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I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting married, having a child, buyi

• histories 3y ago
  Your website is amazing and has helped me personally thousands of time. It became the first quick english reference for everything when I first moved here. Thank you!
  • nicbou 3y ago
    This is exactly what I'm aiming for since 6+ years. It's really happy to hear that it's working.
• freyfogle 3y ago
  Really I think this is overdone. I fully appreciate Berlin is disfunctional, but in other regions (I live in Thüringen) things go quite quickly.
  • nicbou 3y ago
    I don't think that it is overdone. It's bad everywhere, and it's much worse in Berlin. If you've experienced anything like a modern bureaucracy, Germany is infuriatingly backwards. The article is painfully accurate down to the minute detail.
    • freyfogle 3y ago
      I have lived/worked/banked in four countries (UK, US, ES, DE). Germany is not at the cutting edge, but it is far from the worse. The interactions I have had with bureaucratic systems in Thüringen have all been entirely fine. Friendly people, clear process, done quickly. Obviously that is only an n=1. It is a rural area that is not overloaded as Berlin is. Which country would you consider "modern"? My experiences: In the UK the way you prove who you are is literally a physical copy of your water bill. Spain, some things work well enough, others are insane. US, massive variability from state to state and government department.
      • nicbou 3y ago
        My biggest gripes, summed up: - The requirements are arbitrary, undocumented, and largely depend on how the case worker feels on a given day. Common wisdom is to bring far more documents than asked for, just in case. - Everything is paper-based. You are expected to act as a transport layer between offices that won't talk to each other. Everything is mailed, because digital communications are distrusted and digitalisation lagging far behind. - Everything takes far longer than it should, partly due to the above, and due to chronic understaffing of government offices. This is a problem in all major cities, and many of the smaller ones. In this case, n is a pretty big number backed by the many relocation consultants I work with. You got lucky, and I envy you.
        • freyfogle 3y ago
          Oh for sure it could be much better in Germany, and I hope that rapidly becomes the case. Definitely digitization needs to come faster. My complaint is simply people imagining it is perfect elsewhere. Really that is not the case, no where is perfect. All the people chiming in about the US being so easy, yes, wonderful. Now let's talk about healthcare and how your health insurance is tied to your employer. Everyone who is extolling how simple the UK is, that's lovely. What a shame about brexit though. The point is there are major pains absolutely everywhere.
          • hiq 3y ago
            To your counterexamples: if you move to the US or the UK for a job, you don't really suffer directly from Brexit or healthcare being tied to your unemployment. Sure, these could make things worse in certain cases (let's say you get laid off while in the US and end up having to get your own healthcare for a while). The thing with bureaucracy is that it's part of normal life, there's no way around it. You can assume there's a 20% chance you'd get laid off in the US and that it would be bad, but there's a 100% chance you'll have to get a work or residence permit or something else in Germany, and it seems that the default is a painful process (reading the comments here). > The point is there are major pains absolutely everywhere. There are still places such as Switzerland where things are better though.
    • 4ad 3y ago
      As bad as Germany is, it is better than average. Eastern Europe is harder, and Asia borders on impossible. Africa is literally impossible.
      • smabie 3y ago
        Africa and Asia are pretty easy, you just pay a bribe
        • Freedom2 3y ago
          Could you elaborate on this? I had a friend who joked about paying a bribe in Japan or Taiwan, do you think it would work there?
          • amrocha 3y ago
            No
            • Freedom2 3y ago
              Any reason why not? I'm genuinely curious about your previous comment.
              • deleted 3y ago
                [deleted]
              • amrocha 3y ago
                I'm not the parent commenter, but no you can't bribe people in Taiwan or Japan. If I told you the only way to deal with the Canadian government is bribes, would you believe me? Then why do you believe it when talking about equally advanced countries?
                • Freedom2 3y ago
                  My apologies, looks like I need to level up my reading comprehension. I think I am still confused with smabie's authorative sounding comment, then. Why would he say that you can just pay a bribe?
• whalesalad 3y ago
  What are the redeeming qualities of Germany?
