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.
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.