edit: changed from just personal tax to personal+corporate
What should the US LLC do ?
It will end up being treated like a GMBH in Germany (keyword : Typenvergleich ) and you will have to do all the bureaucracy in the us + Germany and end up paying the same taxes
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
For a limited company in the UK, you need a number of pieces of legal paperwork which I think you can technically write yourself but may prefer a solicitor to draft them correctly for you, and then you pay £100 to register the company, and you (and any other directors, shareholders or guarantors) capitalise the company yourself. You are now limited in liability for what the company does, to no more than the capital y…
You don't need to use a lawyer to draw up the docs unless you have special requirements: you can use the proforma memorandum (it's auto-filled if you apply online) and adopt the model articles of association.
- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7da236e5274...
- https://www.gov.uk/guidance/model-articles-of-association-fo...
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#274> 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…
> A company that starts with nothing wouldn't be a GmbH (limited liability company), it would be a GoH (company without liability), and there's a good reason why those don't exist...
Those do exist in other countries. An LLC in the USA does not generally need to have a certain amount of assets. Such a company is more or less without liability until it has some assets; the worst case for its owners when it comes to a routine business debt is shutting down the company. Exceptions are possible in case of serious misconduct of course.
Of course a company like that will find it difficult to borrow money, but it's not rare for its last bills to go unpaid when it goes out of business.
Whether those should exist or not doesn't have a clear answer. Culturally, Germans tend to be pretty uncomfortable with "sometimes shit happens and debts go unpaid", while Americans tend to find a moderate rate of that sort of thing tolerable, especially if it makes starting a new business viable for a greater fraction of the population.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#275Mh, seems to me about ranting as some things went wrong.
With all due respect, founding a company shouldn’t be that easy; otherwise investors wouldn’t give you money for it. “UG” reads as “not serious” – no, that was in the past. Times have changed.
I’m not here to defend a big country that clearly has to do better, of course.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
The authors inability to understand this really makes wonder how much of the rest of their story is essentially self-inflicted.
They are jealous of the US system where you can create an LLC in one hour for $200, and by the next day be doing business with all your personal assets isolated.
The US system is built to support entrepreneurship while the EU system broadly is to support the consumer and employee. The US will never be able to match the EU's consumer and employee protections and the EU will never be able to match the US's ease of doing business, because to have one you have to fundamentally give in on the other.
Depending on who you ask, one system is wildly better than the other, but at the end of they day they are just different systems with different tradeoffs.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they are still a German tax resident , they are committing tax evasion . § 1 Abs. 1 KStG
It doesn't really matter. If you do business in Germany you are evading taxes just by the fact of doing business. Everything and anything you make belongs to the government. It is an unfortunate loophole in the law that temporarily permits you to steal some of your profit back from the government where it rightfully belongs. Yeah, this is sarcasm, but not really. The practical reality is that it simply makes no sense…
If you don't like the laws/rules then just leave Germany .
There is no justification for tax evasion .
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#278Before 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.
I've done it in 2018 and just needed to go to a notary to wet sign something (not KvK)
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#279> 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…
You call €25k liability? I just decided I won't work with a company that can't cover €25M in liability. Should the state force you to block that in your bank account just in case you want to work with me?
This is why insurance exists!
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Germany you need a notary in the us you don't.
The notary adds about a week to the process (2-3 hours of your time, plus the time to wait for the appointment), and about $1000 (depends on how much money you put in the company). And for "standard" setups you can skip the lawyer and simply use the templates and "free" legal advice from the notary (free as in "included in the notary fee you have to pay anyways") Yes, it's more involved than an online form. But in th…
Why do Europeans put up with that notary nonsense? Ideally almost all notary jobs should be destroyed.