I think his point is, English is the lingua-franca of the internet and international business. If you are looking to accept international founders, investors and money, maybe it's a good idea to add EN i18n.
Unless you’re looking for a country to change it’s official language to English I think this is a wrong direction. The law is in German, it’s interpreted in German, if there’s some misunderstanding or a mistake in filings it will be heard in court in German. It’s better to set expectations early. All legal processes are held in country’s native language. It is better to NOT provide “official” i18n of the process of starting the company, which unless you’re then willing to support the whole process in this foreign language. How do you also then make sure that the English translation is fully legally equivalent to the German version?
- it is not cold, if possible - the tax rate is low (even if I have to pay services later myself but with my own choice) - the hospitals and school system are good, even if private - it is not difficult/expensive to open a business
I am all ears :)
Singapore: probably meets all of your requirements. Low tax, easy to open a business, lots of private schools. No idea how to rate the hospitals, it has a couple in the best hospital lists in the world, but I don't trust those. Drawback is everything is expensive.
Andorra: not cold for Northern European standards. Low tax, a couple of international schools, private medicine, you should be able to access the private medical system in Spain. A few inconveniences are no train, no airport (closest are Barcelona and Toulouse), custom inspections into France or Spain, generally isolated feeling and tourist centered feeling.
Portugal: Warm and friendly people with good food. I don't know anything about the schools or medical system. Bureaucracy probably isn't great. Low tax for a couple of years. Unfortunately local citizens do not benefit it so a foreigner taking advantage of it is likely displacing a local. Feels very unfair.
Puerto Rico: not cold, no US federal taxes. If you are a US citizen and non-resident and move there, there are some other tax benefits, but people who were already residents can't take advantage of it. Lots of infrastructure problems.
From the list Puerto Rico looks to me like the new idea. I was considering the others, yes. But Andorra is cold as hell and boring :( Portugal's bureaucracy approaches that of Spain, but Spain is getting sooo bad IMHO that some day Portugal could be better, if it is not already.
Thanks for the ideas!
A few other low tax places to consider that I don't know much about: Belize, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia.
As for the negative points... did you listen to their english? lol.
And Dubai? Yes, it is not too cold there, hahaha.
But the process should be clear for all those who take part and so much stuff in Germany is not even clear to native speakers, and I don't even mean legal contracts, just objects and instructions on stuff you buy at the hardware store.
Is it that much different in English speaking countries? There’s a reason why whenever a legal matter pops up people say “consult a lawyer”.
In Germany all proceedings will be held in German. But you can represent yourself everywhere without speaking German assuming that you have a sworn translator with you. That will cost you probably around €200/hour.
Complex entry processes favour incumbents, it sucks.
The complicated part about having a limited liability company is that it requires double accounting and strict separation between your personal and the company property and that your books must be testified by an accountant. So you’ll need a tax accountant.
Minor note: having formed a British Ltd, I can tell you that some things are much more confusing for foreigners than you might expect. And some are outright hilariously bad. I could not negotiate a health insurance for our British employees since the insurance folks are not allowed to talk to foreigners - something something personal data something. Yes, I tried multiple companies.
I would advise against doing it. You will regret it at every step of the way. Save yourself a million headaches (and euros) and go to Ireland or some other EU country with more respect for entrepreneurs. In Germany you'll just end up feeding the entire endless bureaucracy network that is set up to thrive on the work of other people. Among those being:
- lawyers
- notaries
- tax consultants (this is a big one)
- IHK (useless mandatory organization that takes a piece of your cake)
- Radio and TV tax (they require a tax based on the number of locations or cars that your company operates)
You can absolutely go through this process without speaking German but it will cost you money in lawyers.
> I think his point is, English is the lingua-franca of the internet and international business.
Maybe the Internet, yes. But international business? I don’t think so. Maybe from a perspective of native English-speaking person it appears to him like that. But it’s not the case in many non-English speaking countries.
When a Swedish company does business with a Portuguese company, they speak English. Other languages are used for domestic business. International business is done in English. There are exceptions to the rule like the Francophonie, but let's not be pedantic. You may learn some phrases of the other party's language as a gesture of goodwill and politeness (and honestly it's kinda fun use of company time), but the actual important talks take place in English.