  • fleshmonad 3y ago
    Note that I am a German. I would say there are few. Bad education, especially in schools, a broken railway and public transport system, as well as incredibly high taxes. You may say "free healthcare" and a point can be made here, but when you take a look at the high taxes you have to pay, it's not worth it, if your income is above average. All in all it's a mess and I haven't even begun speaking about German people and their mentality, as well as poverty and unsuccessful immigration.
    • lrem 3y ago
      Looks like you really want to move to Switzerland :D
      • fransje26 3y ago
        To then start complaining about the costs of living..?
    • Keyframe 3y ago
      (rants) yep, you are German alright!
      • MrJohz 3y ago
        Truly the worst thing about living in Germany is the apparent national hobby of complaining about things that perhaps aren't great, but really aren't as bad as you might think. In practice, German schools are pretty decent, but they obsess about PISA scores and so neglect to ever notice what the schools are doing well. The train networks are fairly extensive, can be quite cheap depending on how you travel, and consistent across the country, but a lot of Germans would much rather complain about how late they are than recognise anything positive about the system. The general public transport networks (i.e. transport inside towns and cities) are amazing, and one of the things that I would most miss if I went anywhere else. I think part of it is just that if you're German, you rarely see these systems from an outside perspective, so you only see the points that chafe regularly. But another part of it really is just that German tendency to criticise first rather than to view things holistically.
• zettabomb 3y ago
  Oh hey there! I've just moved to Germany from the US (not Berlin but hey, easy enough to apply the general knowledge elsewhere) and your site has been fantastic. Obviously I did not move because I valued bureaucracy, but I'm willing to put up with it partly for a fantastic job, and partly to escape the horror that is modern America. Thank you so much!
  • nickpp 3y ago
    I am curious: what specific horror of modern America are you escaping?
    • jeffrallen 3y ago
      I'm European because of US healthcare, insecurity, inequality, bad food culture, urban planning, and danger from natural and man made disasters, quality and cost of education. Every single one of those things is better in my new European home.
      • zettabomb 3y ago
        A very good summary. There's also more Nazis in America than in Germany, and more far-right hatred in general.
        • Hrun0 3y ago
          Bold and utterly wrong statement
          • zettabomb 3y ago
            Any reason you think so or are you just not paying attention? Far-right sentiment is rising in the US by any metric.
            • Hrun0 3y ago
              I belong to an ethnic minority in Germany and had real Nazis, not Neo-Nazis, as neighbors growing up. Just because you don't know how racist the average German views are, doesn't mean it isn't so. - CDU, which is politically the closest to the Republicans, is by far the strongest party now - AFD, actual Neo-Nazis, are the second strongest party in recent polls - East Germany is basically a giant No-Go area for PoC, with a couple of exceptions. https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
• Biganon 3y ago
  I refuse to believe it is worse than France. I trust the Germans to at least be somewhat efficient.
  • nicbou 3y ago
    Germans are anything but efficient. At best, they're methodical. Speaking from experience, that is also a lie.
    • mtsr 3y ago
      They’re not know for efficiency or being methodical, but for gründlichkeit - being meticulous. Then again, anything like this is a stereotype.
      • nicbou 3y ago
        That is the most accurate term, I agree
    • aleph_minus_one 3y ago
      > Germans are anything but efficient. Germans are (rather) efficient. The German bureacracy isn't. :-)
      • moooo99 3y ago
        Considering these bureacratic organizations are made up of people, most of them German, could you actually conclude that? :-)
        • aleph_minus_one 3y ago
          Quite many German people hate the bureacracy similarly. But most of them feel powerless to change anything. EDIT: But to give more evidence for my claim: violent attacks against government clerks are more and more increasing. I will just post two articles (in German), but it is easy to find many such articles: > https://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/attacken-auf-amtstraeger-mehren-sich-16543558.html https://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/attacken-auf-amtstrae... > https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/heilbronn/angriffe-gewalt-behoerden-mitarbeiter-jobcenter-rathaus-beamtenbund-auslaenderamt-inflation-krise-100.html https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/heilbronn/a...
