It takes 8 weeks from start to finish to be able to get paid for your first sale as a German limited liability company.

People outside of Germany really have no idea how sclerotic the state is. Mean while Germans suffer from the brain damage of having lived there their whole lives and don't see a problem with this.

If you think brain damage is too strong a word, the last time I brought it up a bunch of Germans came out of the wood work to defend an 8 week process as completely reasonable. Then when told I could do the same thing in Australia in 15 minutes they insinuated I was probably a criminal for wanting less paper work to open a business there.

That's great to know! In Germany it involves a lot of physical paperwork, going to a notary to certify the creation, taxes are a nightmare, every change you need to make again you need a notary. It's so frustrating!

> Similar experience in Spain, fill out 2-3 forms and it's done.

This isn't true in Spain - all company creation requires a notary, among other awkward steps (although as of relatively recently in some cases you can now do this over videoconference, without physically visiting at least). It's not as bad as what I hear of in Germany, but it's non-trivial and slow, and the banking setup process is similarly annoying and slower than it should be.

You can register as autonomo (an individual freelancer) easily with just a couple of forms, but that is not the same thing as creating a separate legal business entity (SL).

> How much more process could the German government really add here?

Hahaha, good one, little padavan...

I'm pretty sure Sweden is the most business friendly country. its why so many people move their business from Norway to Sweden.

Company formation in Germany requires identity and statute checks by a notary. You can nowadays do that remotely via video appointment but it’s still a bit of a hassle and delay. It’s not as bad as people claim, or rather: if people already have difficulties with that step I wonder how much fun they will have with “bureaucracy” later on.

Frankly, I understand how one can be annoyed at certain requirements but how do people imagine it without those? I can totally accept temporary annoyances since ultimately all of it serves to protect me from harm as a customer. I really don’t want to deal with companies whose founders already find the quite straightforward registration procedure too difficult.

The claim by others in this thread that you have to wait for the registration entry is false, your company is created the moment you pass notarization. While it makes proof of existence easier to be in the database, you can act and get bank accounts etc with those documents already. And I doubt the stability of your business idea if you cannot even wait a bit.

Lobbies whose only purpose is to sustain themselves even at the cost of maintaining friction should be made illegal.

I had my experience with bootstrapping a self founded UG (Unternehmergesellschaft), and the process was long (about 8 weeks), involving me getting support from a company (firma.de) to help me prepare all the documentation which involved a lot of physical paperwork, then there's the visit to the notary which is required. After you do that, you need to register with the Finanzamt, and then you start finding out about all this other registries you need to pay and register to, or that you're automatically registered, but you receive separate invoices.

Any changes you need to make, adding more capital, change address, requires again, paperwork, tons of hours and again the notary.

Taxes are also quite difficult to figure out, I'm not German born, and my German is good for conversation, but to read and understand the tax has been a problem and I had to rely on very expensive tax consultants. (I know, this is my problem, not a german problem)

It's not that is hard, it's very time consuming, manual, and involves a lot of paperwork. Other countries do this much easier. Also, shutting down a company... I'm still trying to figure that out :(

In the UK, it took me half an hour and 30£ to open a Ltd, which I think is the equivalent of a GmbH.

It might have changed, but a few years ago you could go from 0 to a fully functional limited company, with accounting, business account, registered address with mail forwarding, etc. in a matter of days, from the comfort of your sofa.