Correct, and they both feel less entitled about the other part not speaking their language as English native speakers do
Have a couple of stories about this. Yes, some people think that you should know their language when they just speak theirs. I do not find it too polite, honestly. Especially a couple of times I saw things that even once made me jump in and say: "how many languages do you speak?" He was abroad, you know, in Asia. And I had to reply: "what makes you think everyone should speak english? You are not even in an english speaking country".
It is not nice to see people behave like that. I think it made the locals feel insulted, not bc he cannot speak the local language. It was because of the attitude of demanding the others to talk to him in english. English is the most used second language. But noone said each of us must learn it.
Just my two cents.
And depending on the education we also speak Spanish, French, German and Italian, as the main learning paths in high school available to chose from.
But again, legal documents, Portuguese.
It's not unusual, I think, for big international companies that already have assets and legal advisers in the UK to specify English law and English courts for a contract, but if a small Greek and a small Italian company were to have a contract in English, it would, I imagine, just make a legal dispute much more dififcult and expensive to resolve (whether or not the contract specifies English law and English courts: different problems in each case).
Come on now, how many people had any of these languages in high school speak it at a conversational level let alone for business. The vast majority of people i met who learned a foreign language in school (other than English) cant speak it.
Myself I speak fluently six languages.
The issue is probably what you personally consider fluently / be able to speak.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
IMO you're misrepresenting to a huge degree the actual part of the population that is able to learn this many languages. Most young people in Europe can speak a native language and a second language, with a bit of a 3rd language thrown in. And that's only counting the richer part, many do not learn past a 2nd language if that.
BTW I count speak fluently == could have a dialogue with a native person about a random topic and be understood. Being able to ask for directions or talk about the food is not fluency, I can do that without language at all.
The average as per EU statistics is three languages.
The person's country main language, english, local dialects or additional national languages in countries like Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and so forth.
Or in the case of European expats, the language of the country they happen to work on.
Pray tell what the language of international business is in the EU.
No, but in every one of those cases English is the way to bet.
> What about a Belgian company from Wallonia and a French partner? Or Luxemburg and Wallonia?
Almost certainly French because it’s the working language of both companies. If people share a native language they’ll use that. Otherwise the default is English. It’s not certain that they’ll use English but Siemens doesn’t expect its international partners to have German speaking partners for dealing with it; it does expect its executives to speak English.
Just as science has a lingua franca so does business. It is English.
Once I had a business meeting in Switzerland. It was all in English (for me, the American), but at one point they were speaking German to each other. And later in the hallway, they switched to speaking French with the lawyer who was there with me. And at lunch in the restaurant attached to the office, the Swiss German host ordered his food in Italian.
I would note, though, that in a court proceeding, one side can pay for simultaneous English translations (I don't know about other languages). I know this because of the German map patent I worked on. I didn't get to go to Germany for the hearings, but if I had, we would have gotten the English service.
This is not true in Berlin, atleast. Even the immigration office may not speak English.
I would not confirm that.
In Berlin everybody speaks at least some English, and more importantly, people are way less "shy" to do so.
But the overall level of education (and that includes foreign languages) is much much lower in Berlin than in the southern states. You can even get your Abitur in Berlin without having to take English exams. That's something that's impossible in say Bavaria.
I’m fairly confident that you have to have at least 4 years of English in school everywhere in Germany if you have at least Mittlere Reife (you can pick a different language as first language in 5th grade, but you need to have Englisch from 7th to 10th)
English was once mandatory as far as I remember. (And you could pick French, Latin, and sometimes ancient Greek, or Spanish additionally).
But the point about Berlin is in fact a little bit different to what I've written before: You can get ABI there without any foreign language at all! (And their math and physics level was more or less comparable to my 11th grade in Bavaria). I was shocked when I leaned that… (That was the first time I've understood why some people would like to lower the ABI results of people coming form the north by one up to two grades when they come to study in the south; the different levels of education across Germany are in fact a real problem).
Whereas there were not much possibilities to get around the final exam in the second foreign language in Bavaria, and no way at all to avoid the exam in at least one foreign language. Which makes a very big difference for someone who's not good in languages—as only the grades form the exams are part of the graduation certificate (which is relevant for example when applying for a university place).
That extremely unfair!
You get Abitur in Berlin more or less for free.
The grade from the subjects you don't have any final exams in are of course not part of the graduation certificate…
I know someone who was struggling in Bavarian middle school with at best average grades, moved to Berlin, could join the "equivalent" of Gymnasium there, and got out with an A-grade ABI. Such "good" grades would get you for example prioritized for say studies in medicine or law, whereas you would not even be allowed to get into university in Bavaria with a middle school diploma.
