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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

#411

Post by CPLX »

paulsutter wrote: post #391
Zak wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the impression the situations where that actually happens are at least arguably serious misconduct, and usually targeted at someone with significant assets. A construction company that pockets ten million dollars and doesn't build anything probably can't shield its owner this way, but a single-developer software consultancy that pockets ten thousand dollars and delivers buggy code can.

While extreme cases are the easiest to imagine, in real life the plaintiff almost always argues to pierce the veil and the defendant always argues the opposite, and both sides earnestly believe that they are right.

Yeah but the veil doesn’t get pierced that’s super rare, which is more important than everyone’s emotional state.

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

#413

Post by dgellow »

whazor wrote: post #10
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!

In Germany it might be easier to open a company remotely via Estonia

No, it’s generally a pretty terrible idea. Germany applies taxes based on the place where a company is managed. If you live in Germany and remotely manage your Estonian company then you’re expected to pay your corporate and other company taxes in Germany. The overhead of managing the international situation is more complicated than opening a company in Germany to be honest

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

#414

Post by davedx »

mplappert wrote: post #297

There’s a lot of confusion here: - There is no double taxation if you just pay yourself a salary (since it’s a normal business expense). If you want to take money out of the company flexibly, a GmbH is the wrong structure. - I’ve never heard of anybody doing an UG/GmbH + KG to get started. This is highly unusual. Most people either do just a simple UG or maybe they set up a holding structure with two separate GmbH /…

> The standard way to reduce liability risk is to get liability insurance

Exactly! That's what I do in the Netherlands. It's also common to cover this contractually too - you can negotiate where liability falls for many cases.

Getting a limited liability company for a one-person operation is just overkill.

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

#415

Post by esterna »

egorfine wrote: post #244
ExpertAdvisor01 wrote: post #147

Earlier 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…

While I won't dispute that 6 months is outrageous, OP has not spent them to "please the bureaucracy", they spent them to escape personal liability should the company go bankrupt. The rest of the post is bemoaning the fact the German government won't let them also permanently reduce the company liability below 25k.

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

#416

Post by Zufriedenheit »

solatic wrote: post #320
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…

This is not an argument that founders should seed 25k EUR to cover liability, it's an argument that GmbH bank account amounts should be visible publicly. If I want to put in a catering order, the catering business does not need 25k EUR to cover liability. If I want to build a data center, 25k EUR is not nearly enough.

All GmbH are mandated to publish their financial statements in Germany. Its on Bundesanzeiger a government website which of course takes a fee again…

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

#417

Post by kuschku »

notpushkin wrote: post #386
earcar wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have founded a UG and upgraded to a GmbH before. It had got us "more credibility" with our clients, and 12,500EUR less in each other's bank accounts. Thanks for your insults.

Don’t let the insults get to you. But yeah, obviously, the more capital you pay in, the more “credible” your company looks. The whole concept of limited liability means that if your company capital is X €, the creditors can only get the X € (unless you do something stupid, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil ). The fact that the minimum capital amount is so high in Germany is bonkers to me.

The minimum capital amount is 1€, that's the entire point of the UG, to encourage entrepreneurship.

The intended path for the upgrade from UG to GmbH is that once the UG makes a profit, this should be used to save up the 25k€ and convert to a GmbH once it's reached.

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

#418

Post by kuschku »

Zufriedenheit wrote: post #416
solatic wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an argument that founders should seed 25k EUR to cover liability, it's an argument that GmbH bank account amounts should be visible publicly. If I want to put in a catering order, the catering business does not need 25k EUR to cover liability. If I want to build a data center, 25k EUR is not nearly enough.

All GmbH are mandated to publish their financial statements in Germany. Its on Bundesanzeiger a government website which of course takes a fee again…

It's also available in the Handelsregister, which is available for free.

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

#419

Post by echoangle »

keiferski wrote: post #372
echoangle wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consumer return policies, customer service, etc. tend to be much better in the US than in the EU. Maybe the ones voluntarily offered by companies, but not the legal ones.

Not sure if that matters much. Only the actual end result does. The better policies given by US companies is also likely driven by competition, so by definition they wouldn't be something that a government regulation could accomplish (other than to incentivize more competition.)

It does because for one you can go to court. If a company stops playing nice because they think you’re defrauding them if you tell them your package went missing during transit, company niceness doesn’t get you anything. (That’s a random example btw, I don’t know how this is handled legally in the US. The point is that there are situations where you actually want the law on your side).

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

#420

Post by matwood »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #285
matwood wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yep, and it’s still worth it for a multitude of reasons. Business formation is easy in the US, and taxes are generally lower than other places. Current administration not withstanding, most people don’t want to leave once they get to the US.
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