My story starts on the 3rd of november 2021 when I legally founded my company. Without prior knowledge in the field I thought of the many people who made their dreams come true by starting their business. I was 25, still living with my parents and nearly zero cost of living. What could go wrong?
This is when the struggle begins.
Like in every country there are certain requirements to be fullfilled to start a business. I chose the legal form GmbH which has the following requirements
- Corpus of 25000€ (12500€ minimum up front)
- Company agreement
- Declaring a CEO
- Company name
Obviously there are more things to cover but lets keep it simple.
Since my business is focused on managing my own wealth I wanted to keep the company agreement as simple as possible. There is only one shareholder which is myself and I’m free to pursue my time as CEO in other businesses (you have to declare this in Germany otherwise there might be problems later on. But since I founded the company solely this is no problem)
The company agreement has to be signed by a notary otherwise the company will not be legally founded. I called many notaries in my area choosing the one who had the earliest appointment possible. I had to make the appointment 3 weeks in advance. Many notaries told me they only had time in late January 2022! So start planning in advance, like months ahead.
After the company agreement was signed it took nearly one week to get the official documents from the notary.
The business must have its own bank account and in order to be able to create a bank account you need the signed documents from the notary. Luckily I opened my bank account with a fin-tech company so the process took me 1 day to have a business bank account.
I deposited my primary capital which was 25000€. The bank receipt was then sent to the notary in order to finish the process of being added to the commercial register in Germany which is mandatory.
The letter of confirmation of being added came on the 20th of november 2021, 17 days after I legally created the company and 8 days after proving the deposit of the primary capital. A long time was gone in which I could not conduct any business. But still I can’t do any business since I have to get my tax information for the company. On the 26th of november I sent my letter of tax registration to my local finance authority.
I called a week later and even sent some mails without a response.
On the 24th of december my company got its tax information. 51 days after being at the notary and 28 days after sending my tax status.
Now I could finally open a brokerage account for my company. The process finished on the 29th of december 2021.
For the new year 2022 I was finally set up to conduct business.
German bureaucracy took 56 days from start to finish.
I hope this story encourages everyone in the process of starting his own company in Germany.