That are literally life changing differences! That's really not OK.
But of course no official will talk to you in English. No way. Even if they could without much effort.
If you need to speak to an authority you need to do it in German. They will insist on that. Out of their perspective it's all about forcing you to "show respect" for the German authority.
Berlin is special anyway. It's more likely that some random dude on the street speaks English than German. I know people that live in Berlin for many years and still don't speak any German at all. In the day to day life that works out pretty well. The only occasions where they need to bring some native speaker with them is when they need to interact with the authorities…
On the countryside it's different though. Even everybody does also know English you wouldn't get away with not learning German; as not only the authorities would insist on speaking German. People will just ignore you and pretend they don't understand if you try to talk to them in a foreign language (even everybody understands at least some English).
Everybody understands it, most people are able to speak it quite well.
This should be no wonder as the languages are actually quite similar. At least the gap isn't so big as for example between English and some Latin language, or even something linguistically much more far away.
But even people are considerably well educated in this regard they don't like to speak English in daily life. Berlin (and the few other big northern cities like Frankfurt) are mostly an exception to that. But even there this does not hold for authorities. They will on principle insist on German.
They're actually quite not. Try typing something into www.deepl.com - verb placement alone separates the languages by much more than a few shared roots.
* I do so wish the German rules on the pronunciation of 'ei', and 'ie' could be/ could have been internationally adopted.
I asked him about that. He said in Alabama where he was born this was fairly common.
> They're actually quite not.
Of course German and English are very close related.
Both are Germanic languages. Look here, in the right lower corner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages#/media...
Or here:
https://alternativetransport.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/34/
Not only words and grammar are closely related even most of the idiomatic "pictures" are exactly the same in both languages.
I have also no clue what you mean by "verb placement alone separates the languages" as both languages use by default SPO (subject - predicate - object) word order. (German is a little bit more flexible in this regard, though).
However, I found when I was there that attempting to speak at least a little bit elicited sympathy, and they would answer in English. It was probably easier than finding some German words I would understand.
So yeah, you don't just walk up to someone and start out speaking English.
Translating legal terms can cause the meaning to change.
The German texts are often already highly complicated, that does not become better by translation but leads to new problems.
Translation brings in ambiguity.
Such a copy is good enough to use for 95% of the negotiation process. Then, if it's a serious business contract, you get a sworn translator to check its accuracy before the final signing.
(In my case, since the Danish ones were standard contracts, I just checked that they didn't differ from the publicly available texts).
Example from Dutch bureaucracy: "A household receiving an allowance under the Participation Act must contend with the Cost Sharing Norm". That's all nominally English, but effectively gibberish without an understanding of what the Participation Act is all about.
There is no easy technical solution at hand here. That doesn't mean the author doesn't have a point concerning the notoriously obtuse German bureaucratic machine. But any real solution will have to involve a cultural change.
And presumably thousands of euros in fees. And you think this is fine? Why, when other countries do it quicker and faster?
> when I arrived in the UK in 2006, I didn’t expect that everyone will explain to me things in Polish. I actually had to learn the language.
Yes but nobody speaks Polish except the Polish, or?
Now substitute Polish with Spanish or Chinese and take note how dumb that statement sounds.
For Spanish: all of Mexico, Central and South America except Brazil, which speaks Portuguese; Cuba, the Dominican Republican and quite a few of the other Carribbean islands; and all of the southwestern United States and to a lesser extent all the rest of it.
For Chinese: true story: many years ago, my neighbors three houses up the street were two Chinese immigrants and their three kids. Very nice people. The parents each spoke their own Chinese-family language and could only communicate with each other in English. When they had kids they decided to all learn Mandarin together. So... China, Mongolia, Taiwan, Singapore, and probably parts of Malaysia?
Chinese speakers: more than a billion.
Polish speakers: 50 million.
Not comparable.
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house/...
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-custo...
Hardly obscure.
No we wouldn't. As an Eastern European I can assure most of my countrymen know and prefer English far better than they prefer and know German.
You're probably thinking of the countries bordering Germany that still have ethic German populations from the post-WW2 era, or the ones part of the former Austrian empire (Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, etc.) where learning German was mandatory during those times and the tradition of learning it in school as the main foreign language was kept till recently, but if you go a bit east, or look at youth of today, almost nobody speaks German compared to how many speak English.
If you go as a tourist to Slovenia, Croatia or Bosnia, and talk to old people, you're far more likely to get by in German rather than English, but if you talk to young people, it's almost the complete opposite, which is fascinating.
When I registered my German company the worst was to get an internet contract. Registering was done in one or two day. Internet needed more than 2 months.
First you don't need a notary.
Second you absolutely must not need to register a Gewerbe, as this will inherit the most costs. Check how your work is a "free Gewerbe" (eg. providing system IT services, opposite to application IT services).
Third, get rid of a tax advisor, if you care to read the tax laws and maybe a book. I only took a tax advisor in one of my early companies, and it was a massive pain and costly. Without I always managed fine, and survived many extra tax office checks.
Finanzamt and Elster is easy. Social insurance also, just a bit expensive. GmBH is expensive, so just take personal risk and register a normal UG.
If you have a lot of money/skill/experience and the country wants it then I would expect the country to improve its services (in this case business but we could be referring to council services for immigrants, the immigration process itself etc) to the point where language is not a problem.
However, even after a year or so, when I had to go to some more 'official' appointments (for like CAF and banks, etc.), it was like I didn't speak French at all. None of the language they used was language I used in daily life.
My wife is Chinese, speaks English great but when she has to fill out more official forms she still struggles with some of the language used.
I do understand their point that English should probably be available in these instances - of course the contracts will be upheld in German.
I do think when moving to a new country, people should learn the local language, but languages are big and the subset we need for daily, effective communication is quite small.
Wow that's insane. Compare that to creating a Delaware LLC and getting an EIN. No wonder there are hardly any startups in Europe.
And fewer scams. FTX anybody? Or have you received any emails lately from a German prince?
> No wonder there are hardly any startups in Europe
Please remember that the process is different in each country. AFAIK the equivalent process takes less than a month in my country, and that's mostly waiting for the paperwork to go through and registering for VAT (which is technically optional, but almost always necessary). There are also companies that will do all this for you for basically pocket money.
Source: I've done this. The first time I tried to shut a company down, my advisors (who you need to handle the local paperwork) didn't tell me about the "three strikes" requirement in the public register. So it took five years to get the company fully shut down.
I don’t see any positive factors to being in Germany as an entrepreneur, only reason to be there is if the business can’t do otherwise (eg serving something physical to a German customer) or you already inherited something and the cost of moving would massively outweigh the benefits.
Edit: note on the inheriting part, afaik if it’s a company they tax you for the sale if you move your tax residency away (in the EU you have a few years to pay, otherwise right away). That’s also another risk when setting something up in Germany.
Getting rid of it is easy. You file an Auflösung, sign it at the notary, ask them to notify agencies on your behalf. Then you have one year to liquidate. Not sure what’s difficult about it.
Could all be done with a small number of forms and online or for a small fee in many other countries.
What’s the benefit of doing all that?
That’s bankruptcy.
> Could all be done with a small number of forms and online or for a small fee in many other countries.
> What’s the benefit of doing all that?
Frankly, I have no idea. Maybe they do want to make sure that the process stays legitimate. I believe you can do all of this without having to show up in the country by giving a lawyer a power of attorney. But you better have the money to close all financial matters.
When I was shutting down the Ltd, I did it via my tax accountant. And yes, I did tax filings for the last year too. The only difference was that there was no grace period for liquidation.
So you're saying for a small UG you should always spare 1-2 years (most likely more than 1) in case you decide not to pursue the business anymore? I'd rather spend 2-5k on other things.
Apart from being an absurdly high amount for something that can be read out easily from any sane accounting system (thanks Germany for basically forcing everyone to use Datev, which they obviously only sell to professionals, so that's how a simple task becomes 2k+ per year [0]).
> Maybe they do want to make sure that the process stays legitimate
That doesn't really solve the problem, I've had clients with GmBHs who ended up not paying what they owed me - just because they pay a lot to accountants, notary, the state etc. doesn't make the business more sound. Conversely, you can handle a legitimate business (e.g. selling expertise in form of consulting projects) much cheaper and with less time invested elsewhere.
Maybe if everyone weren't wasting so much manpower on inefficient systems, things would actually work.
