Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

paolino.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 789 posts

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

#701

Post by selfmodruntime »

moooo99 wrote: post #222
earcar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to find the mythical efficiency everyone was talking about. Trains, Berlin Brandenburg Airport, this. It's rules and adherence to rules, more than efficiency, that I've found in my experience.

> I have yet to find the mythical efficiency everyone was talking about. Comes down to a misrepresentation of history. Germans were never known to be efficient, they were known to be precise with everything, including bureaucracy. This happens to be handy with machinery, but not much else.

This was an advantage when bureaucracy was still young. It's a beast that only grows though.

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

#702

Post by selfmodruntime »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #54

> 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…

No one of your debtors - ever - will see any of these 25000. If you file for bankruptcy / insolvency, your insolvency manager and the processes of dissolving the company will swallow that money before it sees the light of day.

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

#703

Post by markvdb »

jeroenhd wrote: post #683
markvdb wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 re…

Of my many many acquaintances with Belgian CIT liable companies, exactly one used to do their own taxes. They still outsourced salary payment though. That is even trickier than taxes. There's an entire sector specialising in wage administration...

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

#704

Post by markvdb »

fmobus wrote: post #609
asyx wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like he said the GmbH is just the wrong legal form of his company. You can register a Kleingewerbe online over night and an UG within 2 weeks and that waiting period is only 2 weeks because it's such a simple and cheap process that notaries won't make time for you and they are busy people so you just take the next free slot they have in their calendar. So if you are lucky you can get an appointment the next day. My w…

Cool story bro. But this shouldn't require a notary. A sane country would handle this with a handful standardized forms of incorporation with clear rules, so that the majority of use cases that a normie might need is covered. All of this should be a few clicks on a gov webpage at most. Maybe some fee/deposit/whatever. Lawyers and notaries should only start showing up when people want complicated setups. (Yes I'm bitt…

This holds for Belgium too. The notary class here are overpaid self-dealing monopolists selling you mediocre service at best. We were just required to pay 801€ for a bog standard piece of paper. A web form would have served us better and more quickly. At least they've recently become a bit less hereditary than the last 200 years.

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

#705

Post by markvdb »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #696
nish1500 wrote: post #104

I've run a tech business on three continents, and nothing comes close to the Kafkaesque labyrinth of the German world. Everything is unbelievably complicated and over-engineered, and every layer is immune to change. Every rule was rational when it was added, and now everyone has a financial stake in continued complexity. The German notary is the highest-paid notary in the world, and the highest-earning professional i…

German notaries, unlike anywhere in the world, get a percantage of a done deal. That is just insane.

Same here.

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

#706

Post by WarmWash »

watwut wrote: post #660
hyhatqtv wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of similar “monopolies” in the EU they just value safely exploiting consumers more than rapid growth. Regardless US tech monopolies are almost as dominant in the EU as in they are in the US”. At least local companies wouldn’t syphon money to a different continent and could be regulated

American monopolies are not much regulated, they are entirely above the law. The legal system heavily biased toward rich corporations. I did not said europe does not have monopolies. I said America has "winner takes all" economy that systematically creates monopolies everywhere you look. It does not create competition, it creates what you call "incumbent". Americans look down on markets where middle sized companies c…

I think you may be conflating "dominant player(s)" with "monopoly". The US has close to zero monopolies if you disregard natural/patent/IP monopolies.

Its not illegal to have a product that consumers overwhelming prefer over the competitors. Google was ruled a monopoly because it was paying other services to default to Google. But it was ultimately foolish for Google because people given the choice still overwhelmingly picked Google.

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

#707

Post by nradov »

margalabargala wrote: post #652
nradov wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. Strong or weak has nothing to do with it. If you want to be protected then don't do business with undercapitalized counterparties. Everyone can make their own decision on acceptable level of financial risk. It's stupid for governments to dictate this.

How do you know if your counterpart is undercapitalized, though?

You're welcome to ask them for whatever evidence you like before agreeing to do business.

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

#708

Post by nradov »

hapless wrote: post #638
nradov wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. There shouldn't be any capital requirement just to get liability protections. No one is forcing counterparties to accept liabilities.

clearly german regulators and/or voters disagree, as is their right nevertheless it is very easy to start a business , and this man is complaining about an entirely separate problem (it is difficult to create and incorporate two shell companies)

How is that stagnant economy working out for Germans?

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

#709

Post by throwawayffffas »

You could register a limited liability company in Ireland for like 500 euros and a few days. Plus lower corporation taxes.

Why not a simple UG. Liability is limited to company assets so its the same no? If a UG looks bad, doesn't a UG & Co. KG look bad as well?

You can also just buy a clean ready made company. Also known as a shelf company.

Not an accountant but I believe before registering for VAT if you are still under the threshold you can charge anyone without VAT. The threshold for cross country transactions is 100k.

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

#710

Post by [deleted] »

notanormalnerd wrote: post #675
slopinthebag wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot believe there are people defending this.

What? So you should just be allowed to do as you please? Start with an eco-retreat on your winery. Then build out luxury apartments? Then where to go from here? Maybe get rid of the winery for a golf course? Creep your way into a luxury resort? Where is the line?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN