[HN Gopher] How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps a...
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How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain
Author : olieidel
Score : 174 points
Date : 2024-04-07 08:51 UTC (14 hours ago)
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| bouncing wrote:
| Not to brag, but there are so few things to actually feel some
| civic pride for in America, and business registration is one of
| them, so I guess we have that.
|
| I can get an IRS EIN (tax ID), register an LLC, obtain a sales
| tax license (only required for selling stuff), and open a
| business checking account in about 2 hours in Colorado. Someone
| who knows what they're doing and doesn't spend time researching
| banking options could probably get it all done in 30 minutes.
|
| Alternatively, a legal services company will do it all for you
| for about $500. If you have partners and want multiple
| shareholders, the price jumps to about $1000, but you can also do
| that on your own.
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| Unless you're opening companies on a daily basis to evade taxes
| or whatever, I fail to see why you would need the process to be
| that fast. Because with such short delays, nobody will have
| actually checked anything, so the only winners are fraudsters,
| in the end.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Every little speed bump you put in the way will deter some
| people on the margin.
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| If you have 25kEUR of capital but get flustered because the
| state wants to make sure that you are not opening a shell
| company for someone else and that your articles of
| incorporation are legally valid, then maybe you need to
| rethink something.
| _dain_ wrote:
| I disagree. 25k euro is simultaneously a large and not a
| large amount of money. It's big enough to lock out many
| potential small business founders. But also many ordinary
| inexperienced people can have that amount of money up
| front, yet still be deterred by the complexity of a 6
| week long incorporation process as described in this
| article. Especially in the early days of a company when
| your stress level is already through the roof dealing
| with the actual problems of your new business.
|
| I am generally suspicious of rhetoric like "you're a
| little well off, so we can heap arbitrary amounts of
| bullshit on you and you shouldn't complain".
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| > It's big enough to lock out many potential small
| business founders.
|
| They can open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship)
| instead. You shouldn't (and cannot) go all the way to the
| complexities of a GmbH (LLC) if your company is that
| tiny.
|
| > But also many ordinary inexperienced people can have
| that amount of money up front, yet still be deterred by
| the complexity of a 6 week long incorporation process as
| described in this article.
|
| Back to my point then. If they're not ready to put up
| with okay-ish bureaucratic friction in the founding
| phase, they're not ready to open a company. Because if
| you think opening the company is hard, wait until payroll
| or tax season is upon you.
|
| > I am generally suspicious of rhetoric like "you're a
| little well off, so we can heap arbitrary amounts of
| bullshit on you and you shouldn't complain".
|
| You're completely mischaracterizing what I said. Don't do
| that.
| _dain_ wrote:
| _> They can open an Einzelunternehmen (sole
| proprietorship) instead._
|
| Sole proprietorship doesn't have liability protection.
| That's not a small thing.
|
| _> You shouldn't (and cannot) go all the way to the
| complexities of a GmbH (LLC) if your company is that
| tiny._
|
| "[Thing] is too complex, don't bother with it" is not an
| argument against making [thing] less complex. It's
| actually just a restatement of the problem!
|
| Other countries make it easy to set up a limited company.
| UK, US, Singapore, they're all just a token fee and a
| handful of forms. I see no reason for Germany to make it
| so difficult as described in the article.
|
| A lot of successful companies were started by broke
| college grads out of their dorms; they would never have
| gotten off the ground if they had to scrounge together
| the equivalent 25k euros before even getting started.
| Hell, _I_ don 't have a spare 25k lying around and I've
| been working full time for 4 years.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| You can create a UG (haftungsbeschrankt) with all the
| lability protection of a GmbH with 1EUR capital.
| bouncing wrote:
| I had my first LLC in grade school over a summer. I
| didn't make a ton of money, but I did earn enough for my
| first real computer, which launched my interest in
| programming.
|
| When my wife started her current business as a
| consultant, she was living off her savings from teaching
| high school. If you think every entrepreneur has EUR25k
| of capital, you need to reevaluate what your country
| thinks of entrepreneurship.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Why did that need limited liability though? In Germany
| you'd just become an entrepreneur with a simpler company
| type without limited liability.
| bouncing wrote:
| So your liability is limited. That's like asking why you
| need a seatbelt.
|
| You can get the simple company type (disregarded entity)
| and all the advantages of limited liability with an LLC.
| paleotrope wrote:
| Do you want to take the risk of losing your home just to
| start a business?
| Scarblac wrote:
| Maybe the real difference is that such things might be
| possible in the US, but sound laughable in Europe?
|
| What would you need to mess up to be liable for huge sums
| as a single consultant company?
| xenospn wrote:
| There's tax benefits and other business-only products
| that require a business entity.
|
| Imagine if you're a consultant and for whatever reason,
| you get sued or worse. That's what the LLC is for.
| bouncing wrote:
| It's unlikely you'll lose it all, but suppose you write a
| clever app -- maybe a cvs editor.
|
| Suppose you find out your cvs editor infringes on a
| patent and you're liable. Suppose some business suffers
| data loss and sues. These things do happen in Europe too.
|
| Also, it's just a matter of professionalism. A sole
| proprietor isn't very professional and many medium-size
| businesses won't do business with sole proprietorships.
| martijnvds wrote:
| You can probably get insurance for that.
| twixfel wrote:
| The UK is in Europe and it is easy to found an LLC. In
| the UK for example, there is no capital requirement at
| all. That's a lot les than 25kEUR.
| upvota wrote:
| _Was_ in Europe.
| dpassens wrote:
| What continent did they move to instead?
| twixfel wrote:
| Europe is a continent. They're not in the EU. If being in
| the EU is a requirement to be in Europe: that means
| Switzerland is not in Europe?
| nolist_policy wrote:
| Personal insolvency sucks, but you won't actually loose
| your home here in Germany.
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| As explained in the article, if you don't have 25kEUR of
| capital, then you open an Einzelunternehmen (sole
| proprietorship), not a GmbH (LLC). It's a _much_ simpler
| process.
| bouncing wrote:
| There are a lot of reasons not to form a sole
| proprietorship. You have personal liability, for one.
| tdullien wrote:
| A GmbH is _not_ like an LLC, it 's more like a Delaware
| C-Corp. People forget this all the time.
| ufocia wrote:
| Why Delaware?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| You can also create an UG (haftungsbeschrankt) which is
| basically a GmbH with the 25kEUR requirement removed. The
| only drawback is that this can make the operation look
| less trustworthy, depending on whom you are dealing with.
|
| If you are selling Hot Dogs, nobody will bat an eye if
| it's a UG, but if you apply for a big software contract,
| people might be wary.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Presumably the UG is still preferable to being a sole
| trader when dealing with much larger customers. Is that
| right? Or does providing services in your own name come
| across as more trustworthy to those parties?
| ufocia wrote:
| I'm skeptical that an at most 25kEUR recovery would
| alleviate weariness of a big software contract without
| additional due diligence.
|
| It seems to me that a sole proprietorship would do more
| to protect against counterparty risk, i.e. more of the
| person's assets would be available to satisfy the debt.
|
| My guess is that counterparties prefer a limited
| liability partner to arguably insulate themselves from
| employment liabilities.
| bildung wrote:
| And yet the self-employment rate in Germany seems to be
| higher than in the US:
| https://genderdata.worldbank.org/indicators/sl-emp-self-
| zs/?...
| tticvs wrote:
| Most self-employed people in Germany operate as
| "Kleinunternehmer" and therefore lack the liability
| protections provided by the LLC equivalent discussed in
| the article. It's apples to oranges.
| lttlrck wrote:
| That depends how they defined self-employed. It could
| vary widely based on which vehicle was used, LLC, LTD,
| sole-proprietor. And LLC and LTD is ambiguous, yet easy
| to attain outside Germany.
| shaism wrote:
| I think the time is not necessarily the issue. The issue is
| that everything is very manual and "analog" in Germany. You
| have to find a notary, register the "Gewerbe" at the
| Gewerbeamt, get a tax ID, and so forth. All are different
| processes with different institutions.
|
| In theory, you can do the notarization online, but when I
| attempted to do it, the first notary did not even reply, and
| the second one told me: "The system is currently down. I
| would need to come to the office."
|
| In the US, you can just use Stripe Atlas or similar services,
| and get everything done for $500 in a nice digital interface
| within 2 or 3 days. But even if it took 2 weeks, it wouldn't
| matter much because one doesn't have to put time and energy
| into it whereas in Germany you have to contact people,
| coordinate, etc...
