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It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or SA in some EU countries. It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it. Huge a

It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or SA in some EU countries. It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it. Huge amount of risk and cost on founders and a huge distraction from running a business. I think that EU-Inc _could_ be an improvement, but it needs to avoid the committee laundry list of ideas/requirements/form fields that plagues the EU startup ecosystem. My worry is that the end result will require notarized declarations of honour, financial plans stretching decades into the future, 30 page business plan documents, reams of corporate governance documents, and tons of other nonsense to protect against the perceived risk that someone who failed at starting a business once fails a second time. There needs to be UX requirements on the process from day one against which the end result is judged. (E.g. "a company should be able to register in x days", "a complete application should be no longer than y pages", "application costs should be less than z euros").

egorfine 8mo ago
> a company should be able to register in x days Which EU bureaucrats will fully pass by treating this as "a company should be able to register in x days once the full set of documents has been collected".
- moritzwarhier 8mo ago
  Companies are treated like persons legally and while I'm sure there is too much bureaucracy in many places, I'm also sure that there are important documents that should be required. For example to make sure that a company can be held responsible when it breaks the law. There are already enough loopholes to disconnect legal responsibility from profit-taking, and not every company is benign. Sure, if the documents cannot be acquired in X days for other reasons, that would undermine the tagline. But I don't think that's the main risk. Let's not forget that some requirements make sense. In Germany, the government recently decided that some minor applications to local governments must be answered within X days or else are automatically approved. But "minor" is important here... great for a small business that applies for a permit to renovate there outdoor seatings or whatever. I wouldn't want for company foundings to be auto-approved without submitting the legally required documents.
  - egorfine 8mo ago
    There is a huge spectrum between "require impossible documentation" and "require none". Germany and EU are heading towards the former.
    - embedding-shape 8mo ago
      Literally the whole effort this submission, is about is moving a tiny step towards "require none" but not go all the way, compared to how it is today. You chose the wrong submission to comment that on, in any "new regulation in EU" submission that might have been appropriate, but this move is quite the opposite of what you say is happening.
      - egorfine 8mo ago
        > this move My point is that this move will not happen. I don't believe EU can overcome a huge and extremely motivated army of bureaucrats.
      - philipallstar 8mo ago
        This isn't an EU move, is it?
        embedding-shape 8mo ago
        > This isn't an EU move, is it? What, exactly, do you mean with "EU move"? I guess technically it's a "European Commission" move, but overall it's a European and EU move, unless "move" has some specific meaning to you.
    - Bewelge 8mo ago
      German here. That's not true. What crazy documentation do you require? An ID, proof of residence, and a business plan? (edit: you don't even need a business plan) That being said, everything about the process is annoying and you always have the feeling that you're doing something wrong or forgetting something. Together with some ridiculously slow processing times, it's the perfect combination to frustrate you and I'm sure it ultimately reduces innovation. But in reality, getting all the paperwork together is probably a couple of hours of work. You can buy services that do it for you for a couple of hundred Euros.
- sbacic 8mo ago
  Which in itself wouldn't even be a problem if lack of said documents caused your submission to automatically fail validation right at the start. Instead, a real, live person will need to review your request to verify that it indeed includes a full set of documents, said documents are genuine and "correct" (despite most of them already being issued by the government!) before approving your request.
  - egorfine 8mo ago
    And given the founding principles of bureaucracy, no set of documents is ever correct because there are at least two contradictory regulations on any given topic.
egorfine 8mo ago
> My worry is that the end result will require Yes it will. The vast army of bureaucrats in any country does whatever is in their power to make sure their specific requirements are included into the process. What do you mean they would like to open a 3D printing workshop with no Environmental Impact Study done?!
- whynotmaybe 8mo ago
  You know that EU bureaucrats do what each country want them to do right? Each time the Commission comes with a new rule, most countries agree with it. And if its an "unpopular", the game for each gov is to blame the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6481969.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6481969.stm
  - egorfine 8mo ago
    > You know that EU bureaucrats do what each country want them to do right? I'n not entirely sure about that. The vast majority of entrepreneurs are complaining about unrealistic requirements and inconceivable burdens in Germany. Certainly no one wants any of this. Yet somehow the rules pile up.