• hariharan_uno 3y ago
  I completely agree. I have been living here for 8 years, and recently applied for a permanent settlement permit. My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months, while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel internationally, I won't be allowed entry back). Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were unanswered for months. There is no way to contact the foreign office (no email, no telephone, no fax). You just send your application and pray. I strongly advise anyone to stay away from Germany if you have better options. This country is a bureaucratic nightmare in general.
  • nicbou 3y ago
    Mine too! My residence permit expired in February, and my appointment is in July. I expect to have a valid residence title again by end of August. Mind you, I applied in December. I will not be able to travel out of the country for most of the summer as I wouldn't be allowed to reenter. They refused multiple times to issue the temporary permit that I'm legally entitled to. I'm having a lawyer ask again, this time with the threat of a lawsuit. It's such a common problem that I had to write a detailed article about it. People miss weddings and funerals because the immigration office is months late. The number of lawsuits due to inaction is growing exponentially since 2019.
    • chironjit 3y ago
      I'll one up you and say that it's so broken, there are lots of people that basically live on ranges of exceptions. In my case, I was told I was not eligible for the visa I needed but when I spoke to a migration consultant who knew the process, they managed to get it done. I was pretty shocked as this wink, wink, nod, nod style system is not something I expected from this country.
      • nicbou 3y ago
        Yes, bureaucrats can act as gatekeepers for things that you are legally entitled to, and create various bureaucratic hurdles. It's usually mere thoroughness, sometimes incompetence, and if you cross them, vindictiveness. I was told more than once by very knowledgeable people that if you anger a case worker, they can and will make your life hard by nitpicking every little detail and asking for as many documents as they can. This happens for example if you get angry at their incompetence, or if you sue them for inaction (although in Berlin they see it as normal business by now).
• miohtama 3y ago
  Get married in Denmark: This not a joke, but my friends did it (German woman, Indian husband). It Germany it would have taken two weeks. In Denmark you get it done in an hour (minus the booking of the time at the civil registry).
  • dark-star 3y ago
    I fail to imagine a scenario where "getting married fast" is a requirement. I mean you've supposedly been living together for a few years already at that point, so why is 2 weeks too much?
    • twixfel 3y ago
      If it's less work, it's less work. And it can take months if one of you is not German.
      • dpeckett 3y ago
        Yeh two weeks would be very quick for a German marriage involving foreigners, more realistically a few months at-least all things considered.
        • philsnow 3y ago
          Is the delay ostensibly to ensure the identities of the parties, and that's why it takes longer if any foreigners are involved? I could well imagine it being unconscionable for Germans to aver something they were not yet certain of.
        • nicbou 3y ago
          Two weeks would be quick for anything in Germany. 4 weeks seems like the standard for processes that run smoothly.
      • MrJohz 3y ago
        So this is pure anecdata here, but as a foreigner who married a German, it took a while, but it was relatively little work. The biggest issue was that we needed one of my documents (the birth certificate) to have a seal of authenticity from my home country, which then all needed to be translated officially. That took longer than it needed to because we didn't realise it needed to be authenticated and so we got it returned at one point and needed to resubmit it. But apart from that, it was mostly a case of waiting for the formalities to go through - that took a couple of months in total, but it required relatively little work overall. I suspect in total, getting married in another country would have taken more work to organise and arrange, although it would probably have been quicker with the right combination of country and pre-existing documents.
• bradhe 3y ago
  Just wanted to say thanks for your awesome work! allaboutberlin.com was a massive help when I moved here—and continues to be, whenever a new paperwork hurdle presents itself :). You’re doing great work!
  • rkachowski 3y ago
    Truly, it's one of the best and clearly laid out resources out there. I've found a lot of online resources around Berlin life to be frankly hostile (e.g. r/berlin ) to people seeking information on how to approach things like appointments and complying with state regulations. allaboutberlin.com seems to be comparatively devoid of frustration and objectively lays out the situation + steps to be taken in each situation.
    • nicbou 3y ago
      Thank you! I often think about starting a community that functions like /r/berlin, but with a professional moderator like dang to maintain decorum, deduplicate threads, and generally keep the place tidy. With Toytown Germany simply vanishing, there's both a need and a market for it. I just never want to be a moderator again.