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| The friction is precisely the point.
| jimkoen wrote:
| It is and it isn't. The IHK registration is a sham, since
| they're a government protected cartel that don't even act
| in the interests of those they're supposed to guard (like
| Azubis).
| tverbeure wrote:
| These kind of frictions are typically not an exception.
| When I read this blog post about the steps to just start
| a business, I immediately assume that there'll be similar
| frictions during other steps. And indeed, the comments
| here talk about the difficulty to own a home when the
| money was already paid in October, how it can take up to
| 2 years to close down a company, or how there's a 30%
| exit tax even if you leave the country only for a few
| years.
|
| The friction that you seem to like has almost certainly
| cost Germany a good deal of jobs from people who decides
| that the hassle just wasn't worth it.
| bouncing wrote:
| Your individual identity is tied to the EIN, LLC, and bank
| account. I doubt it's that useful for tax evasion.
|
| Each little step of friction discourages some entrepreneurs
| and adds barriers to entry for incumbents to prevent
| competition.
|
| And just in general, not doing something very often is not a
| valid reason for making it needlessly expensive and time
| consuming.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| Ease of doing business is one of the top things to look at in
| any country.
|
| It's on law enforcement and regulators to counter fraudsters.
| Ordinary citizens should not bear pain because of them.
| logicchains wrote:
| When you have hundreds of millions of people in a country,
| there's a lot of companies being opened on a daily basis, and
| the time wasted on bureaucracy quickly adds up to a dent in
| overall national productivity.
| arp242 wrote:
| It doesn't need to be _that_ fast, but the process in some
| (or maybe even many?) EU countries is rather ridiculous, as
| described here.
|
| Anyone should be able to start a business, reasonably easily
| and cheaply - I feel it's a matter of basic freedom and
| liberty: you should be able to do what you bloody well want
| with your life, including starting a business. Basic
| protections to prevent the most egregious of abuse is fine,
| but mostly it's just about registration and paperwork.
|
| Having to pay tens of thousands of euros for limited
| liability so you don't risk getting completely assraped if
| your business fails is how you keep the poor plebs in their
| place. All of this is classic "one set of rules for the poor,
| another set of rules for the rich" type of stuff.
| anaidenov wrote:
| A seasoned fraudster or tax evader have all the experience,
| time, and resources to navigate and exploit the system
| regardless of the measures in place.
|
| On the other hand, an ordinary individual considering
| starting a new business, perhaps only a few times in their
| lifetime, may indeed be dissuaded from pursuing this venture.
|
| This issue mirrors the inefficacy of anti-money laundering
| policies, which, while intended to curb criminal activities,
| have a negligible impact estimated at merely 0.1%; but the
| global cost of implementing these policies exceeds their
| benefits of two orders of magnitude (see
| DOI:10.1080/25741292.2020.1725366 for details).
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| For anyone reading, here's a URL for the paper they are
| taking about:
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.
| 1...
| paulddraper wrote:
| Do you actually need to do it in 2 hours? No, of course not.
|
| And you probably won't do it that fast anyway. But that
| figure demonstrates the small amount of red tape.
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| What you are actually saying is that speed is only for
| criminals and anything honest must drag out for a long time.
| Neither are true.
|
| Starting this process should only require that they know
| their responsibilities, have identified themselves, and have
| fulfilled any obligations like payment. With government
| having our ID's and login/sig/payment tech, each step should
| be done in seconds. Then, some fraud prevention spotting
| obvious issues might add a bit more time. It should still be
| quick.
| cgh wrote:
| Canada is a little slower. It takes one day and $200 to
| incorporate:
|
| https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/corporations-canada/en/serv...
|
| For an extra $100, there's a four hour express service.
| tdullien wrote:
| Important to realize: A GmbH is much closer to a Delaware
| C-Corp than to an LLC.
| nwellnhof wrote:
| Yes, a GmbH is a corporation and mostly dissimilar to an LLC.
| In Germany, there's no such thing as an LLC, except for some
| professions. So if you want limited liability, you're only
| option is to incorporate.
| ufocia wrote:
| Why this fascination with Delaware? How are Delaware corps
| different from other states' corps?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Mostly, it's that Delaware's corporate law is more
| developed so investors have more certainty of what they are
| getting; this is also a self-reinforcing condition, since
| the preference for Delaware corps means more corporate
| issues get resolved under Delaware law.
| fl7305 wrote:
| What does the opposite look like in Germany? Meaning, shutting
| down a Gmbh?
|
| In Sweden, you can get this done in a matter of days, where you
| sell the shares of your corporation for the net value minus a fee
| of about $1000.
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| its one to 2 years of pain. my gmbh shut down also cost 15 000
| and ultimately led to me leaving the country.
| fl7305 wrote:
| That sucks. I can see how it costs thousands of euros per
| year to do the annual financial statements, but 15 000? Is
| that common, or were there special circumstances?
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| nothing special i think this is on the cheap side, does not
| even include lawyers or any huge fights, just a "normal"
| shut down. Remember you have to include work time of
| founders that would be spend earning money otherwise. If
| germany forces you to do 2 hours filling out forms for
| bullshit you have to include your hourly wage to get the
| total costs. Usually everything in germany assumes "work to
| deal with government bs" is free and does not exist, which
| is of course absurd.
| fl7305 wrote:
| Thanks. How much of the 15 000 was external costs to an
| accountant, public notaries, authorities, etc, and how
| much was the internal wages?
|
| The numbers I have seen for external costs range in the
| low thousands, but maybe that is wrong?
| izacus wrote:
| So you basically just made up a number to make it sound
| worse?
| leononame wrote:
| Ugh, tell me about it. I'm in the process of closing one and
| have been for 1.5 years now. I think we're close, but who
| knows. I certainly don't
| fl7305 wrote:
| In Sweden you can sell your company to a specialized
| company that will dissolve it for you (for example this
| one: https://www.standardbolag.com/services/liquidation).
| This can be done in a matter of 1-2 weeks.
|
| In Sweden, you can of course also choose to dissolve it
| yourself, but nobody does that since it takes years, and
| it's pretty cheap to let someone else take care of it for
| you.
|
| It sounds like the same service is not available on the
| market in Germany?
| globalise83 wrote:
| If not, my next question would be: what kind of process
| do you need to go through to sell a company in Germany?
| :)
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| i could not find the most important question while skim reading:
| does it have to be germany. i would rather sit in boiling water
| than found a company there again. you don't always have to move
| away completely to have a non germany company though i can also
| recommend that final step.
| bradhe wrote:
| Bingo. I live in Berlin. I know loads of folks who found
| Delaware corporations, use deel.com to work for them, and
| eventually found a GmbH when they need to.
| intelVISA wrote:
| Nice strategy, isn't it tough to get an LLC's bank setup
| without residency?
| vidarh wrote:
| It might be tough, but even 25 years ago, my worst case (in
| Norway) to get a US bank account was to find one that'd let
| me have the paperwork notarized at the US consulate. The
| next step up in difficulty was flying to the US and open it
| in person. It still limits your choice, but last time I was
| involved in it it was easier (we found a bank that had a
| branch in the country my then cofounder was in)
| johnloeber wrote:
| Not anymore. Online banks like Mercury will do it entirely
| remotely without any residency requirements, IIRC.
| ufocia wrote:
| You still need to put up with various levels of KYC.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Tangential question for third-country nationals in Berlin
| (like me right now): Does the Berlin immigration office
| readily give EU Blue Cards to people in that arrangement, or
| do they say it's really a form of self-employment because you
| own the company you're working for? And do the public health
| insurance funds treat this as employment or self-employment
| for purposes of qualifying for public health insurance, for
| people who don't yet have that?
|
| Of course, the immigration question wouldn't matter for other
| immigration situations like holding German or EU citizenship,
| German permanent residence or EU long-term permanent
| residence, family reunification permits, or anyone who
| actually gets explicit approval to be self-employed. And the
| health insurance question wouldn't matter for people
| switching from employment (with public health insurance) to
| self-employment.
| nicbou wrote:
| The freelance visa requires a local economic interest (a
| reason to live here), usually in the form of German
| customers. There is nothing mentioned about where the
| company is registered and it should not matter.
|
| Practically though, the immigration office's bureaucrats
| are by definition as far removed from entrepreneurship as
| they can be, and might struggle to reconcile the documents
| you have with the list of documents they are told to ask
| for.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Minimum initial share capital of EUR12,500 to found a company
| where liability is limited to the firm seems like a very
| regressive impediment to business. For comparison in the UK,
| there's a PS12 registration fee, and a PS1 (one pound) minimum
| initial share capital. It must put limited liability out of reach
| of so many people.
| davidw wrote:
| It's extremely regressive. I started an effort to reform things
| in Italy and... it kinda sorta got some actual results,
| although not quite as much as I'd hoped
|
| https://blog.therealitaly.com/2015/04/16/fixing-italy-a-litt...
|
| How many days of wages is 12,500 for the average worker? In the
| US, even for someone making minimum wage, you could pretty
| quickly cover the costs of forming an LLC, let alone someone
| making more.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Isn't that already an option in Italy with the SRL
| Semplificata and initial capital starting at 1EUR?
| _dain_ wrote:
| I think that guy's campaign is what resulted in SRL
| Semplificata in the first place
| davidw wrote:
| Yes, that's correct. Other people did the real, heavy
| lifting to get things done, but my idea caught their
| attention.
| davidw wrote:
| Yes, I lit the fuse on that. I took a look at your site and
| the first thing I saw was about a guy who lives here in
| Bend, Oregon, where we moved from Padova. Small world!
| intelVISA wrote:
| Is running under a limited enough to limit liability? I'm no
| lawyer but thought you'd have to establish all the corporate
| infra (bank, tools, etc) to avoid piercing the veil in your
| daily ops.
| multjoy wrote:
| Yes. The corporate veil isn't a literal one - you own the
| company in your real name, registered to your real address,
| but the company is the entity that is at risk from legal
| action unless you've explicitly offered a personal guarantee.
| jimkoen wrote:
| > It must put limited liability out of reach of so many people.
|
| That's the entire point. The concept that any idiot can start
| an LLC with no collateral (which the 25k are) is completely,
| absolutely, mind bogglingly bonkers to us Germans. Sounds like
| a scam imo.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| why is there an assumption that people starting an LLC in
| Germany not an idiot?
|
| no wonder you guys fell for Wirecard
|
| good thing the EU/Eurozone/EFTA/EEA lets anyone do business
| with a business entity registered in any member state and
| accept SEPA in any regional currency
|
| so some microstate with competitive laws and more egalitarian
| access can circumvent Germany's exclusionary hurdles
| jimkoen wrote:
| I'm not saying it's great, it's just that German culture
| has no place for no collateral LLC's. We don't do this
| here, our business culture is much closer to medieval trade
| guilds still, rather than a modern globalized economy.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I really get tired of the old world bullshit, especially
| regarding share capital. It seems it was more useful as a
| form of Proof of Stake to support old isolated currencies
| that doesn't have much relevancy in a monetary union.
|
| But I'm glad Luxembourgh, Estonia and others do things
| that mirror new world novelties, while remaining easier
| to bank in the EU and look familiar to EU residents.
| mac-mc wrote:
| Companies are the legal ownership equivalents of shipping
| containers, and enabled a revolution in humanity despite
| being so simple, much like shipping containers. There is
| something up with your laws if that is not what they
| effectively act as to need collateral like that.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| I don't fully understand the comment you've made. Why do you
| believe it to be bonkers or a scam to allow no-capital
| limited liability firms?
|
| It effectively puts the entire country into a position where
| unless a citizen is born relatively wealthy, they have to
| perform labour for someone else for several years while they
| save up enough to start their own business. Who does the
| system benefit? What is it preventing? Why has the sky not
| fallen in on the UK with a near identical economy, but near-
| zero cost ltd company startup fees?
| badpun wrote:
| There are plenty of other forms of companies than LLC which
| people can use.
|
| With an LLC, the company is only liable with the capital
| that it has, and if it has none, then it can scam people
| with impunity (there can be criminal charges if there's
| outright fraud, but you won't win any money in a civil case
| against a company that scammed you, if the company has no
| money).