    - hvb2 8mo ago
      You said > In Germany And then > Yet somehow the rules pile up. Which is just German culture as much as food is Italian. If you want rules for everything I'm hard pressed to think of a more regulated country than Germany. And the populace, in general, might scoff at how long things take but absolutely want to understand what the process is... So yeah, you can't have it both ways
      - egorfine 8mo ago
        > hard pressed to think of a more regulated country than Germany. Unfortunately the influence of Germany over other EU countries is quite strong in terms of regulations. Absolutely no one wants more regulations, yet they slowly pile up in the whole EU. I live in Poland, where regulations are incomparably more sane than those of Germany, but even here it slowly grows.
te_chris 8mo ago
Truly, this is one of the greatest losses of the UK leaving. For both parties. Advising EU startups on where to incorporate that isn’t London could be so much simpler.
- whateverboat 8mo ago
  What about Luxembourg?
  - embedding-shape 8mo ago
    If you have to setup a company today, and want the easiest path to EU-wide SaaS, probably Estonia is the way to go, very easy for EU citizens (don't know how the experience would be from outside, if it's even possible).
    - psychoslave 8mo ago
      Interesting https://eurosaasedge.substack.com/p/the-estonian-saas-formula-europes https://eurosaasedge.substack.com/p/the-estonian-saas-formul...
    - MrJobbo 8mo ago
      Too bad that Estonia won't exist after 2027...Russia will gobble it up alongside Latvia and Lithuania.
      - embedding-shape 8mo ago
        Yeah, such a shame Estonia isn't in NATO nor the defense clauses of the EU, so they're sitting there all alone at the border...
    - Tangurena2 8mo ago
      It seems easy enough for US residents as well: https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/ https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/ Checking the requirements, it seems to me that any "first world" citizen would encounter a low barrier for entry, with exceptions for Russians ("second world" citizens).
logicchains 8mo ago
>My worry is that the end result will require notarized declarations of honour, financial plans stretching decades into the future, 30 page business plan documents, reams of corporate governance documents, and tons of other nonsense to protect against the perceived risk that someone who failed at starting a business once fails a second time. That sounds like a really good use for AI.
- regularfry 8mo ago
  "It is a mistake to optimise something that should not exist in the first place." - Elon Musk (apparently, although I would be astonished if Deming or Ohno hadn't said something similar)
  - amunozo 8mo ago
    I agree, but us individuals cannot change the system that easily. But we can use these tools.
- ThePowerOfFuet 8mo ago
  >That sounds like a really good use for AI. No, it is not a really good use for a word prediction engine.
  - miki123211 8mo ago
    In Europe, there are two parallel realities which coexist, have some influence over one another, but are ultimately somewhat separate. There's the real reality, and then there's the reality as it is perceived by the bureaucratic apparatus, the "upside down." It's important to realize that everything in the "upside down" must be consistent with the rest of that reality, but not necessarily with what actually happened in the real world. The closer your activities get to the government and government scrutiny, the more true that description is. Did John have to go somewhere on Monday and finish his work on Saturday instead? He could have filed for time off and then gotten special permission to work on Saturday, but that's far too many forms with far too many signatures. It's just easier to pretend (on all documents, yes all of them, the "upside down" demands consistency) that he did in fact work on Monday and did not work on saturday. Americans call it fraud, Europeans call it Tuesday.
PurpleRamen 8mo ago
> Huge amount of risk and cost on founders Better than potentially putting risk and costs on other companies, the country and/or it's citizens. > nonsense to protect against the perceived risk It's not a perceived risk. No rule is made without cases.
- pjc50 8mo ago
  > No rule is made without cases I can generally reverse engineer from the UK Companies Act what the cases were, but many EU countries have much more onerous requirements for what seems like no good reason? Perhaps the cases were too long in the past and things work differently now? What risks are we talking about, anyway?
mytailorisrich 8mo ago
There really is no reason for it to be longer, more expensive, and more complicated than what exists today in, say, the UK where you can do it all online for about £20 (or is it £50 now?) and complete in a matter of hours. This is really down to individual countries' red tape and suspicion. The risk element is also not at all attached to forming a company (hence why it can be so simple and quick), it is with funding and finance. So banks will want to see a business plan but the company registration office does not, or should not, care.
baby 8mo ago
Having a startup in the US is a huge mess due to all the states and taxes, if Europe can make everything digital AND easier, it's a no brainer for us to move our company there.
- bluecalm 8mo ago
  >>Having a startup in the US is a huge mess due to all the states and taxes, In EU you will need to deal with VAT basically from day one (10k EUR of revenue). In US you will not deal with it until you can afford it as thresholds are very generous.
  - niemandhier 8mo ago
    At least in Germany, this is not correct. You do not have to pay that unless: You earned more than €100,000 this year or more than €25,000 last year.
