You don’t need to register a business for a bit of side money. Even in Germany, you don’t need to register as “eingetragener Kaufmann” unless it’s, you know, actually a proper side business and ticks some criteria.

Going down that road, there’s heaps of people doing consulting as sole proprietor (or e.K. In Germany) without getting sued or stuck in tax hell

I think you’re looking at things a bit too pessimistic here

> Even in Germany, you don’t need to register as “eingetragener Kaufmann” unless it’s, you know, actually a proper side business and ticks some criteria.

You absolutely can do a Gewerbeanmeldung. The problem is, without a Kapitalgesellschaft ("Mini GmbH" and similar), you're fucked liability-wise. Your entire private assets can be taken if you end up bankrupt.

I don't really get the sentiment on tax fillings. Experts in most other fields manage to do the odd job here and there for a few hundreds, why shouldn't programmers be able to? Either on the books or off the books.

> people can and will fuck with you just because they can or because they hate you for whatever reason. Anything from mass reporting you to Paypal over death threats to outright SWATting you.

That sounds like straight paranoia. All businesses are online today on Google Maps etc. Does your local hot dog stand get swatted on a regular basis?

> That sounds like straight paranoia. All businesses are online today on Google Maps etc. Does your local hot dog stand get swatted on a regular basis?

I've been on the Internet for decades and seen pretty nasty shit. If you want to know what German trolls are capable of, search for "Drachenlord". Additionally, I'm an active antifascist and received my fair share of death threats. So yes I'm biased.

I think those are two very different sides of the internet.

There are easy solutions for the problems you listed. The easiest being to not use your real name to accept SEPA payments. You can put anything you want there on the invoice, the banks just care about the account number.

> The easiest being to not use your real name to accept SEPA payments. You can put anything you want there on the invoice, the banks just care about the account number.

Is it wise though? Absolutely no. All that is is asking for a lot of trouble.

What? The only thing people can do if they have your bank account number is send money to that account. There's nothing else they can do.