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Don't know how it works in the UK/Germany, but an LLC
| isn't a complete shield against liability. If you're
| scamming people or acting recklessly you could easily
| find your personal assets targeted by a judge.
| jimkoen wrote:
| > It effectively puts the entire country into a position
| where unless a citizen is born relatively wealthy, they
| have to perform labour for someone else for several years
| while they save up enough to start their own business.
|
| Yup that's pretty much the idea. If you think that's
| unfair, oh boy, wait until you hear about our infamous
| trade schools and apprenticeships.
|
| Though you're right, incorporation doesn't shield from
| scammers. We as a nation fell for Wirecard after all.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| If we follow your logic, only the rich will be able to create
| LLCs then..
| fl7305 wrote:
| > The concept that any idiot can start an LLC with no
| collateral (which the 25k are) is completely, absolutely,
| mind bogglingly bonkers to us Germans.
|
| Uhh, what? Have you never heard of UGs? That is, 1 Euro
| GmbHs.
| jimkoen wrote:
| No it's not. With UG's limited liability is only extended
| to the collateral put in, meaning that as soon as someone
| sues you for 2EUR, suddenly you're liable with your private
| wealth. A GmbH is a true shield against that, you can be
| sued for millions and are shielded behind the 25k
| collateral.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I have a hard time believing there are many scams that have
| succeeded specifically because the scammer was permitted to
| set up an LLC with nominal share capital (at least in the
| last few decades). In the business world it is pretty
| standard to do due diligence and get collateral for any
| material exposure to an LLC. So the people who would be taken
| in would mainly be the vulnerable and uneducated who could
| likely be scammed without an LLC. There are additional
| protections against scams via various laws relating to
| bankruptcy, creditor protection and "piercing the corporate
| veil"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil).
|
| Not to mention that the minimum capital requirement is
| unlikely to deter any determined scammer. All you're really
| doing is making life slightly difficult for scammers who
| can't scrape together EUR12.5k in capital, while
| simultaneously also making life hard for all the legitimate
| contractors and (would-be) entrepreneurs who can't scrape
| together that amount.
| jimkoen wrote:
| If you read the German version of the Wikipedia article you
| linked, you'll find that this concept is rarely, and I mean
| _rarely_ applied by courts. It is also case law, which is
| exceedingly rare in German law. You're going to have a hard
| time arguing for it's application in court.
|
| Regardless, most laws around incorporation in Germany are a
| deterrent to any founder, I agree, but I honestly think we
| don't want this as a society. German culture is about work,
| and working for _someone_, not starting your own business.
|
| I agree it could, and should be easier, at the same time
| you won't change a system that evolved from medieval trade
| guilds.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Since 2008 you can found a "UG" ("Mini GmbH") that doesn't
| require that much upfront capital. It can be foundet with 1
| Euro. The catch is that you need use 25% of your yearly revenue
| until you reached the 25k of a proper GmbH.
|
| https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/what-is-a-ug-haftu...
| pgeorgi wrote:
| correction: 25% of the yearly profit
| pantalaimon wrote:
| The catch is also that everyone can see that you have less
| than 25k EUR in funds, so depending on what your customers
| are, they might not take you serious.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Depends if this can be spend. On things like equipment,
| services and wages and so on. It is not actually that much
| money as runaway for most fields.
| xxmarkuski wrote:
| To be honest, I don't think much of notaries and believe that
| they stifle innovation and harm the German economy, especially
| SMEs, but also clubs and citizens. For example, the purchase or
| sale of a property can only be carried out with a notary who
| reads the purchase contract for both parties. For this service,
| he charges a fee of around 1.5% of the sale price. The entire
| profession is strictly protected by law and there is no
| competition.
| morkalork wrote:
| Wow and I thought realtors getting a % cut on sales was a scam,
| at least in NA when you get to the notary, it's a flat fee.
| namaria wrote:
| In Brazil notaries get a cut of real estate deed transfers,
| and the position was hereditary until the 1990s.
| somat wrote:
| It sounds like notaries are a different service as well, in
| the US a notary is a minor(very minor) government official
| whose primary purpose is to verify that the person signing a
| document is the person they are claiming to be. For the most
| part US notaries have little knowledge of the contents of
| that document.
|
| In California (I think other states, but each state has it's
| own specific laws) the fees are fixed below a small set
| amount.
|
| https://www.nationalnotary.org/knowledge-center/about-
| notari...
| morkalork wrote:
| At least in Canada, it's not government employees but
| rather not-quite-a-lawyer types who are glorified ID
| verifiers.
| somat wrote:
| I was a but optimistic on my wording, But in the US they
| are not government employees(they are not paid any sort
| of salary) just citizens who are authorized to verify
| signatures(a governmental duty, which is why I called
| them minor government officials) and are are allowed to
| collect a small fixed fee for their effort.
| pintxo wrote:
| Technically, there is competition. You are free to choose
| whichever notary you want. But pricing is legally regulated, so
| you will pay the same price everywhere.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| The amount of notaries in Germany is very limited. . You
| can't just study that and open a notary in Germany. They are
| cash cows that obviously don't want competition. During Covid
| Germany was the only country of its neighbors that did not do
| remote attestations.
|
| From 2000 to 2020 the number of notaries in Germany had
| almost halved. How is that normal for any country ? Unless
| they replaced notaries with automation which Germany didn't .
| almostnormal wrote:
| The solution is easy: Create a small company to own the
| property. That company can be sold much more easily than the
| property itself. It also avoids the tax on propery purchase.
| robocat wrote:
| Companies have other issues like VAT/GST and reporting. I
| had a friend use a company in New Zealand and it cost him
| multiple % of property price due to an issue he didn't
| forsee.
|
| New Zealand doesn't have notiaries or special insurance but
| you do need to use a lawyer to transfer ownership and I
| think it costs about NZD1500 each for vendor and buyer.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Every word they say is worth about EUR50 then!
| alphager wrote:
| The Notar does much more than just read the contract; he is
| liable for the correct administration of the transfer of
| ownership (done by a three phase process which guarantees that
| the seller cannot get the money without transferring the
| property and the buyer cannot get the property without selling
| the money).
|
| The concept of title insurance doesn't exist in Germany as the
| Notar eliminates the risk.
| nickff wrote:
| From a brief search, title insurance often costs around 0.1%
| of the purchase price of a property; it seems the Notars are
| collecting a monopoly rent in Germany.
| StefanWestfal wrote:
| Common in practice is 0.5%
| twixfel wrote:
| OK but how is it that other countries get by without them for
| founding LLCs? Are there countless scams going on in the UK
| surrounding limited company for example since you don't need
| a notary there?
|
| There's often lots of post hoc justifications in Germany for
| "why it is that way" (and has to be that way). But nobody
| ever seems to stop and think: ok but the rest of the world
| seems to get by OK without these reams and reams of bullshit?
|
| The problem with Germany is not that it is stuck in the 20th
| century and completely backwards, but that nobody seems to
| care that it is. Worse, if anything there seems to be a
| degree of pride among Germans of the "process". As soon as
| you criticise some piece of particular bullshit German
| bureaucracy (as opposed to bureaucracy in general, which
| generally you're permitted to criticise) then they start
| circling the wagons (often pointing to other countries where
| the situation is supposedly the same or worse). So it is
| never going to change.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| My assumption of the bureaucracy is that it stems out of
| the German empires professional service
| freyfogle wrote:
| I now have a German GmbH and had a UK Ltd in the past for
| 10 years. Definitely there is more
| seriousness/trustworthiness to a GmbH.
|
| I am not sure there are "countless" scams in the UK, but
| yes, in 10 years of commercial operation did come across a
| few oddities. Example - a customer (UK Ltd) who declared
| bankruptcy owing us a money and then then next day founded
| a new Ltd company and tried to act like he didn't owe us
| the money because it was a new entity.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-packaged_insolvency
|
| I have not come across this kind of thing in Germany.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| > I have not come across this kind of thing in Germany.
|
| Oh, it does exist :)
| freyfogle wrote:
| Obviously there is fraud everywhere. Still, I have a
| higher level of basic trust when dealing with a GmbH than
| someone who created their Ltd Co 3 hours ago. It's just a
| sign they are a more serious/stable business counter
| party to deal with.
| splatzone wrote:
| Fraudulent limited companies are a major problem in the UK.
| But I think the tradeoff is probably worth it
|
| https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/03/crisis-
| uk-c...
| StefanWestfal wrote:
| There are ways to ensure the correct transfer of ownership
| without involving a third party. You can see these principles
| at work on some trading platforms already, be it for Magic
| cards or something else where parties cannot trust each other
| because they do not know each other.
