There’s a lot of confusion here:

- There is no double taxation if you just pay yourself a salary (since it’s a normal business expense). If you want to take money out of the company flexibly, a GmbH is the wrong structure.

- I’ve never heard of anybody doing an UG/GmbH + KG to get started. This is highly unusual. Most people either do just a simple UG or maybe they set up a holding structure with two separate GmbH / UG entities.

- Related to the above: if you go with a simple, standard structure you will incur minimal legal fees. You don’t need a lawyer, you just directly task a notary and tell them you want a standard setup.

- If you don’t want the complexity of a limited liability company, the standard way to reduce liability risk is to get liability insurance. Many, many people do this instead of having a GmbH.

The valid criticism is the a) lack of digital processes and b) sequential processing of steps that could happen in parallel. For example, I sped up my own GmbH process by driving to the register court and paying in cash on-site. For whatever reason that’s much faster and saves about a week.

▲

davedx 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The standard way to reduce liability risk is to get liability insurance

Exactly! That's what I do in the Netherlands. It's also common to cover this contractually too - you can negotiate where liability falls for many cases.

Getting a limited liability company for a one-person operation is just overkill.

	▲	t0mas88 a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		The Netherlands changed the rules 14 years ago to allow a BV (equivalent to a German GmbH or US LLC) with zero starting capital. If suppliers want to check company capital, the data is public with the companies register (KvK for locals). There are two reasons not to go this way in NL, 1. There are tax discounts for small businesses that only apply to a sole proprietorship kind of structure and 2. Administrative costs for a BV are slightly higher because the legal entity itself needs to file taxes, instead of only the owners having to do so. But the difference is now very small, #1 has been reduced the past few years and #2 is quite simple. It's an online portal to submit the numbers, if you know what you're doing you don't need an accountant. And I think this is the key criticism for the German system. They don't seem to have a simple online portal for this and they still require 25k starting capital. That makes it harder for a small business to get started.

▲

nonethewiser 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don’t think the barrier to entry is a valid criticism?

	▲	asyx 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Like he said the GmbH is just the wrong legal form of his company. You can register a Kleingewerbe online over night and an UG within 2 weeks and that waiting period is only 2 weeks because it's such a simple and cheap process that notaries won't make time for you and they are busy people so you just take the next free slot they have in their calendar. So if you are lucky you can get an appointment the next day. My wife works for a notary and most of the time people are really pushing to get an appointment but then fail to register a bank account on time so they have to wait a couple of weeks anyway without anybodies fault but their own. Also this is not some secret knowledge. Like, these are not some tricks you learn over time this is something you could technically just ask a tax consultant or a notary. In fact the notary even likes it if you do that because if you try to be clever on your own you are most likely going to cause them more work. Like, you can literally go to a notary and say "this is my business. What should I do?" and they are either going to just do an UG with you or sent you to a tax consultant just to be sure. Like, we have notaries because and they are as expensive as they are because they are supposed to consult you in legal matters and they are required for so many things so that you don't accidentally mess something up that is complicated. Going to a notary really makes this so easy. You just sit there, dude's gonna read his legalese text and then sums it up in 2 sentences for you. Didn't get something? Ask questions. That's why you are there. That's their job. It's really only difficult if you need a lil something for the AppStore for a side hustle and then try to get a GmbH straight away without ever consulting anybody that is literally only there to consult you and make it easier for you.
	▲	mpweiher 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There is valid criticism to the barriers to entry that do exist. The problems the post describes are not that. They are barriers that the author created himself by selecting a complex corporate setup.