    - alibarber 8mo ago
      But there is no threshold for cross-border selling in the EU. Fine if you're selling widgets at a market in Germany - but if you sell software abroad, make sure you're following [each] one of the 27 VAT codes correctly. (From what I understand - would love this to be wrong)
      - yujzgzc 8mo ago
        Following US sales tax has way more complexity. In my county alone there are many different rates depending on the city in which the sale is made. Even just finding out authoritatively which jurisdiction to pay taxes to is nontrivial, practically impossible to solve without dedicated software.
      - friendzis 8mo ago
        > Fine if you're selling widgets at a market in Germany - but if you sell software abroad, make sure you're following [each] one of the 27 VAT codes correctly. Yes. > But there is no threshold for cross-border selling in the EU. Kinda, but misinterprets the VAT itself. Basically, VAT is paid at the point of sale and local thresholds apply.
xattt 8mo ago
> a complete application should be no longer than y pages The monkey’s finger curls. All contract text is now sized at 2 points.
miki123211 8mo ago
I think what's even more important is that the costs for founding and maintaining such an LLC should scale with revenue, including scaling to 0. In many EU countries, you still have to pay social security and/or health insurance, even if your company brings in no revenue. This isn't supposed to be a problem, as you're not really supposed to officially start a business unless you cross specific revenue thresholds. However, that doesn't work in practice if you're offering your services online, as many payment gateways in Europe will not deal with non-business accounts.
- trueismywork 8mo ago
  Startups but definition have no revenue. Its also a chicken and egg problem. Having a revenue means having a company and vice versa. Unless you're in very old fields, which explains lack of new tech companies in Germany
  - friendzis 8mo ago
    > Its also a chicken and egg problem. Having a revenue means having a company and vice versa. How would you pay your employees making the product/service that will eventually bring in the revenue? That's what "own capital" is for. Typical LLC/JSC will have at the very least one employee -- the CEO -- and that will bring one minimum wage worth of expenses (sort of). There are legal entity types that can function without employees with shareholders sort of self-employing, but those are not universal across the EU.
    - jandrewrogers 8mo ago
      In the US, it is common for a small startup company to have no employees. Your role and title with a company is separate from your official employment status. This is where concepts like "sweat equity" come from. You can be an owner and work on a company without being an employee or receiving any compensation. Creating a company in the US comes with no real obligations to do something with it. This is beneficial. It allows small companies to bootstrap without incurring the complexity and cost of having employees until they have enough revenue or capital to justify that expense.
seec 8mo ago
They won't be able to solve the problem. The only reason all those roadblocks exist is to control/regulate everything in a way to ensure the maximum possible taxation. At the same time, bureaucrats get to justify their existence, pretending to do meaningful work while they only take from productive people. You can't even say they manage to regulate actual problems; they only reinforce the big players. The cookie consent banner nonsense and ongoing legal fight with Apple (and GAFAM in general) didn't bring anything of value to end consumers. Cookies haven't disappeared; they have just become a major annoyance that you have to spend a lot of time clicking on and tracking hasn't been reduced, quite the contrary. The iPhone is still a locked-down device, with Apple maintaining a monopoly on software access as well as repairability (their repair program is such a joke that they should be tried for contempt if the EU actually had any power). Bureaucracy is just cancer, and the EU is fully metastasized; there is not much that can improve until a major failure happens. If you want to create a business, you have to pay the bureaucracy before you even make a single cent. Business has become more profitable to the government than the actual business owners; those thriving are the big ones who can afford to play the lobbying game and engage in regulatory capture and offload most of the cost on the taxpayers while profiting overseas.
Gravityloss 8mo ago
Yeah, since there's lots of countries and some are very dynamic and modern, maybe they could act as early adopters. But don't stop there: if it works for the early adopters, others could also apply their lessons. For example Estonia is often mentioned in electronic government etc.
torginus 8mo ago
Is this a true problem in EU (or indeed anywhere)? I don't think starting a company is the bottleneck, it's mostly the inordinate amount of regulations one has to comply with, as well as the strenuous laws around letting workers go, while making people work as contractors being also frowned upon. I'm not sure how any one these is going to change.
- wolvoleo 8mo ago
  Those things are as designed. This is good. We don't want "at-will" employment like in the US. We want to have rights as employees. We want to have social welfare. We want our free healthcare. It's not a bug it's a feature. We don't want an American-style society. Current developments should be enough reason to understand why (and the understanding that Trump's backers are part of a huge group of people on the low side of the wealth gap). If anything we have too much of that already hence the rise of extreme right here too. It's a result of the austerity movements after the 2007 crash. But this new regulation doesn't invalidate employee rights no. It's just about registration and incorporation.