|
| Next, you would expect that the notary would educate
| participants and act as a source of trust, an actor in your
| best interest, but that is not the case. Notaries can change
| contracts until the last minute, and unless agreed upon, the
| common 14-day withdrawal period for contracts does not apply
| to things like buying property. Furthermore, if you are
| inexperienced, you can easily fall into traps.
|
| As a concrete example, when buying a part of a shared
| property, it is commonly believed that the "Hausordnung"
| (house rules) is the owners' agreement for house rules.
| However, that is not the case, as there can be more, and in
| our case, it forbade us to keep dogs. Now, you could argue
| that we should have made ourselves more familiar with the
| law, and I would agree that is true. However, it begs the
| question, why do we need a notary?
| Slartie wrote:
| > There are ways to ensure the correct transfer of
| ownership without involving a third party. You can see
| these principles at work on some trading platforms already,
| be it for Magic cards or something else where parties
| cannot trust each other because they do not know each
| other.
|
| So what else is that "trading platform" then, if not a
| "third party"?
|
| The way in which this problem is solved is by introducing a
| third party that is trusted by both, seller and buyer.
| There's nothing wrong with this principle. What's wrong
| specifically with regard to notarys as a third party in
| property sales in Germany is that the amount of work
| involved in being this third party does not really scale
| linearly with the value of the thing to be transferred, but
| the system by which the price of the notaries' work is
| determined assumes that a property transfer is twice as
| laborious (and thus must be twice as expensive) if the
| property is twice as expensive as some other property.
| Which is BS.
| StefanWestfal wrote:
| Indeed, my mistake and agree. Here, I wanted to refer to
| the fact that the transfer of ownership could likely be
| done even without involving a notary or a human in a
| properly digitalized system.
| Slartie wrote:
| In that case you have the entity operating and
| maintaining the "digitalized system" which is the third
| party that everyone has to trust. And that entity won't
| do its work for free either. And it also will somehow
| "involve humans" which are working there.
|
| Oh, and please don't suggest to "simply put it on a
| blockchain". I don't have the time to explain for the
| millionth' time why that doesn't work with physical
| properties. I consider that to be common knowledge among
| HN users after about 10 years of having those discussions
| regularly.
|
| Also, property ownership can get ridiculously complex
| really fast. If just one person owns something, that's
| simple. But in reality, quite often multiple persons own
| something together (sometimes some of these persons
| aren't even humans, but legal entities). In that case
| there are a gazillion different ways in which such shared
| ownership can be implemented, with far-reaching
| implications with regard to what will happen if people
| disagree, split up, modify or sell the property further
| down the road. You cannot simply model this complexity
| with an SQL database because it involves legal contracts
| that specify the details in which a properties' ownership
| is shared exactly. And the notary is actually responsible
| in such a case to write these contracts, ensure that
| every participant knows about their role and rights
| within these contracts and isn't shortchanged.
| mk89 wrote:
| > However, it begs the question, why do we need a notary?
|
| The way I learnt it, until now, is the following:
|
| the person you are contracting is there to perform a single
| specific task.
|
| Applied to the specific context: "Notarvertrag", it means:
|
| the notary is there to perform the notarisation (basically
| to read and write the contract), making legal whatever YOU
| are asking to do.
|
| Any additional thing:
|
| - you ask him/her
|
| - you ask someone else beforehand (so yes, you need to pay
| an additional session for help)
|
| And even then, you not always get what you wished for. And
| when s** happens, .... "that's life experience"....
| fl7305 wrote:
| > The concept of title insurance doesn't exist in Germany
|
| (Title insurance is where you must buy insurance when buying
| a house to guard against the risk that the house may have
| unknown liabilities or owners)
|
| It doesn't exist in Sweden either, because the ownership of
| houses is in a central register. You can't make a claim
| against a house if it is not registered.
|
| Funnily enough, there's no such register for condos in
| Sweden. So you can end up with a nasty surprise if it turns
| out you bought a condo that there were unknown bank loans
| against. But it doesn't happen often enough that there is
| title insurance against it.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| I wonder: why EU did not try to somewhat harmonize company law? I
| can understand that things like tax code, penal code would not
| benefit from unification across disparate societies, but
| companies seem like a ripe target. This should have begun 20 or
| so years ago.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Given the domination of Germany and France in EU, thank the
| universe it didn't.
|
| Signed, a citizen of an EU state where you can create a company
| by digitally signing one form and paying the equivalent of
| $300.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Create a company, or do you mean buy it 'off the shelf'?
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| I mean incorporation of a new company.
| seszett wrote:
| It's about the same in France by the way, except that it's
| free.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Cool! My bad assuming without checking.
| realusername wrote:
| France is much more digitalized compared to Germany, you
| can't really put them in the same basket.
|
| The issue on the French side is more that they put the
| exact same excruciating procedures they had in paper
| online and didn't simplify too much in the process.
| boulos wrote:
| Example: https://e-estonia.com/solutions/ease_of_doing_busine
| ss/e-bus...
| qayxc wrote:
| > Signed, a citizen of an EU state where you can create a
| company by digitally signing one form and paying the
| equivalent of $300.
|
| You'd be surprised to hear that you can do that in Germany,
| too. Costs about 25EUR (depends on the municipality) and
| takes about 30min.
|
| The blog post was referring to a very specific form of
| incorporation. There's not just the ones mentioned in there.
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| Even the USA does not have harmonized company law. Pretty much
| anything except what concerns the IRS says is in the hand of
| the individual states. Why would you expect the EU to do so?
| philwelch wrote:
| Someone in the US can start a Delaware LLC or C corporation
| without living in Delaware. Can someone living in Germany set
| up an LLC or corporation in Denmark or Estonia instead of
| Germany?
| qayxc wrote:
| Yes they can. In fact, until about 15 years ago, it was
| common practise in Germany to found an LLC in the UK and
| convert it into a GmbH only after it grew big and
| profitable enough to warrant the effort.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| Yes, but they would still be a subject of German taxation,
| which is ridiculously complex and expensive compared to
| Delaware LLC or an Estonian company run by a person not
| living in Germany.
| cladopa wrote:
| "Harmonizing" is a great name for "absent of competition" or
| "collusion to raise taxes" and it is the worse thing that could
| happen to Europe.
| lutoma wrote:
| They did try. There's the Societas Europaea, a standardized
| type of corporation largely governed by EU law. It's primarily
| used by large multinational companies (Think BASF, SAP,
| Airbus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea
|
| That was part of a push to introduce standardized EU-wide legal
| forms for other types of businesses as well, but the process
| stalled and never really went anywhere after that.
| Rutjjt wrote:
| Why? It would export German "efficiency" into other states.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Others have mentioned the Societas Europea, which I think is
| the correct way to do this--provide an _option_ to use a pan-EU
| legal form. The other way--mandatorily replacing member states
| ' legal forms with one or more pan-EU forms--would simply be
| too disruptive. You'd be forcing hundreds of thousands, if not
| millions, of companies to change their legal form. Even if you
| tried to make the conversion process automatic, there's no one-
| size-fits-all approach to converting every company that won't
| end up with some companies automatically adopting constitutions
| that don't make sense (for example).
|
| Some particular aspects of company law are partially harmonised
| at EU level, for example insolvency law. But that's mostly
| about ensuring that cross-border insolvencies don't become
| hopelessly complicated and bogged down through parallel
| proceedings.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Fun fact, GmbH is not about protection of getting sued. (Because
| there's "Durchgriffshaftung") It's useful for companies that
| trade physical goods and e.g. when a vendor that was already paid
| got bankrupt it won't affect the finances of the founders.
| Although it shows to the outside world that 25 kEUR have been
| paid and it's not a 1EUR company. But in case of impeding
| bankruptcy it must either be resolved or declared otherwise
| things go bad. ("Insolvenzverschleppung" - the punishments are a
| little draconic) GmbH is really a lot of effort to maintain and
| expensive. The paperwork for UG "Mini GmbH" is basically the
| same. If I would try co-founding again, I'd probably not do a UG
| or GmbH.
| jimkoen wrote:
| > ("Insolvenzverschleppung" - the punishments are a little
| draconic)
|
| The concept of declaring bankruptcy is well known in most
| western jurisdiction, as is the criminal practice of delaying
| bankruptcy. Believe it or not, in most of the developed world
| you can't just have a company go tits up and expect to go out
| of there scot-free.
|
| > Durchgriffshaftung
|
| I've never heard of this concept before, but from what I can
| gather it's a rarely applied legal practice that's defined by
| case law (case law is is pretty rare to encounter in Germany)
| and it essentially just sounds like what happens in the case of
| gross neglience / large scale fraud.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| I don't know the implications outside of Germany although
| looking in the Wikipedia article it sounds it's an especially
| big deal here. If I recall it correctly from a back then
| mandatory course I did about it, it can even happen for an
| unpaid parking bill on an empty account.
|
| I'd assume so but probably most legal matters are settled
| outside of courts. Also looking at it the other way around,
| it would be pretty silly if creating a GmbH would create
| immunity. Indeed I doubt it's applied very often but when
| trying new territory regarding copyright, it's probably worth
| a consideration that one may still be personally liable.
|
| That said, my point is just that UG/GmbH is overkill in many
| cases especially if the company isn't making any serious
| money. You can invent a name, go to the town hall, fill a
| form so you can do business with it and it's possible to
| legally receive payments. Founding a GbR is a quite informal
| thing
| tdullien wrote:
| I have founded a company in Germany in 2004 and sold it to Google
| in 2011. I started an AG in Switzerland in 2019 and organized a
| Delaware-Flip therafter.
|
| Most of the described steps are also necessary for a Delaware
| incorporation, and I found the process of incorporating a
| nothingburger.