      • shiroiushi 3y ago
        >I often think about starting a community that functions like /r/berlin, but with a professional moderator like dang to maintain decorum, deduplicate threads, and generally keep the place tidy. If /r/berlin is anything like /r/japanlife, the problem IS the moderator.
• qmmmur 3y ago
  Thank you for your website. It has helped me immensely.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• zrules 3y ago
  From all the comments in this thread it seems like everyone is in agreement Denmark has less bureaucracy. Is it also a better place to set up a company? Do more companies get acquired from Denmark than Germany?
• cf 3y ago
  I just want to take a moment and say your website has been a real lifesaver. So many headaches avoided by consulting it!
• rtpg 3y ago
  I got married in Japan so was curious about the differences. The two differences seem to be needing to schedule an appointment and needing proof of income. Doesn’t seem really much worse than most countries (tho I can get Denmark being easier) I do place some blame on embassies not issuing documents in local languages. I’m not asking for proof I’m not married for fun! Extremely unhelpful, tho a good job generator for translators. In the end tho, lots of these convos are based off of people coming from the Wild West of common law, which leads to the US government saying stuff like “well we don’t know if you’re married but you can sign an affidavit in front of us”. The American Empire, barely capable of a proper census! Things can and should be improved, but I do think it’s good to be cognizant of the fact that many countries off of differing axioms (especially when it comes to things like the need/interdiction of knowing where your residents live)
  • zarzavat 3y ago
    The common law jurisdictions are simply more honest. If German requirements force people to marry in Denmark, and registering a foreign marriage in Germany takes 4 years to process (the actual waiting time in Berlin), then Germany doesn’t know if someone is married either. They are just more willing to pretend that they do.
  • thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > which leads to the US government saying stuff like “well we don’t know if you’re married but you can sign an affidavit in front of us”. The American Empire, barely capable of a proper census! How would a census help? That's just you declaring your marital status in front of them, without having to sign anything; it has even less probative value than what you're presenting as a stopgap measure that wouldn't be necessary if the census worked better.
    • rtpg 3y ago
      No, you’re right. Census is the wrong word. Just… having a list of residents and marital state seems pretty table stakes for an administrative state
• Tainnor 3y ago
  Other people have already written this, but Berlin is not a good representation for Germany as a whole. It has been known for decades within Germany for having a dysfunctional government structure and administration (due in part to unclear division of responsibilities between districts and the city). Elsewhere in Germany, bureaucracy tends to be tedious but functional. The neglicence of the state of Berlin is actually illegal in many cases. I once even asked a lawyer if I could sue them for their delays, but he wrote back to me to the effect that he was too much on good terms with them to sue, but that I could pay him some money (out of my pocket, of course) so he would go "talk" to them.
  • microtonal 3y ago
    We lived in Tübingen/BW and it the bureaucracy was dysfunctional there as well.
  • mdekkers 3y ago
    > Elsewhere in Germany, bureaucracy tends to be tedious but functional. Data to back up your assertion that it’s only Berlin? I can speak for Düsseldorf, which is a total nightmare. Literally everything folks talk about regarding issues in Berlin also happens as a matter of course in Düsseldorf. A friend of mine is high up in the NRW civil servants apparatus and he confirms it’s fucked across the board in NRW.
    • elbear 3y ago
      Do you know the causes for why there's so much bureaucracy? I wonder what the potential solutions are.
      • microtonal 3y ago
        The bureaucracy problem is compounded by not wanting to link databases between government organizations and a general resistance to anything digital that involves personal data (except Facebook et al. for some reason), which reduces efficiency a lot. However, this is understandable given German history.
