> “No,” said the lawyer. German company names have to be distinctive, and “Plenty” is a plain English word. Berlin would reject it.
Good.
Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
281–290 of 789 posts
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#282> 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. But it was his call. As the author has already pointed out, he could have started a sole proprietorship, but he did not want to take on that risk. The 25'000 is because it's not his risk if he starts a GmbH, it's the GmbH's r…
I can't verify if the author's attempts are even real tbh. Sounds like they were creating problems for themselves just to see how much it would cost to get sort them out. For a GmbH you also want to get an accountant and just delegate the whole process to people who can guide you before you hurt yourself.
Yeah, this reads to me like "I made some weird decisions, and now I'm upset they resulted in a weird situation." My feeling is that starting a GmbH is relatively simple, quick, and cheap, so it's not worth trying to engineer some workaround to problems that most likely didn't exist in the first place.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#283> 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…
The trust in a company should still be left to the criteria of suppliers, customer, etc. Not the random number that a bureaucrat pulled out of his arse.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#284Fascinating, and useful for those of us considering starting up in DE.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#285> 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…
A fourth alternative is to leave, and a fifth is to not start a company at all. Now you understand why the USA deploys 3-4x the amount of VC capital compared to the EU. And prior to the current administration, entrepreneurs mostly wanted to get to the US.
Are you aware that the US charges an exit tax if you choose to renounce your citizenship? And if you do not renounce it, they will tax you no matter where you live in the world?
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
You phrase this as if it’s absurd. Why should it be possible to offshore your future capital gains without paying an exit tax? You live in a country with a tax system that assumes people pay into it.
[flagged]
Your question is more well formed if you challenge the premise that the tax you owe should scale linearly with the value of your assets. Obviously a business benefits from things the state provides, and the business should pay it's share to cover those costs. Maybe, honestly, even a little extra.
The challenge is if someone makes a software company, and a team of 20 workers on computers create a €10B business, does the state have a fair claim to €5B of it when the company at most with the most generous possible estimate (and then double it for good measure) used €50M of state services?
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#287Germany 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 do not know an EU or Asian country that doesn’t have a similar paperwork misery; I had a company in DE and in many others; you won’t survive in Spain as SL if you are small and follow the rules either. So literally no one does. No different in DE. We never got fined or even reprimanded. Largest fine in DE we got was for charging the wrong VAT for some items and that was not really that bad compared to all the tax b…
As far as I know, incorporating a BV in the Netherlands can be done in 1-2 weeks, with a lot of less pain. Many services are integrated and available online.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#288Germany 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…
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…
> The optimal solution is just to leave Germany
Just go to one of them Baltic states. They actually have a functioning electronic ids and other necessary infrastructure.
There’s no reason to live in Germany if you’re working with international clients.
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#289The EU is a single market, just form an entity in the quickest and easiest state to form it, open a bank account, payment processor and you’re off to the races, as long as you can accept Euros directly people are fine?
Who are these people that care
“Oh you don’t have a GmBH, oh your share capital is so low ohhh ho ho ho ho”
Re: Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can't send an invoice
#290Germany 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 do not know an EU or Asian country that doesn’t have a similar paperwork misery; I had a company in DE and in many others; you won’t survive in Spain as SL if you are small and follow the rules either. So literally no one does. No different in DE. We never got fined or even reprimanded. Largest fine in DE we got was for charging the wrong VAT for some items and that was not really that bad compared to all the tax b…
Estonia makes it very easy.