The added burden of dealing with personal tax, the high price tag for it along with social welfare (which only helps in highly rare circumstances, e.g. when I literally don't have anything anymore - which I don't need because of what I've invested) and the time lost just don't add up.
I've lived in many countries, small, large, rich, poor, and I think Germany is the worst among them to start a business (and also to live, but everyone has their preferences) unless you have a really good reason to be there.
To start something you need flexibility, low overhead, and not to waste time you could be using to talk to customers and build something, rather than deal with bureaucracy. Germany offers neither.
[0]: one quick note on the side, I've used Collmex to do my own accounting back then after I had to fire my tax accountant for absurd things I was being charged and to wrap up the business that I wasn't working on anymore. For me it worked out - in principle what is accounting: you want to track receipts and transform them into a balance sheet and P&L statement + a few of the extras you need in Germany, like VAT reporting. Still a massive pain to transform it into what the tax agency wants and get the info what that actually is, I think it's hard on purpose to waste people's time and direct them to tax accountants that overcharge.
Anyway, time invested vs. paying someone to do it probably doesn't fully add up but I learned a bit more about accounting which is nice to have in any business context.
Try India. There was an HN post the other day about a guy who tried to set up some manufacturing and 2 years in he was still far away from all the permits.
One thing the article we are discussing notably lacks is the mention of bribes. Obviously, you'd add, those would be illegal. Haha. True! They are illegal in India too. And in all other countries. But compared to some forms that are (outrageously!) in German, those re a real PITA.
I'm living in Germany now, by choice, and it's a lovely country with lovely people. Not everything is perfect, but many of the imperfections contribute to the loveliness. Just like in many other countries, rich and poor.
If you look at the outrageously high fees and lack of competition (notaries and tax accounts - yes there’s a bunch out there but it’s not the market dictating the fee and no guarantees that they won’t work towards a suboptimal outcome) I don’t really see how bribes are worse. In Germany corruption has just moved up the chain making everything expensive.
Overall it’s a lost opportunity to create wealth, jobs and a competitive advantage, both in India and Germany.
Then there’s the bit about personal preference. I didn’t see anything good in Germany, but happy for you if you do and live there.
I'm sure you can get your business quickly off the ground if you are friends with the dictator in a country with an oppressive regime. (Others go to jail but that's less important apparently.)
I am telling you that if a company runs out of funds to sustain its operations, it's bankrupt. In Germany it is called Insolvenz. You can feel as emotional about it as you want, but that's what it is called. Yes, you absolutely need to take this into consideration, if you want to shut down a company gracefully. You need to have that financial resource available. You can, of course, finance your company by capitalizing it with extra funds and that's really simple - you put the money in the bank account of the company and write a document as a director stating what has happened.
In any country in the world, when a company does not have money to pay its obligations, it's bankrupt.
My impression of Germany was that they try to force you to keep things going on forever - health insurance, pension, etc. as soon as you want to change something you lose a ton of money. Also: don’t ever criticize anything because they obviously really know what they’re doing.
What is funny is that germans don’t even realize how absurd this looks for the rest of the world. Compare this with closing a company in two weeks in the United States.
The reason for this is that the company must pay any outstanding debt before it can shut down - and you need to give creditors a window to write their invoices. And you’re legally allowed to write and collect on invoices for work (or deliveries) that date back up to three years.
So what happens when you liquidate a GmbH is that a notice is placed in the register for all your creditors to see if you have an outstanding debt with them - and then you just have to wait.
It’s a bureaucratic exercise that most countries manage to avoid.
If they don’t have money and outstanding debt, they can’t liquidate the company - they’ll need to file for bankruptcy, which is an entirely different thing.
How is this complicated? You don't have to do anything for or during that closing period! The only thing that happens is that you get the final "it's been closed for good now" after that period. I let the "Steuerberater" handle everything while the GmbH was active anyway, the fee was not that much. I just gave them all my receipts and they handled accounting completely. I was a bit pissed at the Steuerberater fees accumulating during closing, which were a bit much, but I negotiated that down significantly.
But again, the least complicated part of it was having that waiting period. It had no impact on me whatsoever, not for taxes, not for anything. I just got a message after that time was over, and another one even later from the tax authorities that they are satisfied and would never retroactively look at the company again, so that I knew I would not get any tax surprises from them. Which I did get from the US IRS - years after leaving the US they wanted money from me.