  - WarmWash 8mo ago
    The EU has a borderline stagnant economy, couldn't defend itself from Russia, facing population collapse, totally whiffed on the tech scene explosion in the last 25 years, now also missing out on AI. European social obligations are expensive, yet nobody seems to really want to stress about creating new sources of wealth. At some point Europeans need to look in the mirror, and understand that the last 30 years has been a vacation, and even worse, there is now a whole generation who was born on vacation and thinks it's the norm.
    - wolvoleo 8mo ago
      We can defend ourselves, it's just that the US didn't want a too-powerful Europe until trump. In particular nuclear. They heavily pushed against that. We'll have to scale this up now but it is not a big problem. Population collapse is a good thing. We already have too many people in this world, causing environmental and housing issues. We can't keep ever growing as humanity, stabilisation or even a reduction is very good. It'll cause some short term cash flow and elderly care issues but we'll deal with that. And AI so far is more of a hollow promise and hype. It's not a race, the way America is approaching it it's inevitably going to lead to a bubble collapse.
TacticalCoder 8mo ago
> It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or SA in some EU countries. Totally. One of the biggest and most horrific aspect of it is the KYC/AML. We regularly read articles explaining that drugs are so out of hand that several EU countries, like Belgium, are becoming narco-states: these are front page, major newspaper, stories. We also read articles explaining that cash bills from petty drug dealing are "necessary for the underground economy of the poor oppressed people". Official numbers say 2% to 5% of the world's global GDP is tied to criminal activities. So major drug trafficking is ongoing and that money is definitely being laundered. Yet when regular people like myself want to open a company, the gates of the KYC/AML hell do open. Bureaucrats and many people at various institutions like banks, notary, etc. do believe that the KYC/AML meant to catch actual criminals is actually a greenlight to go full stasi-mode on everyone. Things go, literally, a bit like this: stasi agent: "Source of funds: where do the 50 K EUR of capital come from?" honest person: "I sold at 600 EUR shares of Meta I bought at 60 EUR in 2015 (making that up), here's a printed copy of both the buy order at the bank in 2015 and the copy of the sell order, at the same bank, 10 years later." stasi agent: "Nice try! Where did the 5 K EUR you bought those Meta shares with in 2015 come from?". The above is, literally, happening. It happened to me. It happened to people I know. At one point I had no trace because I had to go so much back in time that the bank wouldn't give the proofs anymore: and it cost something insane like 25 EUR / month per account to get old infos. So for say four accounts we're talking 1 200 EUR per year to ask for old bank statements. I'll remind everyone that a principle in many EU countries is that if there is no suspicion of fraud there's a delay after which the IRSes cannot legally go back. They have to prove that there's potential fraud to be able to go back more than, e.g., 7 years. But the stasi-agents working in KYC/AML at banks, notary, etc.? They believe they have a mission to make regular's people life hell. Oh and a good one: you think it's bad that legitimate citizens to denounce illegals? You wanna me to tell you about the phone numbers the governments put in place in many EU countries so that citizens can denounce other fellow citizens "because they believe they're frauding the IRS"? How's that one? Where's the outrage? In my native country of Belgium I heard that at least one in every four solo-preneur ("independant") / entrepreneur has been the subject of at least one such denunciation. Stasi. Also totally counter-productive: when everybody is a suspect, nobody is. I see on LinkedIn people whoring their profiles to would be employers by boasting about how many SARs denunciations they made (Suspicious Activity Reports). Stasi agents. And then don't get me started on people who are just bitter and sour because, in the EU, they may be net 3 K to 5 K EUR a month, and yet are authorized to KYC / AML on people owning Porsche and Ferrari, hundreds of thousands or millions of EUR worth of equities/investements, expensive real estate, etc. These people cannot comprehend, in their own little minds, surrounded by people limited the same way they are, that there are people out there who are just legitimately more succesful than they'll ever be in life. Their bitterness and jealousy turns them into little stati agents. Bank menaced to not only not open my company's account but to close not just my account but also my wife's account. I had then to spend three weeks, full time, while my wife was on vacation (I sent her on vacation and stayed to produce the papers for the stasi), to produce a 49 pages (49 fucking pages) document full of proofs going back more than 10 years. Only to create a company and bring 50 K EUR in capital. Just fuck this entire system. You simply cannot hate bureaucracy enough. > It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it. It's some countries it's near mission impossible. A friend of mine who had the equivalent of a LLC in Belgium who was then acquired by an US company spent 10 years to close the belgian entity. And it's much worse than that: while they refuse to do what's necessary to close it, many taxes are due and keep on coming each year. But of course those did manage to close a company or who know someone who closed a company are going to say: "I had no issue, so there's no issue". All of this really does feel like a dystopian bureaucratic nightmare, in the style of the Brazil movie. It'd be nice if more movies were produced in that genre for it's badly needed to at least be able to vent off with some well-deserved satire.
