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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

#501

Post by rurban »

Well, he used a popular trick to use LG and Co KG as two seperate entities, usually in the combination GmbH & Co KG. Which is in my eyes unethical and complicated, but tax instructors favor that scheme to limit liabilities. Selbst Schuld. In my own companies I never spent more than I had, and never feared liabilities taking away my personal income. Never needed a lawyer, notar or such leachers. Everything can easily be googled. Could write invoices after two weeks. It needs much longer to get an internet connection.

Germans are crazy taking you to court, but it's not as risky as in the US.

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

#502

Post by dyauspitr »

Aurornis wrote: post #473
rayiner wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. In the US this condition is handled at the back end. Running a corporation or LLC without sufficient capitalization can be grounds for piercing the liability shield in a lawsuit.

> Running a corporation or LLC without sufficient capitalization can be grounds for piercing the liability shield in a lawsuit. Which is exactly how it should be handled, IMO: Deal with the abuse situations directly. Forcing new companies to capitalize with an arbitrary amount of money at time of founding penalizes small players who want to start a company. It's also not a hurdle at all for large players who want to…

Is the gmbh pierce proof? Because then I like the situation where if you start with $25,000 under no circumstance can they get past the liability shield.

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

#504

Post by sliqqq »

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…

100% agreed! Reality is, many german businesses are just flying under the radar, as they simply dont want or cannot deal with all the tax crazyness and bureaucracy.

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

#505

Post by nekusar »

Zak wrote: post #335
rayiner wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. In the US this condition is handled at the back end. Running a corporation or LLC without sufficient capitalization can be grounds for piercing the liability shield in a lawsuit.

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.

Thats cause the software and computing industry early on, disclaimed all liability.

"Computers are hard, yo!". It devalues the profession.

And I thought no liability was bad enough... But no. Now its LLMs and " for entertainment purposes only". I take it management and leadership also read that, and don't give one fuck.

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

#506

Post by Chu4eeno »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #221
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.

As far as I understand, the US taxes its citizens whereever they live (the third alternative I mentioned).

There's various exclusions and credits to avoid double taxation.

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

#507

Post by frugalmail »

keiferski wrote: post #293
_fat_santa wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I think this is a false dichotomy. Consumer return policies, customer service, etc. tend to be much better in the US than in the EU. I would characterize it rather that the US is pro-business and pro-consumer, but somewhat anti-average worker.

This is the result of the US embracing capitalism more than Germany. The market has set minimum expectations, but outliers with other benefits can have an opportunity to thrive until they have an opportunity to meet those minimum expectations.

Although, this is rapidly changing. Places like California are putting in similar regulatory barriers and excessive minimum taxation.

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

#508

Post by frugalmail »

9dev wrote: post #435
WarmWash wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the major reasons US consumers shop with megacorp over small business is because of the no hassle returns.

Exactly my point. In Germany I can order from the smallest of webshops without even reading their return policy, because I am guaranteed favourable terms by law.

So the person that wants to sell that ultra-unique item that isn't produced by mega-corp, and the person that wants to buy that ultra-unique item despite unfavorable return policies never gets their needs met.

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

#509

Post by weinzierl »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #365
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…

> If you want a GmbH quickly there are specialized lawyers that maintain a pool of freshly founded GmbH's for you to buy. The fact that this absurd situation exists is a huge proof that the bureaucracy has gotten out of hand and that Germany is unfriendly to starting new businesses.

Well, German bureaucracy is out of hand but selling freshly founded (or sometimes deliberately aged) companies to speed up and ease the founding process is neither absurd nor uncommon. I think the business of selling shelf companies exists to some degree everywhere.

I makes a lot of sense too. This is a one-time fee for something you gain nothing from and you learn nothing useful from.

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

#510

Post by mindjiver »

rapatel0 wrote: post #259
Lariscus wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The authors inability to understand this really makes wonder how much of the rest of their story is essentially self-inflicted.

In america, we have liability insurance. Is this not a thing in germany?

It is, I guess it's depending what you wish to achieve. I'm a independent software consultant based in Germany (no employees etc, also not selling any SaaS or anything) and I've got a liability insurance to cover any mess ups.
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