• usr1106 3y ago
  I am familiar with both German and Finnish bureaucracy. German bureaucracy is (in)famous for paperwork and using faxes. Citizens/residents have no unique identifier (more and more weakened recently) and need to present documentation for everything. If you have no paper birth certificate you are not born... Finland has had much higher digitalization for decades. You have a person number and authorities store everything centrally. A big brother nightmare for Germans. 20 years ago many processes in Finland went quickly, much more smoothly than in Germany. However, recently more and more authorities went into meltdown. It takes 3 or 6 months to renew a passport (or you queue in the street for many hours to get it done without an internet reservation). Certificates needed for inheritance processes delayed for many months each, so in the end heirs don't get access to their property until years later. If an elder person needs a legal guardian because they are unable to handle banking or similar anymore, you are more or less openly told: Does not make sense queuing, they will die first. Where the degradation came from I have no idea. At least digitalization is not a guarantee that things work smoothly. In some areas (but probably none of those examples I mentioned) failed IT projects are the direct cause that processes break down.
  • rand846633 3y ago
    Anyone know more about this? Find this really interesting and surprising!
    • alibarber 3y ago
      As someone who was advised to wait 6-12 months for a tax refund in Finland (not a standard payroll/prepaid tax) [1] I'd say it's because 'the system' is still the old system from the past that hasn't entirely kept up with the fact that in this day and age: - A limited company is not always a giant manufacturing concern - An ever increasing amount of the population will not have been born in and will not be living their whole lives in Finland. IT is a nice frontend for it and can serve you in many languages and with the latest and greatest UX - but the actual processes and decisions are not keeping pace. Changing these is a high-friction, low-reward endeavour for politicians. [1] https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/contact-us/processing-times-for-returns-and-applications/ https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/contact-us/processing-times-...
• raverbashing 3y ago
  > the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark True. And not only for Germany (The Netherlands might be a good second choice as well)
• bboygravity 3y ago
  Now try Portugal. It will make Germany look like a walk in the park.
  • iamsaitam 3y ago
    Are you kidding? Specially with the article in the topic referring to creating a company. Search for "Criar uma empresa na hora".
• smarnach 3y ago
  I think that's vastly overstating how bad it is. Maybe it's different if you are a German citizen. Just as an example, I never did anything other than signing the contract to get a job. I filled in a single form for each of my two kids when they were born. We got the forms in the hospital and just left them there. Similarly for registering a car -- there was a single simple form.
  • zarzavat 3y ago
    It’s much less of a problem for people born in Germany because the burden is spread out over many years of their lives. If you immigrate to Germany then you need to instantiate yourself in the German bureaucracy everywhere at once, and that bureaucracy has a hostile indifference to the concept of immigrants.
  • tietjens 3y ago
    I disagree. This is not in any way overstating the state of things. Have you ever changed cities and needed to change Finanzbehörde? Have you ever registered for driving school? Have you ever tried changing from one driving instructor to another? Have you ever got married in a district where there are no appointments for marriage? Have you ever been unable to take your children out of school to attend a family funeral in a different country? Have you ever purchased a car in a State different from the one that you live in? Have you ever had to experience the nightmare of applying for unemployment money? Have you ever tried picking up your child's sick notice without their insurance card, but just only your own ID? I could go on and on... Not all of these are on the same level of annoyance/senselessness but there are countless more examples. The bureaucracy and stiff insistence on following processes and rules at the expense of common sense are everyday occurrences. In my experience what is most amazing is how most citizens of this country just accept this and don't find it unusual.
    • allarm 3y ago
      > Have you ever registered for driving school? What's so difficult about that? That was 10 minutes long process for me. I changed cities so I had to change the driving school as well and there were no issues at all. > Have you ever tried changing from one driving instructor to another? I haven't but my school encourages people to do that if they find that they don't click with their instructor. Not arguing with the rest though.
• schnitzelstoat 3y ago
  You should see Spain... basically the same but impossible even to get an appointment. There are dodgy third-party people that sell them on Facebook (I guess they use bots to get them), that's how bad it is.
  • amval 3y ago
    Might depend on where you are in Spain. Having lived in both, I'd take Spain over Germany any day of the week.
  • bigbacaloa 3y ago
    Having immigrated to Spain, it's not so bad. Everything is done digitally. There is a unique personal identifier. Something like filing tax returns is genuinely very easy.