When you close the GmbH it's not like you have to keep anything. You really close it, bank account and all too. The waiting period has nothing to do with you, unless creditors show up. The only thing that happened was that that very final message about the final closing only comes after that period, without any creditors showing up it has no impact on you and you don't have to do or pay anything.
I had had an "offene Handelsgesellschaft" (OHG) with someone before I had the GmbH. The limited liability company forms, GmbH and AG, are much worse than the ones with a fully liable owner. Those are much easier to set up, and they too can become quite big companies and are quite commonly in use in Germany even for established firms. But it's true, the effort around the liability corporation forms is enormous, and lots and lots of fees everywhere. You can shield yourself easily and outsource it all, but the got-to company form that Germany aimed for historically for the "common man" to quickly and easily set up a company was one of the two where one person or a group own the company and are liable. Limited liability was (still is) deliberately kept to be much more demanding.
https://www.ihk.de/stuttgart/english/services2/business-supp...
Forms 3 and 4, and 5 in that list, sole proprietorships and general and limited partnerships.
Here is a table with some numbers, how many firms of each form there are in three size categories by nr. of employees: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Unter...
(and just for comparison, the data for the US, scroll down for the table: https://tingen.law/2022/business-structure-statistics/54443/)
Maybe too many people go for a GmbH too quickly? A KG with one main owner and partners only liable with their share and they can be any legal entity, so businesses instead of people can be a partner, would probably work just as well. I know I went for the GmbH form out of such stupidity, because it was "cool" and internationally it was the form everybody was talking about (limited liability. hey!) but I would have been better off with another form. The "limited liability" has very limited benefits if you are a new founder anyway, nobody is going to give the new company any credit without someone being liable in addition because creditors are not stupid.
old world notaries are an entrenched protectionist industry that function more similar to what lawyers do, or at least have similar weight with the addition of being required
slow a lot of things down and will be unfamiliar to new world + UK
similarly, the new world doesn't require share capital anywhere. where it is a common “proof of stake” system to reduce spam and capitalize the country’s coffers in the old world
The concept that rules differ across nations should not be so hard to grasp.
https://www.computerbild.de/artikel/cb-News-Handy-Prepaid-Ka...
The header makes it pretty clear "Danger of terrorism! Lawmakers tighten restrictions on pre-paid SIMs". That is of course useless nonsense, but politicians can point at it and claim they did something. Also, something, something, stones, glass houses.
Bureaucracy is indeed a rampant runaway force in Germany. Every attempt at reducing it will inevitably create more of it, because, in the bureaucratic mind, you now have to create an oversight committee to control the adherence to the decree of reduction.
I believe this to be a universal constant: you cannot task bureaucracy to with making itself superfluous. Digital services are a decade behind here, since most bureaucrats fight tooth and nail against them, for fear of losing their job.
The EU is to the German establishment what the USSR was to the Russian establishment.
However, your examples are not the best: GDPR and Cookie Law are actually quite good. Regarding the GDPR, I like being able to obtain all the data a business has on me, and to demand that it be deleted. As for the Cookie Law, it’s only a problem for websites using them for tracking people: you are not required to get agreement from the user to use cookies for things like logging in.
Those annoying pop-ups almost everywhere are a disinformation campaign to turn users against that law.
Now, there are other things like the Link Tax you mentioned and the MOSS (VAT on digital services), which means having to charge/pay different VAT rates depending on the user’s country (which you need to justify with 3 different pieces of evidence) that are a big burden on small businesses while not affecting much the big ones to which they were supposedly directed.
MOSS: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-digit...
The end effect of those Bizantine regulations is that big companies just use them as loopholes while small businesses get weighted down with them.
Your last line summarizes it well: “The EU is to the German establishment what the USSR was to the Russian establishment.”
Yeah, this is exactly the issue.
I work in Finance and the right to be forgotten / right to deletion is a pain, as it doesn't apply to invoices (needed for financial reporting for 10 years), but can apply to the user ID, etc. which makes it tricky. It's doable in a big company though, even if it's a headache.
But for example, I live in a housing co-operative, and there the laws really become a pain. Like we wanted to use the CCTV to better enforce treatment of communal areas, but you can't without a police report, etc., and we wanted to build a better portal for residents but then there are lots of issues with the GDPR, etc. - like all just little hurdles that get in the way of iteration and innovation. Especially for something like that which is basically part-time among residents.
