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Creating 3x a personal company for the founders is not a required step. Germany expects those personal companies to be conducting business so it's all those ste
by mtmail 4y ago
Creating 3x a personal company for the founders is not a required step. Germany expects those personal companies to be conducting business so it's all those steps like a "real" company. The 3 founders could've just created the real GmbH company and be 3 shareholders.
The founders also could've created a UG (mini-GmbH), plenty of startups do. It's no clear from the blog post why they do the real GmbH. Possibly because a mini-GmbH can't be owned by 3 personal companies. Well, sure, in that case you need those 25000 Euro on the bank account.
Transparenzregister (transparency registry) was new in 2021. The notary should've done that step. Germany kind of added the registry so people can't hide behind personal companies when doing business.
Chamber of Commerce for an IT company is weird indeed. Makes sense for businesses that need special permissions, certifications or have regional limits (let's say pharmacies) but not IT.
Think of Gewerbeamt as local taxes vs federal taxes. Gewerbeamt is your city taxes. While federal tax rate is the same everywhere, city tax rate differs and allows them to compete a bit.
"so we had to agree with our investors that we would transfer the
remaining 12,500€ over the next couple of years." Strange to have investors and then not have them pay the full amount. They're saving money here, true, but then shouldn't complain that this part of the process is not straight-forward.
Using a tax accountant for a GmbH company is not required. The author doesn't seem to grasp even the function of some of the contracts he signed so he should of course use a professional to file the annual accounts forms.
If you have money from investors and skip many of the steps: buy a holding company, costs 5000 Euro. You pay 30000 Euro and receive a ready-for-you company with bank account of 25000 Euro. Then go to a notary and have, in a single document, change the company name, change the shareholders, move it to the desired city.
- Major_Grooves 4y agoOP here - the holding companies are indeed for obligatory, but they are what nearly all startup founders do for tax efficiency. We took a 1.2M € investment round. Investors do not want to invest that into anything other than a "proper" Germany company. The investors can't (or should not) pay any money towards the 25k €. We had 1.2M € go into the bank account, but we have to agree that we are liable for the 12.5k € and pay it in ourselves over time.
- quonn 4y ago> buy a holding company Wow, I didn't know this. Interesting. Apparently you can even buy it for just 3500 Euros (28500 in total) and already registered in your city of choice (presumably for the larger cities). It seems like the problem, then, is transferring the bank account (the new owners nee to be authenticated). I'm not sure this is easier than creating the company from scratch.
- mtmail 4y agoWe bought a holding company, I should've made that more clear in my previous comment. Bank account transfer was straight forward. The advantage is speed, you're ready to do business in a couple of days vs waiting for various paperworks for weeks.
- csomar 4y ago> If you have money from investors and skip many of the steps: buy a holding company, costs 5000 Euro. You pay 30000 Euro and receive a ready-for-you company with bank account of 25000 Euro. Then go to a notary and have, in a single document, change the company name, change the shareholders, move it to the desired city. Is this a good idea? How do you make sure the company doesn't have any liabilities or did any shady transactions.