|
| 1) The choice between a limited liability construct or a pass-
| through construct exists everywhere. My advice was always:
| Separate the biz from you personally, always use the non-pass-
| through option unless you really know what you're doing.
| Complexity and pain of a GmbH is identical to Delaware corp.
|
| 2) picking a new name that isn't in any dictionary is generally
| good advice, no matter what your jurisdiction is. We originally
| incorporated as SABRE Security, then years late got into a
| trademark dispute and had to change names. The fact that the
| Handelsregister can reject particularly poor names shouldn't be
| an obstacle.
|
| 3) I find getting riled up about the share capital a bit weird. I
| have never seen anyone struggle with that.
|
| 4) we can debate the utility of the notary public system in
| Germany, but this is hardly an obstacle.
|
| 5) Setting up a bank account with a GmbH iG in Germany is easy
| and quick with any of your local savings banks. These are non-
| profit banks with the explicit charter to help local businesses.
| Not sure what the author did wrong.
|
| 6/7/8) yes you need to pay in the share capital and prove you've
| done so, and get the reply from the Handelsregister.
|
| 9ff) yes you need tax and VAT IDs. Yes you need someone to do
| your books and taxes. True in Delaware, true in Germany, true in
| Switzerland.
|
| All in all, the article reads super-whiny. I mean the author even
| complains that the notary uses your passport to authenticate you
| (?!).
|
| I have been through a German GmbH, a Swiss AG, and a Delaware
| C-Corp with VCs, and I can tell you: The bureaucracy is pretty
| similar. And you will need help with taxes, accounting, legal
| compliance etc. And yes, it'd be nicer if all of this was
| simpler, fewer middlemen and lawyers involved, etc. - but this
| article paints things that are the absolute basics in any of the
| big jurisdictions as nefarious obstacles.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Thanks for this reality check
|
| Yes the process in Germany can be improved a lot. But a lot of
| it is similar or equivalent to process in other places
|
| > I mean the author even complains that the notary uses your
| passport to authenticate you (?!).
|
| Yeah I had skipped this when reading the article, sorry it
| really sounds like the author doesn't know much about the
| basics of gov processes
|
| "Don't forget your ID or passport because that's their
| foolproof way of identifying you"
|
| Yes, that's exactly what it is. Your passport is official ID
| twixfel wrote:
| I mean he established a GmbH in Germany so it sounds very
| much like they do know what they're talking about.
| robert_foss wrote:
| Having founded a company in Germany, I would never under any
| circumstances do it again.
|
| Notaries should not exist, and could be replaced by a simple
| website.
|
| It's all incredibly tedious and slow, and there are lots of
| reoccurring work and fees. Closing a company takes 2-3 years too,
| even if there are no irregularities.
| TillE wrote:
| Germany loves endless bureaucratic paperwork which absolutely
| must be done in person (and good luck getting an appointment in
| Berlin), despite the many years of bleating about
| _Digitalisierung_ which has apparently amounted to nothing.
| robert_foss wrote:
| From what I heard the cut the public funding for
| Digitalization by 90% last year. It truly is like going into
| a a -20yr time machine living here.
|
| Soon you'll be able to use a credit card in most shops even!
| lttlrck wrote:
| I moved from the UK to Germany in 1996 and back then the
| banking & payment was just sooo backwards. Some stores were
| incredibly anachronistic (Lerche springs to mind - since
| closed down)
|
| Sorry to hear it's still the same.
| mk89 wrote:
| Germany and "digital" payments have a history due to old
| reasons.
|
| We don't appreciate its meaning anymore, but cash is
| literally the only anonymous payment method you can have
| in this lifetime, and people in Germany tend NOT to trust
| any entity/company/government holding your data for no
| particular purpose.
|
| The downside of this is the split brain problem that you
| have with distributed systems: a state knows something
| about you that another state maybe doesn't, which leads
| to "interesting" things like illegal people having
| multiple identities in several states, etc. Weird s**.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| N'ah mate, the main reason is tax fraud, not trust in
| data holding entities, otherwise nobody in Germany would
| use Google/Instagram/TikTok if they cared so much about
| their data privacy.
|
| Being free to dodge the tax man is incredibly valuable
| for small business and individuals in Germany as a lot of
| wealth is built on tax fraud. That's the kind of privacy
| people mean.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > N'ah mate, the main reason is tax fraud, not trust in
| data holding entities, otherwise nobody in Germany would
| use Google/Instagram/TikTok if they cared so much about
| their data privacy.
|
| The people who are very vocal about (data) privacy in
| Germany (which are quite some people, though not all)
| indeed typically try to avoid such services.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| There's a difference between "some vocal people" and "the
| majority of people".
|
| And there's a difference between being vocal and actually
| walking the walk and doing anything about it.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > We don't appreciate its meaning anymore, but cash is
| literally the only anonymous payment method you can have
| in this lifetime, and people in Germany tend NOT to trust
| any entity/company/government holding your data for no
| particular purpose.
|
| Exactly.
|
| This is the eperience from two dicatorships on German
| soil in the 20th century of which one ended less than 35
| years ago (many of its crimes still have not been
| prosecuted). There still exist lots of contemporary
| witnesses who can tell you what being potentially be
| surveilled means in the day-to-day life.
| fabianholzer wrote:
| > This is the eperience from two dicatorships on German
| soil in the 20th century of which one ended less than 25
| years ago
|
| In comparison to the NSDAP and SED, I think calling the
| 15 years of CDU government under Helmut Kohl (which
| actually ended a bit _over_ 25 years ago) a dictatorship
| is a bit too harsh... /s
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > I think calling the 15 years of CDU government under
| Helmut Kohl
|
| I fixed my mistake. :-)
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| This one [0]? Legend, flipping through the records there
| was a dream come true for some years. But Vinyl shops
| world-wide had to close, but only this.
|
| [0] https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.stuttgart-
| album-zu...
| mk89 wrote:
| > Soon you'll be able to use a credit card in most shops
| even!
|
| Not sure where you people live, but this myth has to stop,
| eventually. I can literally count on one hand the n. of
| shops NOT accepting cards - it's most of the times shops
| which, I guess, use cash to have flexibility in their
| accountings :)
| ricc wrote:
| "Accepting cards" is not the same as "accepting _credit_
| cards" though... A lot of them only accept girocards and
| not credit cards...
| rglullis wrote:
| And credit cards in Germany are not "credit" cards as
| well. At least the one I got from Sparkasse does not let
| you hold a balance and must be paid in full every month.
| ricc wrote:
| Not sure about those, but I got mine around 2-3 years ago
| from gebuhrenfrei.de, which is from Advanzia Bank. Seems
| fine so far...with a minor disclaimer that I don't really
| use it much. :-)
| mk89 wrote:
| I don't have enough experience to speak about CC in
| Germany, but I don't see why a Rewe or ... boh, Aldi,
| Mcdonalds, etc should prevent that. I am a bit surprised,
| to be honest.
| ricc wrote:
| Big chains and enterprises, for sure. But there's still a
| lot of SMBs not accepting credit cards.
| mk89 wrote:
| Are these the same SMBs that ... accept only cash? :) Or
| do they really exclude CCs?
| ricc wrote:
| They exclude CCs. They have a card reader but they either
| have a sign saying, or the vendor will simply say, "keine
| Kreditkarte".
| 4ad wrote:
| If you use contactless payments, this is a non-issue,
| they can't detect it. Although they wish they could.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Debitcards, not girocards. I have no girocard since
| years, and still can easily pay everywhere. But to be
| fair, the pandemia really pushed this even the small
| shops.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > From what I heard the cut the public funding for
| Digitalization by 90% last year.
|
| This is basically wrong. They moved the budgets to
| different departments, where it made more sense. And it
| actually does move on..slowly. It's basically a living
| example of too many technical debts and the pains of
| federalism gone wrong.
|
| > Soon you'll be able to use a credit card in most shops
| even!
|
| Real credit cards are very uncommon in Germany. Debit cards
| on the other hand are working well everywhere, even in
| small shops (since the pandemia to be fair).
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > and good luck getting an appointment in Berlin
|
| It's our failed state, so what do you expect?
| ricc wrote:
| _Digitalisierung_ means one receives a PDF form via email
| that he should print out, fill out, scan, and then email back
| again. X-D
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| surely you meant "... and then fax back again. X-D"
|
| ?
| khaomungai wrote:
| Where would you do it then instead?
| AndroTux wrote:
| Estonia, like stated in the article. As a German founder
| living in Estonia, I can confirm that the difference in
| complexity when it comes to founding a company, filing taxes
| and dealing with bureaucracy isn't even comparable.
| artemonster wrote:
| do you know how in such cases salaries works? i.e. founder
| and employees are german and the company is in Estonia. Do
| they work as contractors? I thought to be a normal salaried
| employee you had to have the company also registered in
| germany too.
| AndroTux wrote:
| No, you don't necessarily. Estonia has an e-Residency
| program targeted exactly at this scenario: Having a
| company in Estonia but living abroad. However, Germany
| being Germany, you will still have to deal with the
| Finanzamt and all the nice stuff that comes with it. So
| while you can run an Estonian company from Germany and be
| employed by it, I doubt you will gain much freedom from
| it. There's really no escaping German bureaucracy without
| leaving the country.
| miohtama wrote:
| In theory, it should be possible for any EU citizen to
| work in any EU country.
|
| In practice, it is not possible because you need to
| register to a local tax office of the worker. Spanish
| employee -> need to register your company with the
| Spanish tax office.
|
| Good luck unless you can afford expensive legal services
| that do this for you. Does not make a sense unless you
| are planning to hire in quantity (>20 workers).
|
| The alternative is that every remote worker is a
| subcontractor and takes care of their own taxes.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| Not sure if that's common in Germany but you can use services
| which offer "empty" but legally established companies and you
| just change the name.
| konha wrote:
| It is. "Vorratsgesellschaft"
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Do they also sell really old ones, so you can start in business
| and immediately advertise with a slogan like "since 1950"? This
| is something that has been somewhat common in Britain with
| businesses such as breweries, as provenance is highly valued by
| the market, yet not generally examined with much rigour!
| drooopy wrote:
| I've heard similar Kafkaesque stories from German relatives of
| mine. And from what I gather, most digitalization efforts by
| state and federal government essentially resulted in digitizing
| existing bureaucratic procedures.
| kleiba wrote:
| Yeah, I would say it's pretty typical.
|
| I moved to Germany about 10 years ago, and my wife and I bought
| a house here last year. I think the money went to the seller
| some time in October, but to this day, we're _not just yet_ the
| official owner of the property because we 're still stuck
| somewhere in the red tape. We're almost there though though (we
| hope), it's just that change of ownership of a house is a super
| complicated multi-step procedure here that must involve a
| notary! Good stuff. And mind you, I'm not talking about
| anything special about this purchase, just a young family
| buying a home from an ordinary person who moved away.
|
| (We're hoping it's only a matter of weeks now, though, wish us
| luck!)