I also live in a housing cooperative and I'm glad these laws exist. They protect me from some neighbors that want to set up CCTV everywhere because somebody once saw a kid in the yard that he didn't recognize so must be a burgler (dark skin tone I might add), and because some neighbors don't fold their cardboard boxes properly in the recycling room. And for that BS I and all neighbors should be put under permanent video surveillance in all common areas on the property? No way, I'm glad the law prohibits that.
I think it's just businesses not knowing, and Googling a service, and installing that service which introspects their cookies and shows them to users with an obnoxious popup.
Then a bunch of mid-size companies who just do what the big guys do because if they do it, it must be fine.
If everyone who just use cookies for session tracking (which is perfectly fine) woulds stop asking, we could better differentiate the bad ones from the good ones.
Agreed. My experience was slightly different: we used cookies purely for login, and our legal person still just heard "cookies" and so we needed a consent popup.
Is this even an EU specific thing?
I set up a company in the UK, and the only thing I needed was a number to do tax returns. The only other required thing is the tax returns, and that only gets you to the level of the typical American who has to do tax returns anyway.
Based on the demographics, most European countries are going to have to start importing young people (immigrants) if they want to keep their social welfare systems up for the next generation. It’s a well known fact that first generation immigrants often have the highest rates of entrepreneurship.
Yet, unlike the US, which was created around the idea of being a nation of immigrants, Europe does a really bad job of integrating people (not unique to Europe, it’s really the default state of humans).
English is the lingua franca of Europe. To make it hard for the people most likely to start a business (immigrants) to do so, is astonishingly short sighted. Where do you think the tax money that pays for the salaries of the 5 million German government workers rubber stamping all these documents comes from?
No, it is not as simple as you seem to put it. Egnlish is not german, period. If someone wants to prosper in germany, they better learn german.
There’s Ireland.
Ireland and Malta have English as one of the official languages, and for Ireland English is even the more important one of the official languages.
But that's it.
Hrmmm. What language do you think people who work in the EU government use when communicating with each other? Here's a hint, it's not Portuguese, Finnish, Dutch, French or Italian.
It's definitely not German (a few historical reasons for that...).
The term lingua franca means "bridge language." That's what English is in the EU.
> ...The future is sign language I suppose.
Or, Europeans can continue doing what they already do when conducting business or dealing with tourists, which is...speak English when dealing with people from other countries.
> English is the lingua franca of Europe.
These two sentences contradict each other: Integrating people implies that these people better learn and speak the native language of the country that they are in instead of English (in the EU of course except for Ireland and Malta, the only two EU countries where English is an (but not the only) official language).
I manage anyway, but im sure this unnecessary friction is one of the factors in reducing entrepreneurship in Germany (my native tongue isn’t English but like everyone these days I learned English very early in life and still speak it better than German).
Ultimately it would be better for Germany to reduce friction for economic activity as much as possible. As others said you can register a company in Estonia without being fluent in Estonian. There is nothing inherently different about German or Germany except that they don’t care as much as Estonia does to encourage (or at least not discourage) entrepreneurship.
In general I wish “old Europe” would have been subjected to the same requirement for reform and modernization as the former communist countries were as a condition when they joined the EU. And generally for some Germans to drop the attitude that they’re better than Eastern Europeans - nobody is suggesting this with malicious intent, it’s meant to make things better for everyone in Germany - including Germans themselves.
Only if Europe wants to be some culturless "money above all" USA style conglomerate
The primary issue i see with Germany are that the issues raised by the writer is not just limited to starting a company. It is EVERYWHERE.
The problem is that whether Germans realise or not, it profoundly affects them in many ways.
Because of the archaic system of doing things, everything takes time. You have to set aside time to do these things. Because of how bureaucratic every process is, each staff can only see a limited number of people.
You constantly have to refresh some archaic website to find a slot. Slots are usually all gone in an instant, and your luck depends on someone cancelling or maybe them adding an extra staff for that day.
Often, there is no way to submit applications online, even for things that may logically be better off being submitted online.
The problem i see is: 1) It affects everything, including healthcare. Waiting times for public healthcare, government support etc, are through the roof. 2) Often times, this time blowout issue is blamed on something else (such as refugees, etc). There may be some truth to it, but as an outsider I see how easy it feels to blame some hapless refugee than admitting that system was already at its seams prior. 3) This system disadvantages the less-well-off - being able to pay for it lets you buy your way out of the hassle. 4) Unfortunately, most Germans view this from some perspective of denial, helplessness while others get defensive when you argue about it.
