> Which leaves the only real question. Why 25,000 at all? It is my company and my risk. If I want to start with nothing, that is my call, not a toll the state collects before it will let me try.

But it was his call. As the author has already pointed out, he could have started a sole proprietorship, but he did not want to take on that risk. The 25'000 is because it's not his risk if he starts a GmbH, it's the GmbH's risk.

Also, the 25'000 are not a toll, it's the company's Stammkapital. The GmbH owns that money. And afaik, in Germany you only have to pay in half of the 25k.

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preya2k 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, can confirm. You can start a GmbH with exactly half of it (12.500€). And the money does NOT need to stay locked on the bank account. You can spend it for company purposes (but NOT for founder wages).

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tomschwiha 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Founder wage is a company purpose, else it wouldn't be allowed. Its not your personal money anymore once deposited into the companies account.

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InsideOutSanta 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, afaik you can pay out founder wages with Stammkapital.

However, it has to be actual wages, i.e., the founder has to do work in return for a salary, and the salary has to be reasonable. You can't just have the GmbH pay you back the money you put into the company. There are also other limitations (https://dejure.org/gesetze/GmbHG/30.html), but that's the main one.

	▲	tomschwiha 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The difference is shareholder (=Gesellschafter) and ceo (=Geschäftführer). They may be the same person. So paying wages for the work as Geschäftsführer is fine (reasonable amount, taxes, etc), paying out money for being a Gesellschafter is not.

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isodev 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I can't verify if the author's attempts are even real tbh. Sounds like they were creating problems for themselves just to see how much it would cost to get sort them out. For a GmbH you also want to get an accountant and just delegate the whole process to people who can guide you before you hurt yourself.

	▲	InsideOutSanta 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, this reads to me like "I made some weird decisions, and now I'm upset they resulted in a weird situation." My feeling is that starting a GmbH is relatively simple, quick, and cheap, so it's not worth trying to engineer some workaround to problems that most likely didn't exist in the first place.