4 ms·

The same story in Switzerland, perhaps even worse. Any company here generally requires a full-time administrator to handle the paperwork (and salaries here are

The same story in Switzerland, perhaps even worse. Any company here generally requires a full-time administrator to handle the paperwork (and salaries here are huge). Or you can outsource it to the agency, but it will cost at least $10k/year, even for the smallest operations (cheaper than hiring a full-time administrator, however, agencies tend to miss things).

alternize 10y ago
huh, where does your experience come from? currently running two small swiss it companies (3 and 6 employees), and ran several more in the past. none had a "full-time administrator". founding costs (notary, fees etc) were always around €2000 for GmbH and €5000 for AG. our yearly expense for an external accounting expert to do our end-of-year accounting and taxes is around 1k to 2k per company (i.e. 1 to 2 man-day).
- atemerev 10y ago
  Which canton are you incorporated in? My experience is with the canton of Geneva, where I have made multiple beginner's mistakes.
  - alternize 10y ago
    sorry for the late reply. nidwalden and zurich... there was not much difference between the process in the two cantons. we had a lawyer and an accountant help us in the beginning to get the hard-to-figure-out things during incorporation right. money well spent!
matt4077 10y ago
If you actually look at the meat of the article you'll notice that all it takes for the setup is about an afternoon with a notary and 500 Euros. Yearly expenses are mentioned by the author somewhere in this threat, and he says 2000 Euro pa, but note that they're talking about a business that must do at least 6-figures revenue (otherwise VAT reporting wouldn't be on a monthly basis). For a minimum shell company, you can easily get by with a few hundred, and the burdens scale at below O(n), so it never becomes economical to chose a different jurisdiction for for the administrative burdens.
- atemerev 10y ago
  It's not expensive, but quite time-consuming. :(

alternize 10y ago

huh, where does your experience come from? currently running two small swiss it companies (3 and 6 employees), and ran several more in the past. none had a "full-time administrator". founding costs (notary, fees etc) were always around €2000 for GmbH and €5000 for AG. our yearly expense for an external accounting expert to do our end-of-year accounting and taxes is around 1k to 2k per company (i.e. 1 to 2 man-day).

atemerev 10y ago
Which canton are you incorporated in? My experience is with the canton of Geneva, where I have made multiple beginner's mistakes.
- alternize 10y ago
  sorry for the late reply. nidwalden and zurich... there was not much difference between the process in the two cantons. we had a lawyer and an accountant help us in the beginning to get the hard-to-figure-out things during incorporation right. money well spent!

matt4077 10y ago

If you actually look at the meat of the article you'll notice that all it takes for the setup is about an afternoon with a notary and 500 Euros. Yearly expenses are mentioned by the author somewhere in this threat, and he says 2000 Euro pa, but note that they're talking about a business that must do at least 6-figures revenue (otherwise VAT reporting wouldn't be on a monthly basis). For a minimum shell company, you can easily get by with a few hundred, and the burdens scale at below O(n), so it never becomes economical to chose a different jurisdiction for for the administrative burdens.

atemerev 10y ago
It's not expensive, but quite time-consuming. :(