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Founding a company in Germany?! Simply living there and working
| on employment contract is complicated enough. Do not attempt it
| without lawyer parents.
| hnhg wrote:
| There is also a brutal and inflexible exit tax. Should you decide
| to leave Germany, even temporarily, you will be faced with a tax
| of ~30% of the current valuation of your worldwide shareholdings
| (in companies in which you have >1% ownership). I commented on
| this in more detail in another post a while back:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39786934#39788110
|
| In the author's case, because he is using a holding company, his
| exit tax burden will be doubled!
| _Microft wrote:
| If this reply [0] to a comment of yours is true, then you're
| allowed to ,,temporarily" leave Germany for 7-12 _years_ before
| being affected by this.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39790138
| hnhg wrote:
| I answered later in the thread: "Unfortunately, so far that
| deferral will most likely come with the requirement for a
| security, typically cash. That is the prevailing view of tax
| specialists right now, but will depend on each individual's
| experience with their local tax authorities."
|
| Sadly, you cannot just leave and think it would be
| automatically deferred. You must apply for the deferral
| before you leave and the local tax authorities can ask for a
| security in cash for the entire amount owed. It is absolutely
| kafkaesque.
|
| As with many German corporate tax matters, if you think you
| are affected by this, you should really speak with a tax
| advisor who has strong experience working with people in your
| particular situation. You cannot just read the rules and
| figure it out.
| _Microft wrote:
| What would prevent anyone making off with the money owed if
| they didn't require that?
| toast0 wrote:
| From the article you linked in that comment[1], it seems like
| this exit tax only applied to companies where you own 1% or
| more? and it's structured as the capital gains tax, but due
| now, so on the current value minus your cost basis.
|
| The US has an exit tax if you renounce citizenship, and it's
| assessed on your entire net worth. If the article you linked is
| accurate, this german tax seems much more reasonable.
|
| EDIT: actually, I reviewed, and I think it's broadly similar
| --- treat all assets as if sold at market value on the date of
| exit. Thus, any deferred taxes from unrealized capital gains
| need to be paid when you exit the taxing jurisdiction.
| Although, again, if the linked article is correct, it only
| happens to assets where you own >= 1% of the company when
| exiting Germany, and all capital assets if you qualify in the
| US.
|
| [1] https://www.winheller.com/en/tax-law-tax-
| advisory/internatio...
| klohto wrote:
| how are you comparing renouncing citizenship with temporarily
| leaving the country
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm comparing 'exit taxes'. But also if you leave Germany,
| you're no longer subject to German income tax, and you have
| to both leave the US and renounce citizenship to become no
| longer subject to US income tax.
| hnhg wrote:
| I updated my comment to improve its clarity. I can see
| how it was unclear to you.
| pests wrote:
| I think the wording was unclear as that's what I thought
| too, that "leaving" meant for good, and maybe there was a
| way back - hence the temporary part.
|
| A tax on simply exiting the country is a very foreign
| concept to Americans I would assume.
| freyfogle wrote:
| Hah! Americans have to file US tax whether they live in
| the US or not.
| pests wrote:
| Only for higher income individuals. We get a Foreign Tax
| Credit for taxes already paid where we live/work.
|
| Looks like the limit last year was $120k. Only 17% of
| Americans make more than $100k/year. Only ~5million
| Americans living abroad, or 1.5% of the population.
|
| I'm sure those numbers are correlated, but I'll bet its
| under a few hundred thousand of people who are burdened
| with the tax. Even then, the benefits also are pretty
| nice.
| akvadrako wrote:
| No, all Americans who make money abroad have to file
| taxes. Yes, there is the Credit and the Exclusion, which
| will often reduce your burden to often zero but still
| requires all the paperwork.
|
| Try owning a stake in a foreign company (CFC) though,
| that's a nightmare with often unavoidable significant
| taxes.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| isn't comparing it to an even worse jurisdiction like US a
| bit unfair? why not compare it to other EU countries or even
| Asia. I'm not a US citizen but being taxed on my global
| income would be a pretty strong reason to renounce my
| citizenship.
| ccozan wrote:
| This rule has been changed in 2006, see the wikipedia entry.
| Also the double tax rule allows you to tax the win in the
| target country and not Germany.
| pingou wrote:
| There may be something new now:
|
| https://winheller.com/blog/en/no-more-immediate-german-exit-...
| nicbou wrote:
| I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is
| like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting
| married, having a child, buying a car - is mired in slow, paper-
| based bureaucracy. It is a constant, significant impediment to
| life in the country.
|
| Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get
| married in Germany is to get married in Denmark.
|
| I cannot overstate how terrible German bureaucracy is, and how
| defeating it is to deal with it. A lot of people give up and
| leave the country over it.
|
| [0] https://allaboutberlin.com
| freyfogle wrote:
| Really I think this is overdone. I fully appreciate Berlin is
| disfunctional, but in other regions (I live in Thuringen)
| things go quite quickly.
| nicbou wrote:
| I don't think that it is overdone. It's bad everywhere, and
| it's much worse in Berlin.
|
| If you've experienced anything like a modern bureaucracy,
| Germany is infuriatingly backwards. The article is painfully
| accurate down to the minute detail.
| freyfogle wrote:
| I have lived/worked/banked in four countries (UK, US, ES,
| DE).
|
| Germany is not at the cutting edge, but it is far from the
| worse. The interactions I have had with bureaucratic
| systems in Thuringen have all been entirely fine. Friendly
| people, clear process, done quickly. Obviously that is only
| an n=1. It is a rural area that is not overloaded as Berlin
| is.
|
| Which country would you consider "modern"? My experiences:
|
| In the UK the way you prove who you are is literally a
| physical copy of your water bill.
|
| Spain, some things work well enough, others are insane.
|
| US, massive variability from state to state and government
| department.
| nicbou wrote:
| My biggest gripes, summed up:
|
| - The requirements are arbitrary, undocumented, and
| largely depend on how the case worker feels on a given
| day. Common wisdom is to bring far more documents than
| asked for, just in case.
|
| - Everything is paper-based. You are expected to act as a
| transport layer between offices that won't talk to each
| other. Everything is mailed, because digital
| communications are distrusted and digitalisation lagging
| far behind.
|
| - Everything takes far longer than it should, partly due
| to the above, and due to chronic understaffing of
| government offices.
|
| This is a problem in all major cities, and many of the
| smaller ones. In this case, n is a pretty big number
| backed by the many relocation consultants I work with.
| You got lucky, and I envy you.
| freyfogle wrote:
| Oh for sure it could be much better in Germany, and I
| hope that rapidly becomes the case. Definitely
| digitization needs to come faster.
|
| My complaint is simply people imagining it is perfect
| elsewhere. Really that is not the case, no where is
| perfect. All the people chiming in about the US being so
| easy, yes, wonderful. Now let's talk about healthcare and
| how your health insurance is tied to your employer.
| Everyone who is extolling how simple the UK is, that's
| lovely. What a shame about brexit though.
|
| The point is there are major pains absolutely everywhere.
| hiq wrote:
| To your counterexamples: if you move to the US or the UK
| for a job, you don't really suffer directly from Brexit
| or healthcare being tied to your unemployment. Sure,
| these could make things worse in certain cases (let's say
| you get laid off while in the US and end up having to get
| your own healthcare for a while).
|
| The thing with bureaucracy is that it's part of normal
| life, there's no way around it. You can assume there's a
| 20% chance you'd get laid off in the US and that it would
| be bad, but there's a 100% chance you'll have to get a
| work or residence permit or something else in Germany,
| and it seems that the default is a painful process
| (reading the comments here).
|
| > The point is there are major pains absolutely
| everywhere.
|
| There are still places such as Switzerland where things
| are better though.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I'm a full time software developer, the lead programmer
| actually, but I don't have health care. I have important
| unfilled prescriptions because of lack of money. So how
| exactly does a lack of health care not affect people?
| chironjit wrote:
| You're missing the point here. It's bad, and it affects
| people's lives. It also fuels populist sentiment because
| people blame immigrants for problems not entirely related
| to them.
|
| Worse still, if a german says fuck it and wants to run
| his business in Estonia, the org still has to pay taxes
| in germany
|
| The only silver lining to all this are Spaniards, Greeks,
| etc say the system here is better than in their country,
| but I think you should strive to benchmark up and not
| down
| dpeckett wrote:
| I can confirm that moving out into the bacon belt of
| Brandenburg drastically improved the quality of my public
| services interactions (as an immigrant). Getting an
| anmeldung done didn't require a 3 hour ordeal and the
| local Auslanderbehorde answers their emails.
