throwaway15805

Pretty much. I just have a symbolic 5% stake in the company and working there has certainly not made me rich. I'm still early in my career so I don't have a ton of savings. It wouldn't cause "serious trouble" but paying tens of thousands in taxes on top of the cost and hassle involved in moving overseas is still a significant burden and certainly a case of the regulation missing its mark.

The issue is liquidity. The tax comes due as soon as you leave, but you might not be able to liquidate your shares quickly enough to be able to pay those taxes. Depending on how your company gets valued these can be eye-watering numbers.

This is something you can solve with enough time, but if I get a job offer where I'm supposed to start in 2 months? Very inconvenient. (There are some ways to spread this out have this tax burden spread out over time, but it still represents significant friction)

Been there too. Paying thousands of € for a notary just to read some text you wrote out loud to you is absurd.

The cherry on top is the exit tax:

> And no, I could not just leave instead. My first company, Freshflow, is valuable enough that walking out of Germany would trigger a massive six-figure exit tax, on gains I have not even realised, purely for the privilege of leaving.

This is ostensibly there to prevent large-scale tax fraud but has ridiculously low thresholds that make life difficult for anybody who is shareholder of even a small company.