• constantcrying 3y ago
  As a German this never really happened to me. I even own a business here, not a GmBH though. Took one document to fill out about an hour of "work". I really do not get these complaints at all. Even Taxes can be filled out easily with a pretty good online form. None of the bureaucracy ever happened to me, except it is annoying to book appointments. The only things that need addressing are the chronically understaffed government offices and the ridiculously high taxes which are constantly being wasted on utter nonsense.
  • earthnail 3y ago
    I'm German and have a GmbH. Go found one; it's completely ridiculous. Not just founding it, but running it, too. Esp. when you know how easy it is in the US/UK/Sweden (the three other places I've lived).
    • formerly_proven 3y ago
      Several people close to me own-operate GmbHs and it's probably the best vaccination against entrepreneurship there is.
• liendolucas 3y ago
  Come to Italy, it can't be any worse than here. Here bureaucracy is a huge and very lucrative business. Getting a driving licence privately here is the epitome of stupidity. Honestly I can't understand how so many basic common-sense things in life are self-over-complicated just to favor bureocrats and state-maintained employees.
• ketzu 3y ago
  From the examples, I can only fully appreciate the marriage part. When a foreigner wants to get married in germany, they need to prove they aren't married in their home country yet. Getting these documents can be a huge hassle or even impossible. This made a few international couples I know go to denmark to get married. Any process around immigration seems pretty awful, just based on the overwhelmed and (often) unhelpful offices (based on reports from the former friends again). On the other hand, buying and registering a car was quite easy and possible online, besides picking up the car at least. (With some caveats though. Wanting an electric license plate at the time needed me to go by in person to show them the certificate of the car.)
• artirdx 3y ago
  Your website is very informative. Please build something equivalent for Munich.
  • seb1204 3y ago
    Feel free to start this yourself if you have first hand pain.
  • nicbou 3y ago
    To do a good job I need to be there and experience the pain firsthand. There are many subtle nuances that are really hard to spot from a distance. This is why I never really covered studying or raising children. German bureaucracy is hyperlocal. I rely on more and more on a local network of experts to do a good job. In Munich I'd be mostly starting from scratch. However most of the website covers all of Germany. A smarter person would have started All About Germany, if only for SEO purposes.
• krsdcbl 3y ago
  If u really wanna have "worst of all worlds" though, i can only recommend Austria. Basically it's the German-grade paper bureaucracy described here, but spiced up with a truckload of what i would describe as "negative global southern stereotypes": - Everything has to be strictly processed by the book, but ... - "the book" closes Friday at noon, no wait, today it was 10:00, come by next month, we only process such requests on the first friday of the month. Oh wait, Mrs Soandso is on vacation next month, would June suit you? - the one managing "the book" doesn't like your face/surname/tone/something? You might wanna try another city ... In short: it's all strict and utterly beaucratic like you'd expect in Germany, but at the same time ripe with small time corruption, incompetence, and petty xenophobia (Small anecdote: I actually once had to get a lawyer to register a company, since the person responsible for my file at the business court thought my surname was sounding a bit too "foreign" and demanding I present a valid staying permit -- which I do not need (and therefore couldn't even get) in Austria. Straight up refused to process my filing until my lawyer requested a legal statement in writing)
• samtuke 3y ago
  I got married in Denmark for this reason. Super easy. Costs plenty. Smart economic strategy.
• mfiro 3y ago
  I've been living in Germany for more than 7 years and I can only verify this. The offices in big cities are overloaded with requests and getting an appointment for things like renewing documents can takes weeks if not months. Not to mention the naturalization process which can take up to two years[0]. A solution for this in my opinion would be to centralize these processes and make them online, like making a government portal for the whole country. But for that many rules should be changed, which is highly unlikely. [0] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/zwei-jahre-warten-auf-die-einburgerung-immer-mehr-menschen-verklagen-das-land-berlin-wegen-untatigkeit-10039279.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/zwei-jahre-warten-auf-die... (German)
  • tpm 3y ago
    You can't centralize them, as in, it's simply not possible because Germany is decentralized. It's not that many rules would have to be changed, the Constitution would have to be changed. It's completely impossible. The processes are going to be online, this is mandated by law, it will take years, but it is being worked on (some are already available online). They will still be provided by the respective municipality.