|
| My favorite Berlin anecdote is when my wife (then
| girlfriend) and I first arrived in Germany, she was
| unemployed for the better part of a year as no-one would
| give her a chance. She actually got quite depressed about
| it, and reached out about state sponsored integration
| courses as the language lessons she was taking were
| expensive and she wanted to do something more holistic.
| The authorities told her in no uncertain terms that they
| didn't care and that there were no places available.
|
| My biggest bugbear with Germany is that the state
| intrudes extensively in your affairs, most of the time
| they are being benevolent but that intrusion brings in a
| tremendous amount a bureaucratic baggage. And that
| baggage is slow, paper based, and becomes a significant
| barrier for doing anything. In many countries the kind of
| paperwork you have to slave over here just doesn't exist
| in the first place.
|
| FWIW my wife and I got married in Denmark. It was
| impossible for my wife to provide an up-to-date (less
| than six months old) translated copy of her Chinese birth
| certificate. Theoretically she could have traveled back
| to china (in the middle of the pandemic) and begged her
| backwaters local police authority to print a new copy but
| they weren't obliged to issue her one. Denmark was happy
| with her passport and some declarations from the local
| authorities in Germany.
|
| Some days I really wonder why I continue to put up with
| the hassle, probably just sunk cost at this point and
| stubbornness. Wouldn't recommend Germany for anyone with
| a low frustration tolerance.
| dataflow wrote:
| Interesting, so this means you can go to another country
| just to get married there? There's no requirement that
| one of you have some kind of tie to the country (working,
| or resident, etc.)?
| dpeckett wrote:
| Yep the Danes are an entrepreneurial bunch, strict cash
| for marriage document type deal (but all done very
| professionally, not some vegas chapel pony show).
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > My favorite Berlin anecdote is when my wife (then
| girlfriend) and I first arrived in Germany, she was
| unemployed for the better part of a year as no-one would
| give her a chance. She actually got quite depressed about
| it, and reached out about state sponsored integration
| courses as the language lessons she was taking were
| expensive and she wanted to do something more holistic.
| The authorities told her in no uncertain terms that they
| didn't care and that there were no places available.
|
| Honestly, as a native German this anecdote rather sounds
| like your girlfriend saw the _good_ side of the German
| bureacracy (and life) (you likely haven 't seen the bad
| side ... ;-) ): the girlfriend asked for something and
| got a direct honest answer. This is German directness,
| which I would rather consider a German virtue, but often
| confuses people from other countries where answers tend
| to be more sugar-coated.
| 4ad wrote:
| As bad as Germany is, it is better than average. Eastern
| Europe is harder, and Asia borders on impossible. Africa is
| literally impossible.
| zettabomb wrote:
| Oh hey there! I've just moved to Germany from the US (not
| Berlin but hey, easy enough to apply the general knowledge
| elsewhere) and your site has been fantastic. Obviously I did
| not move because I valued bureaucracy, but I'm willing to put
| up with it partly for a fantastic job, and partly to escape the
| horror that is modern America. Thank you so much!
| nickpp wrote:
| I am curious: what specific horror of modern America are you
| escaping?
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I'm European because of US healthcare, insecurity,
| inequality, bad food culture, urban planning, and danger
| from natural and man made disasters, quality and cost of
| education.
|
| Every single one of those things is better in my new
| European home.
| zettabomb wrote:
| A very good summary. There's also more Nazis in America
| than in Germany, and more far-right hatred in general.
| Biganon wrote:
| I refuse to believe it is worse than France. I trust the
| Germans to at least be somewhat efficient.
| nicbou wrote:
| Germans are anything but efficient. At best, they're
| methodical. Speaking from experience, that is also a lie.
| mtsr wrote:
| They're not know for efficiency or being methodical, but
| for grundlichkeit - being meticulous.
|
| Then again, anything like this is a stereotype.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Germans are anything but efficient.
|
| _Germans are_ (rather) efficient. The German bureacracy
| isn 't. :-)
| moooo99 wrote:
| Considering these bureacratic organizations are made up
| of people, most of them German, could you actually
| conclude that? :-)
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Quite many German people hate the bureacracy similarly.
| But most of them feel powerless to change anything.
|
| EDIT: But to give more evidence for my claim: violent
| attacks against government clerks are more and more
| increasing. I will just post two articles (in German),
| but it is easy to find many such articles:
|
| > https://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/attacken-auf-
| amtstrae...
|
| > https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-
| wuerttemberg/heilbronn/a...
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> I trust the Germans to at least be somewhat efficient._
|
| They're eficient at creating more bureaucracy as a universal
| solution to all problems.
|
| Having dealt with Germany I have come to realize that
| excessive bureaucracy is basically a jobs program and a way
| for people to cover their ass whenever the shit hits the fan.
|
| Something goes wrong and you're the big boss? Add more
| bureaucracy as your attempt to "fix" the problem and your
| justification to why your job is valuable to the company.
|
| Something goes wrong on your watch? It's not your fault if
| you followed all the bureaucracy conjure by your bosses.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > They're [The Germans are] eficient at creating more
| bureaucracy as a universal solution to all problems.
|
| _Never ever_ confuse Germans with the German government
| (except if you are looking for trouble :-) ). It is well-
| known that what are "lawyer jokes" in the USA are
| "politicians jokes" in Germany.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| I didn't confuse anything I meant exactly what I said. To
| whit:
|
| 1. German companies are equally as bureaucratic because
| the people and society in general are culturally so into
| it.
|
| 2. German government is formed by German people voted by
| other German people, they aren't ruled by some aliens
| that came from of the sky, therefore are representative
| for them.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| German government just reflects the German society, which
| is happy to come up with an incredibly bureaucratic non-
| digital process on any random occasion. I was once told
| by a lawyer assistant in an email, that I need to call
| them to make an appointment for another call to discuss a
| billing issue. Needless to say, the matter could be
| clarified in a few emails, and those are the people who
| charge 150-200EUR per hour. This is the essence of how
| the things are often done here by businesses which are
| supposedly rooting for efficiency and profit margins.
| brnt wrote:
| I've worked in both, plus the Netherlands. France has one
| forgiving element: usually some room for the human element.
| Germans civil servants seem happy to apply rules and
| procedures, even if they are clearly suboptimal. French civil
| servants would agree it's ridiculous and are more inclined to
| help you get unstuck if you can show them that you are.
|
| France also seemed further along digitizing things.
|
| Total duration is probably still a tie: it's all over the map
| but things can take ages in either country.
|
| The Netherlands is great, except when it isn't. If you ever
| get stuck there, you have no chance convincing anyone. Their
| believe they have the best (civil) service doesn't help, but
| it turns out its all highly optimized for 'normal' Dutch
| citizens. As soon as your deviations from that norm start to
| add up, you're going to run into unhandled edge cases, which
| people won't handle (no protocol, and they are not used to
| using their own brain). "Computer says no" is Dutch (civil)
| service in a nutshell.
| gryn wrote:
| The digitization in france in making things worse on the
| edge though, the system are buggy and now you no longer
| have that human you can talk to fix things.
|
| I remember not being able to create an account because the
| website password validation regex was buggy, I wrote an
| email about it and it's probably still not fixed. I've had
| to read the "compiled" js of the website to understand what
| was wrong to begin with.
|
| I've had administrative processes slightly deviate from the
| happy path and getting stuck. When you talk to a human now.
| it's sorry can't do anything it's all online even when you
| explain that yes you tried other possible contact channels
| phone,email,in person, etc (email seems to go to /dev/null
| or get a canned response that clearly didn't read your
| message).
|
| "Computer says no" is more and more of a thing now here in
| france. it's faster when you on the common happy path but
| if you aren't you better pray. Also the different services
| still seem unable to talk to each other even when they are
| in the same building / same administration but different
| department. Hopefully they'll improve that in 20 years.
| moooo99 wrote:
| I know Germany has this reputation and Germany can be very
| efficient at times. But the vast majority of the time Germany
| is anything but efficient.
|
| The Administration is particularly bad. Most of the time,
| they're understaffed and digital infrastructure is completely
| lacking most of the places. Then, in many cases, there is
| also a ping-pong in terms of responsibilities. Sometimes your
| stuff is bouncing between different levels of administration
| (thank you federalism) and sometimes its between different
| departments. Its not unheard of that you have to provide the
| same data in different forms for the different departments
| working for the same agency.
|
| The amount of time I have spend waiting in line to do
| something as simple as renewing my Perso (national ID) or
| requesting a passport. When I moved two years ago, I spent 4
| hours waiting in line to sign a form stating that I moved
| here. Waiting for the passport was a similar waiting game
| (and that is as a German-born citizen, I can't begin to
| imagine how bad it is when you're also concerned with
| residency and visa stuff).
|
| German companies love to complain about the bureaucracy of
| the government, but are effectively replicating that same
| bureaucracy without any need.
|
| So no, most interactions aren't efficient unfortunately
| hariharan_uno wrote:
| I completely agree. I have been living here for 8 years, and
| recently applied for a permanent settlement permit.
|
| My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months,
| while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a
| prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel
| internationally, I won't be allowed entry back).
|
| Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were
| unanswered for months. There is no way to contact the foreign
| office (no email, no telephone, no fax). You just send your
| application and pray.
|
| I strongly advise anyone to stay away from Germany if you have
| better options. This country is a bureaucratic nightmare in
| general.
| nicbou wrote:
| Mine too! My residence permit expired in February, and my
| appointment is in July. I expect to have a valid residence
| title again by end of August.
|
| Mind you, I applied in December. I will not be able to travel
| out of the country for most of the summer as I wouldn't be
| allowed to reenter.