I had a UG, still do so, with a partner (non-German citizen but a German resident) that started out as a JV for the above mentioned GmbH and ended up with me as the 50% shareholder after the GmbH was closed down. That went even faster than the GmbH, again getting a VAT number took the most time (tax authorities in my city are so bad that most companies just move 2 km into another community over it).
I said it before, and I say it again, GmbH set up (or incorporation in general) is something almost every single mom-and-pop retail store and every single contractor shop with more than two people goes through. How smart can start-up founders be if they almost fail at something all those lowely (sarcasm, I have the utmost respect for those traditional and small scale entrepreneurs and blue collar companies) do with a singoe complaint?
Maybe, if the basic legal things about incorporation go above your head, choose a different jurisdiction or, well, maybe flubding and running a company just isn't for you...
EDIT: Why do people insist on the 25k captial? Half of that is ok, founders are on the hook for the reminder. Also, we talk about start-ups, potentially raising millions of VC money. Why can't those founders be bothered with coming up with 25 thousand? Unless, of course, people aren't actually serious about running a business, aka the real "life style businesses", as opposed to those run by people who actually have to earn their living with a company.
Also, the stab, or whatever it was, at the German subreddit over his entitled English requirement (try that in the UK or the US with a non-English language) is just pathetic. And honestly, no amount of language mastery enables you to read and understand legal documents, regardless of the language, without a legal background in the particular domain. But hey, if notaries are outdated maybe we don't lawyers neither as long as we have a native language speaker?
Having lived in several EU countries, I love learning new languages, but it does make day-to-day life much harder, not to mention more complex topics such as starting companies.
It's conceivable that Germany could introduce English an official second language (having multiple official languages is common in the EU), even if just for certain sections of legal life.
At the end of the day, EU citizens have fairly robust rights to live and work in other EU countries, so it's not a privilege. Providing ways for those people to integrate better into the legal systems would be beneficial to creating a more unified Europe.
For the EU so, the only English speaking country left is Ireland.
That's where he lost me and I stopped reading. It's funny that I only ever hear this comment about English. If the language barrier is that hard, then hire a translator to work with you.
Regarding language, unfortunately English is no longer a EU language and so I see little reason to make an effort to support it when alternatives are available. If you are an expat/foreigner and unable to speak a local language you can usually pay your accountant/lawyer or a dedicated company to carry out the procedures for you and explain to you (in your preferred language) what you need to know.
This is no different to other countries, for example here in Belgium you will have to do the process in Dutch or French (depending on the region). Here it's also common to hire an accountant and a "social secretary" company that specialises in facilitating the administration and book keeping of your company so you can focus day to day business.
Of course it is an EU language as Ireland is still a member.
Also, alternatives to English are not readily available to the overwhelming majority of people in Europe or outside. English is the language of international business and science.
What about Ireland and Malta?
Also English is the language of international business. It's crazy not to support it.
Germany is a technologically backward, conservative and anti-innovation backwater. From refusing card payments to absurd "privacy" laws (banning Google Street View and use of CCTV, etc.) and no digital identification, stopping nuclear power, etc.
It's terrible how much influence such a conservative backwater has on the EU, and actually makes me skeptical of the EU as a whole. For example, the GDPR is a nightmare for startups - where a few angry customers can cause you hundreds of thousands of Euros in legal costs and implementation issues. It really destroys the ability to iterate quickly.
Expecting the immigrants to speak the language is one thing and should be mandatory, something that many countries in EU have failed to enforce.
Expecting entrepreneurs to speak the language to set up their company is a failure of the state. Everything should be done to ensure that new businesses can prosper.
I emigrated from old Europe (France) to new Europe (Estonia) 8 years ago. I’ve experienced the bureaucracy that steals time and the one that saves it.
1. Notary. 2. Bank account. 3. Steuerberater takes over from here.
My UG took days to be registered, GmbH took 5 months due to international founders.
If he doesn’t know what a notary is, well, here’s a good British source he could find using Google: https://www.thenotariessociety.org.uk/pages/what-is-a-notary.
Regarding the language. The only thing you’re going to hear as a response to that entitlement: “this is Germany, we do this the German way”. I’m not German, just fyi…