erispoe 8mo ago
You don't need business plans and all that stuff. The problem in Germany for instance is that a GmbH needs 25k of capital + expensive notarization. These are the only two things that need improvement.
- Jean-Philipe 8mo ago
  Came here to say the same. Founding a company in Germany is way to complicated and expensive... same for dismantling a company. I don't understand why you need a notary for everything.
  - anonzzzies 8mo ago
    Clear right? Because of notaries? They are powerful as everything official goes through them. They also do nothing usually; their underpaid underling presses a few buttons, enters a few names (often wrong the first time), prints and so on and then notary reads and signs. Money made. Luckily this has been changing a lot that some notaries smelled a rat coming and started to go for mass market, heavily undercutting all others for standard contracts; in some cities I have seen these type of places eating all the other ones. They are fast and cheap until you need custom stuff.
- rmoriz 8mo ago
  You can start an Unternehmergesellschaft (UG) within days with a template. However tax filing burdens will costs you around 2000€ baseline a year without having a single Euro of revenue let alone profit.
- anonzzzies 8mo ago
  In NL at least some of that changed; no more payment. It used to be 19k guilders and after about half in euros. Now nothing. The rest still the same.
sschueller 8mo ago
I agree on application costs to be less but I believe a company needs to bring some capital. In Switzerland you need to pony up 20k in startup capital for a GmbH or 100k for an AG (ignoring the 50k work around), it belongs to the company but guarantees some security for customers and vendors that you aren't just going to take their money and run. In Switzerland you don't even need to collect VAT until you make at least 100k a year so I find requiring some capital ok.
- jaggirs 8mo ago
  You can pony up however much money you want and show customers the founding document that says the amount the company was started with. I believe it's usually publically available even. Forcing certain minimum amounts is just arbitrary gatekeeping and prevents companies that don't need that 'trust' and don't have the money from being created.
trollbridge 8mo ago
Didn't Estonia solve this problem?
stevenally 8mo ago
In the USA California, Texas, Delaware etc all have different company registration and compliance processes. This has not damaged the business environment. It should be left to each EU country to decide how to manage their company compliance processes. Those companies can then easily trade all over the EU. You can easily set up a company in Ireland. The EU does not to over reach with one-size-fits-all regulations. That will eventually lead to it's dissolution. It needs to concentrate on maintaining a free trade area.
- lazide 8mo ago
  Each of those places (besides Delaware, kinda) has economies larger than a large chunk of the EU.
  - embedding-shape 8mo ago
    Yeah, we've realized that, that's why we keep iterating on the union :)
    - lazide 8mo ago
      My point is rather than almost anything can be made smooth if you have enough $$ pointed at making it so. One of the biggest issues with small economies is that they don’t have the capital spent to make it easy to do things yet; which is friction that helps keep them small.
      - yencabulator 8mo ago
        This is so ridiculously contrary to a Northern European existence that it's just funny. US is ridiculously more bureaucratic with lots of back office papers shuffled around by humans. US tax filing is hard to even describe to someone who never lived there. Official procedures can be made smooth by valuing them being smooth.
        lazide 8mo ago
melenaboija 8mo ago
I am a European living in the US and my god I am tired of hearing this over and over again. If your biggest hurdle to start a company is the paperwork you’ll have to do for one week, you better think of something else. And yes, there are other way bigger issues in my opinion, such as financing and even social support.
- nickff 8mo ago
  If the paperwork ended after one week, it wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
  - melenaboija 8mo ago
    I don’t understand why people pretend there’s no paperwork to do in the US. Not only that, but different states have different processes. I think there are some misconceptions about the US and tend to over idealize, especially around paperwork and taxes. And I think it’s precisely that misconception that makes it appealing to foreigners and makes it an attractive place to be an entrepreneur. And again, yes, objectively it’s easier, but I don’t think that’s the main reason the country is successful in this aspect.
