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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

#681

Post by therealdrag0 »

kazinator wrote: post #621
Aurornis wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> penalizes small players who want to start a company That's a barrier to entry; and who likes to perpetrate those? Why big, established companies who lobby the government.

Ya we don’t have those in America, wait—

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

#682

Post by Saline9515 »

pintxo wrote: post #658
Saline9515 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that 25k€ is too little for some types of businesses (say, a bridge architect), and way too much for others (say, selling spice mixes online). I don't get the "seriousness" memes in Germany, which sound more about gatekeeping than anything else. Why not require 1M€? This is serious! More serious! Meanwhile, they have companies likes Wirecard that went under in a day after it discovered a "hole" of…

It exists, it is called "UG", minimum capital 1€. You have to increase capital up to at least 25k though, out of your annual profits.

Why have a different category that sounds like "unserious" to german people? I can see people in procurement departments say "oh no, we don't deal with UG".

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

#683

Post by jeroenhd »

markvdb wrote: post #463
jeroenhd wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Registering a private limited liability company in the Netherlands costs around 400 euros. If you can file all of the taxes and other legally required paperwork yourself, you can be set up in a week or two. You will be a salaried employee of your own company, though, with a minimal salary you will need to rake in. The combination of "no personal risk whatsoever, minimal funds/risk coverage, maximal profit extraction"…

> If you can file all of the taxes and other legally required paperwork yourself, you can be set up in a week or two. Is realistic in the Netherlands to try and fulfill all formal paperwork requirements? In my native Belgian city, outsourcing that be from ~3k€ excluding VAT/year for the very simplest CIT liable structure. That's excluding 409.3€ corporate social security contribution and 148€ provincial tax. That mak…

People do it. I think the time and learning resources it takes to do it all yourself is probably not worth it for a company trying to make it big, especially if you stack your BV inside of a holding inside of a stichting to get something similar to the OP tax-avoidance-cum-risk-reduction strategy.

The risk of making a mistake and getting hit with a huge fine, as well as all the time wasted on crunching numbers and reading tax code, probably makes it very difficult to justify doing it yourself if you have a profitable business. If you do not make the money you need to make paying an accountant make sense, I think setting up a BV would probably not be the best approach.

Getting things like payslips right (you have to pay yourself a defined minimum wage and that means paying income tax and getting all the payslips correct if you set up a BV) may seem simple, but there's a reason companies pay good money to have that all taken care of. Just simple things like the possibility of a 53 week year can trip up someone who is just starting out.

But at the end of the day, plenty of people do their own paperwork, deliver the taxes themselves, and file the yearly required documents. It's neither impossible nor illegal to do it all yourself, just often unpopular.

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

#684

Post by woodpanel »

phlo wrote: post #441
fakedang wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the GmbH the most complex legal structure? What about the AG?

The author went with an UG nested in a KG as the legal structure. That's two legal entities. It's a neat workaround to avoid corporate taxes (the KG acts as a pass-through vehicle, for taxes and for liability), and avoid personal liability (which passes through the KG but stops at the UG). In comparison, AG and GmbH also shield their owners from liability, but require capital deposits and are subject to corporate tax…

It’s a typical holding structure. Mostly chosen in Germany to get tax-efficiency that’s on par internationally, ie for finding and selling shares to investors.

> It's a cool legal structure

No it’s not cool at all that you have to double down on the Byzantine-ness to get a reasonable amount of taxation, „investsbility“ and limited liability. Especially for digital products.

> eating your cake and having it too

This is so typical of our country, the passive aggressive condemnation of founders as greedy, and selfish to even desire fewer taxes and limited liability.

Well if in a couple of years all the German Blue Chips will celebrate their bicentennials, while all the moonshots are LLM-oneshotted outside of Germany, not even talking about „normal“ incorporations: who is going to finance our vast welfare state? Speaking about

> eating your cake and having it too

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

#685

Post by lschueller »

Luckily, it seems you do not plan to import physical goods... This would be a next round of applications, fees, registers and id numbers. There are several countries out there, offering to set up a company legally and in accordance to european legislation within a couple days.

The fees you paid, seem quite high tbh. In particular for notary and court reg. I have the impression that the rates in Berlin are quiet above average.

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

#686

Post by robocat »

watwut wrote: post #650
logifail wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US system is built to support entrepreneurship while the EU system broadly is to support the consumer and employee I disagree: the EU system broadly is there to support _the incumbants_ "Regulatory capture" is the less kind way to put it.

US system seems to facilitate quick creation of monopolies and then keeps them in power long term. There is quick competition, winner takes it all and then it is it forever.

Monopoly creation is a systemic outcome (e.g. network effects), and likely has little to do with the US specifically. The exception is IP laws like patents that grant monopolies (plus the international politics of trade that push those powers into other jurisdictions e.g. TPPA).

Also monopoly breakup is more affected by jurisdiction.

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

#688

Post by TulliusCicero »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #680
TulliusCicero wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans on the Internet will often heartily agree with foreigners about all kinds of things that are shit in America and need to be changed: public transit, walkability, health care costs, university costs, money in politics, lack of basic geographic knowledge, etc. Of course there are some more conservative folks who may be more resistant to those critiques, but the average American will just nod along. If you men…

Americans on the internet don't have confederate flags up and vote for Trump either. If you wanted to talk about how patriotism manifests on the internet, say so.

Americans IRL only rarely have Confederate flags these days. If you want to discuss the extreme right, say so.

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

#689

Post by lschueller »

lschueller wrote: post #685

Luckily, it seems you do not plan to import physical goods... This would be a next round of applications, fees, registers and id numbers. There are several countries out there, offering to set up a company legally and in accordance to european legislation within a couple days. The fees you paid, seem quite high tbh. In particular for notary and court reg. I have the impression that the rates in Berlin are quiet above…

Oh, and what I think is missing, are the fees for the mandatory membership in the industry and trade chamber (IHK) and of course the Berufsgenossenschaft. Especially the IHK is one of a kind... They are absolutely useless and a big bloated mess of self-governance, chaotic and really badly organized internally, but great at billing. When I've dealt with an attempt of fraud couple of years ago, I called them and asked if they have some kind of blacklists, guidelines or someone there, who could help in the case you get an business inquiry you suspect of being fraudulent. Thought, when i pay a yearly fee to them, maybe they have some experience with similar cases from other companies, who might reported attempta of fraud or fraudulent billing. Basically, one perso told me, they don't have a legal department, then I called the legal department directly, they forwarded me to the particular office, who again told me, he never heard of fraud attempts and he doesn't know if there is someone.. And this was the IHK in Hamburg. One of the largest chambers. Absolute joke.

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

#690

Post by DiscourseFan »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #680
TulliusCicero wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans on the Internet will often heartily agree with foreigners about all kinds of things that are shit in America and need to be changed: public transit, walkability, health care costs, university costs, money in politics, lack of basic geographic knowledge, etc. Of course there are some more conservative folks who may be more resistant to those critiques, but the average American will just nod along. If you men…

Americans on the internet don't have confederate flags up and vote for Trump either. If you wanted to talk about how patriotism manifests on the internet, say so.

Yeah but those guys are also complaining about shit and agree with people from outside who make those same complaints. Its just that they are wackos.
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