|
| They refused multiple times to issue the temporary permit
| that I'm legally entitled to. I'm having a lawyer ask again,
| this time with the threat of a lawsuit.
|
| It's such a common problem that I had to write a detailed
| article about it. People miss weddings and funerals because
| the immigration office is months late. The number of lawsuits
| due to inaction is growing exponentially since 2019.
| chironjit wrote:
| I'll one up you and say that it's so broken, there are lots
| of people that basically live on ranges of exceptions.
|
| In my case, I was told I was not eligible for the visa I
| needed but when I spoke to a migration consultant who knew
| the process, they managed to get it done. I was pretty
| shocked as this wink, wink, nod, nod style system is not
| something I expected from this country.
| callalex wrote:
| From a USA perspective, I find that usually when a
| bureaucratic process is hopelessly broken, it is because a
| small portion of the population actively hates the people
| that would benefit from the process and want to harm them.
| However they cannot legally or popularly discriminate against
| them so instead they destroy the processes that benefit the
| hated group. Do you get that impression where you are too?
| physhster wrote:
| Given the amount of immigrants in Europe in general and in
| Germany in particular, I don't think they are trying to
| deter people. Or if they are trying it's not working.
|
| The incompetence is not confined to immigration, it's
| pretty much everywhere. Same goes for France actually.
| philsnow wrote:
| The impression I got from the last time I was in Germany
| (some ~7 years ago), there's a going concern among at
| least some people that a certain ethnicity of immigrants
| is "taking over". This might be a pearl-clutching
| minority, or I may have completely misread the situation.
| Newlaptop wrote:
| This is not a USA perspective. This is a conspiracy theory
| perspective from spending too much time in
| liberal/progressive echo-chambers that repeat fearful,
| hateful myths about their political opponents.
| type0 wrote:
| They use this book called "Der Process" as a manual
| rcbdev wrote:
| You can really feel that Kafka was an Austrian in his
| writings.
| kanbara wrote:
| mine took like a few weeks and was very painless, even in
| berlin. anecdata -\\_(tsu)_/-
| whalesalad wrote:
| What are the redeeming qualities of Germany?
| fleshmonad wrote:
| Note that I am a German. I would say there are few. Bad
| education, especially in schools, a broken railway and public
| transport system, as well as incredibly high taxes. You may
| say "free healthcare" and a point can be made here, but when
| you take a look at the high taxes you have to pay, it's not
| worth it, if your income is above average. All in all it's a
| mess and I haven't even begun speaking about German people
| and their mentality, as well as poverty and unsuccessful
| immigration.
| lrem wrote:
| Looks like you really want to move to Switzerland :D
| Keyframe wrote:
| _(rants)_
|
| yep, you are German alright!
| chironjit wrote:
| The best I'd say is a sense of collectiveness that is
| somewhat higher than other countries.
|
| It's not nationalism. Rather, there is some amount of
| willingness to give up personal comfort for some sort of
| general/societal greater good.
|
| This is really something I've noticed compared to say the UK,
| Australia, certain asian countries, etc.
|
| Not sure why it hasn't translated to improving bureaucracy.
| fleshmonad wrote:
| Can you provide some examples of what germans bind together
| for the "greater good"? I seem to have missed it.
| tazjin wrote:
| > The best I'd say is a sense of collectiveness that is
| somewhat higher than other countries.
|
| I wouldn't say that this comes anywhere close to many other
| countries in Germany. Societal coherence in e.g. Russia or
| Norway is much higher than in Germany.
|
| I think it's rather the other way around: The countries
| you're comparing to might be exceptionally _bad_ at it, and
| Germany is average.
| karma_pharmer wrote:
| The hacker subculture there is incredible; closest thing to
| late-1990s bay area (before the flood of money killed
| everything) that's still alive today.
|
| But yeah, there are a lot of negatives counterbalancing that.
| jjgreen wrote:
| The sausage
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The most beautiful cities at night, especially Dresden. You
| never need to own a car, amazing beer, awesome Turkish food,
| awesome dance clubs in old castles or rundown industrial
| parks; also life is 10 times better if you're a student :)
|
| (I lived in Germany for about a year as an American college
| exchange student)
| miohtama wrote:
| Get married in Denmark: This not a joke, but my friends did it
| (German woman, Indian husband). It Germany it would have taken
| two weeks. In Denmark you get it done in an hour (minus the
| booking of the time at the civil registry).
| dark-star wrote:
| I fail to imagine a scenario where "getting married fast" is
| a requirement. I mean you've supposedly been living together
| for a few years already at that point, so why is 2 weeks too
| much?
| twixfel wrote:
| If it's less work, it's less work. And it can take months
| if one of you is not German.
| dpeckett wrote:
| Yeh two weeks would be very quick for a German marriage
| involving foreigners, more realistically a few months at-
| least all things considered.
| philsnow wrote:
| Is the delay ostensibly to ensure the identities of the
| parties, and that's why it takes longer if any foreigners
| are involved? I could well imagine it being
| unconscionable for Germans to aver something they were
| not yet certain of.
| MrJohz wrote:
| So this is pure anecdata here, but as a foreigner who
| married a German, it took a while, but it was relatively
| little work.
|
| The biggest issue was that we needed one of my documents
| (the birth certificate) to have a seal of authenticity
| from my home country, which then all needed to be
| translated officially. That took longer than it needed to
| because we didn't realise it needed to be authenticated
| and so we got it returned at one point and needed to
| resubmit it. But apart from that, it was mostly a case of
| waiting for the formalities to go through - that took a
| couple of months in total, but it required relatively
| little work overall. I suspect in total, getting married
| in another country would have taken more work to organise
| and arrange, although it would probably have been quicker
| with the right combination of country and pre-existing
| documents.
| dpeckett wrote:
| We ended up going the Denmark route due to the German
| process requiring, what was for us, unobtainable documents.
|
| We've had a number of friends do the same due to similar
| issues, plus the German process can be very cost
| prohibitive once you start including official translators
| and such.
|
| The Danish authorities accept a passport as a proof of ID,
| and the supporting documents can be in Danish, English or
| German.
| Symbiote wrote:
| A last-minute decision to be married before a baby is born.
| Being married can simplify other bureaucracy if the mother
| dies or is incapacitated.
| dpeckett wrote:
| People often forget marriage is also a legal contract (in
| Germany it simplifies so many things, eg. health
| insurance, joint income tax filings, etc).
|
| I think most immigrants who get married in Germany are
| doing it for legal reasons primarily.
| pchangr wrote:
| I have a friend who got married "on emergency" because her
| visa was expiring and she would have to get back to her
| country of origin if she didn't find a job in a few weeks.
| So .. yeah.. could happen. And it's also not just about the
| time .. it's also about the amount of documents, forms and
| all the offices you need to contact.
| np- wrote:
| > I fail to imagine a scenario where "getting married fast"
| is a requirement.
|
| This rubs me the wrong way a bit, and it's because it's
| clearly quite obvious there are many reasons you'd want to
| get married fast (emergency health issues, unplanned
| pregnancies, visa issues, etc etc. can come up with a
| million reasons easily).
|
| You are really asking in a very ungracious way why doesn't
| everyone just simply live like an ideal German.
| bradhe wrote:
| Just wanted to say thanks for your awesome work!
| allaboutberlin.com was a massive help when I moved here--and
| continues to be, whenever a new paperwork hurdle presents
| itself :). You're doing great work!
| khaomungai wrote:
| Yes, it's really painful here in Germany. I've heard in Portugal
| it's pretty easy.
|
| Any recommendations what would be the best place to found a
| company for someone who's living in Germany?
| chironjit wrote:
| Having lived here for 1.5 years, I can say that beraucracy in
| germany basically works in the sense of how bureaucracy in other
| lesser third world countries work.
|
| Basically, the system works in general for the average population
| but is broken such that it affects most those at the margins (for
| example, the rich, the poor, those entrepreneurial, etc).
|
| In other countries, when this happens, you see the rich paying
| their way to access while the poor generally suffer until some
| populist movement comes and promises to save them.
|
| It's thus really not that surprising, I just had yo change my
| view on where I placed each country in this developed/developing
| country mental model
| resolutebat wrote:
| In third world countries, if you're wealthy (by local
| standards), you can grease the wheels with bribes, or better
| yet, cheaply outsource tasks to "consultants" who know exactly
| how to navigate the system and pay the bribes on your behalf,
| giving you plausible denialability. Need an Indonesian multi-
| year business visa? $200 to the right agent and it's yours.
|
| As far as I can tell, this is not an option in Germany,
| certainly not cheaply. Healy, one of the global companies that
| does this kind of thing, wants EUR14000 to create a GmBH for
| you, and I'm pretty sure that doesn't speed up things, it just
| makes it somebody else's headache.
| 4ad wrote:
| As an EU citizen, it's easier to open an LLC in the US, without
| even stepping a foot in the US than opening an LLC in the EU.
|
| The most depressing thing is that EU citizens don't even see any
| problem with that.
| onnimonni wrote:
| Thanks for the great blog post.
|
| I'm very happy to be living and building business in Estonia
| instead. Establishing the company is easy and everything else
| except KYC meeting in bank can be done online. Also in Estonia
| companies don't pay any taxes on yearly profits. Almost all of
| the government officials speak fluent English except in the case
| where I wanted to have company owned car. Would highly recommend
| this option for others too if you can relocate easily. They even
| changed the rules in 2023 and now even 1EUR initial capital is
| enough.
| globalise83 wrote:
| I know this is a tongue-in-cheek critique of the process, but
| it's also a really handy guide! Good job author.
| harha wrote:
| Even more fun: how to get rid of a company
| type0 wrote:
| The national slogan of Germans is "Papiere, bitte!"
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