• tbyehl 3y ago
  I once saw a survey, possibly from the Annals of Improbable Research, asking how many people constitute a bureaucracy. My favorite response: One German. See also: The Checkpoint Charlie scene from the 1985 movie Gotcha!
• hnbad 3y ago
  Another fun example: if you have a child, you won't automatically get Kindergeld (child benefits) even though you have to sign paperwork for the birth certificate. You have to apply for child benefits and parental leave and maternity compensation and you have to notify each relevant institution individually yourself. There are good and important reasons certain public institutions aren't allowed to share data by default but instead of making that data sharing opt-in, it's completely offloaded to you personally.
  • nicbou 3y ago
    Sometimes Kindergeld makes less sense than the income tax reduction. The best option can be calculated automatically, but the state still won't do it. Kindergeld is a fantastic example of bureaucracy that could be abgeschafft.
    • hnbad 3y ago
      Kindergeld is a fantastic example of something that should be a UBI. It's intended to go to the child and be spent by the parents on the child's behalf - legally, it's considered income of the child, not the parents. That's literally a basic income already and it's paid from birth until the child is 18-25 years old (depending on employment status or if the child is in education). Of course because the FDP conveniently forgot that its "Bürgergeld" was supposed to be a form of UBI and decided to simply rebrand social welfare (aka Hartz IV) instead, we're now in a perverse situation where the thing that was supposed to be a universal basic income is instead very much not universal and even takes Kindergeld into account if the child is part of the household. That said, turning the Kindergeld into a UBI would also mean abolishing the Kinderfreibetrag which acts regressive (i.e. in effect, higher income families receive more benefits per child than lower income families). It would also make it easier to justify closing the loophole of migrant workers collecting child benefits for children in their home country given that a UBI could reasonably be restricted to national residents rather than all EU residents (which is the concern with limiting child benefits the same way).
• jacomoRodriguez 3y ago
  Just wanted to say "hey", when reading the topic and you nickname I thought is was you. The link in you commented confirmed it. We met at verkstedt (Mario)
• bacteria 3y ago
  Hey nicbou, a fantastic website thanks for your efforts. While reading your Bank article I noticed a potentially outdated information concerning ING as I am also an expat and was able open a bank account there. "ING: You need German permanent residence or citizenship to open an account. Some students could open an account with a residence permit. Their customer support speaks English."
  • nicbou 3y ago
    I'm rewriting it as we speak. It's my main focus this month. Can you tell me more? When and where did you open an account? What residence title do you have and what is your nationality? Feel free to email me the answer if you prefer privacy.
    • histories 3y ago
      Not the parent but I had similar experience: I could open an account by ING. Opened end of 2022, fully online. I have italian citizenship; my residence title was just... resident? I had the Anmeldung for the apartment I was living in. But it wasn't all easy. I needed: - A german telephone number. - A document (with a MRZ) with my german address in it. - Not sure but maybe they also asked about my job? The document was critical for me; I had to go to my embassy and apply for a new id that had my german address. Also everything was fully in german, no english whatsoever.
• jupp0r 3y ago
  FWIW, I got married in Germany (as a German to another German) and it was surprisingly straightforward compared to other acts of bureaucracy that I've seen.
• fullspectrumdev 3y ago
  Your site was a complete godsend when I lived in Berlin, though eventually the excessive paperwork was a major contributor towards my decision to move elsewhere. A few other people I know who left after a couple of years say the same - endless bureaucracy and extremely dysfunctional local governance (eg: the clusterfuck with rent control where some people had to pay backrent) made the decision to leave easy.
  • nicbou 3y ago
    Where did you end up? What made you choose?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• vr46 3y ago
  Amazing, I’ve moved to Hamburg and the system is horrifyingly fascinating.
• mbrain 3y ago
  Moved in 2018, looking forward for leaving soon!
• nerdyadventurer 3y ago
  Why govt is not doing anything about it? bureaucracy is well known problem in Germany.