    - nickff 8mo ago
      I agree that paperwork requirements exist on a spectrum, and I am only familiar with the requirements in a few different jurisdictions (though I've read a few comparisons with a wider variety). The USA's success is definitely not entirely due to a lack of paperwork requirements, though I believe the paperwork requirements are something of a microcosm of other issues in each jurisdiction.
lossolo 8mo ago
> There needs to be UX requirements on the process from day one against which the end result is judged. (E.g. "a company should be able to register in x days", "a complete application should be no longer than y pages", "application costs should be less than z euros"). It was announced you will be able to create company fully online and will have it ready in max 48h.
wicharek 8mo ago
In my experience it is very easy and pretty cheap to start a LLC in Poland.
jandrewrogers 8mo ago
> It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it. In my experience this is at least as important. Everyone focuses on the process of creating companies, which is now relatively streamlined in many European countries. The real, massive difference between the US and EU is how hard it is to shutdown a company and the legal implications of that. I was shocked at how unreasonably slow and painful it can be to shutdown a company in Europe the first time I did it. Many countries effectively treat it as a criminal proceeding. Sometimes startups just fail, that is the nature of startups. In the US shutting down a company is almost as easy as creating one.
- jan_Inkepa 8mo ago
  I've been told by a lawyer that a common sensible step in closing companies in Germany is to first...reseat the company in the UK ... (at least pre-brexit - not sure if things have changed). Think of how bad and expensive the process has to be for this extra step to be worthwhile.
  - anonzzzies 8mo ago
    I have been trying to close a UK company for the past 2 years (created post brexit). And reseat, as others say, is not as easy; the gravity of decision making has to be in the country of incorporation; if your main shareholders and directors are physically in Germany and you reseat the company to where-ever, Germany is going to see and act like this is a de-facto German company. Hence you gain nothing, you get more paper work.
    - jan_Inkepa 8mo ago
      >Hence you gain nothing You're saying you get nothing, but you perhaps underestimate how time-consuming and expensive even the easiest company shut down in the Germany is. (I had a very smooth process winding down my company in the UK - you have my very sincere sympathies that things are a bit rockier for you). >if your main shareholders and directors are physically in Germany and you reseat the company to where-ever, Germany is going to see and act like this is a de-facto German company. Hence you gain nothing, you get more paper work. Looking online, here's a german tax-advisor who talks about the strategy of liquidating your company by first merging it with a uk company, saying you can close a company in 4-6 weeks by this process (though they recommend against it after brexit for liability reasons, but mention Ireland and malta as options). In germany you have a year of waiting, and lots of additional notary/accounts work. (OTOH, I don't know how you get it down to 4-6 weeks and avoid the uk's company house gazette notification period - they must pick a different kind of company - if your fees for closing down a company in germany are going into the thousands (or tens of thousands) for notaries, liquidators fees, and the like). https://www.stmatthew.de/brexit-gmbh-sitzverlegung https://www.stmatthew.de/brexit-gmbh-sitzverlegung Once again, not my specialty area, I just...wanted you to know that it does happen, is a specialty area of work for some companies, and it's presumably not irrational behaviour.
Daniel_sk 8mo ago
Dissolving an LLC is a in ideal case a multi month process. It's often easier and cheaper to just keep the LLC as zombie instead of trying to dissolve it.
adamcharnock 8mo ago
Agreed. The one bastion of sanity in all this is (/was) the UK. I formed my first company there, 18 years ago, online, in 30 minutes, for around £20. I then moved to Portugal and started not one but two companies there. The whole process is so clearly setup to discourage people from actually forming companies. Everything from the attitude of all involved ("are you sure?!"), to the practical bureaucracy and costs involved. I thought perhaps Portugal was just an outlier. But then I moved to Germany. And just wow. Definitely worse. Rounds of paperwork, notary offices, and fees. A process taking weeks. And for a GmbH a minimum investment of €25k. Sure you can form a UG. company for €1, but that effectively just announces "don't trust us, we're tiny" (IMHO). It is something that really saddens and frustrates me with the EU. Edit: And sure, you can form an Estonian company. But then you have to try and fly under the radar with regards to the 'permanent establishment' rules.
- notpushkin 8mo ago
  > And sure, you can form an Estonian company. But then you have to try and fly under the radar with regards to the 'permanent establishment' rules. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you want to do some tax optimization shenanigans, then yeah, don’t think it’ll work for you (if you’re in the EU, at least). But if you just want to set up a small to mid-sized company without dealing with German bureaucracy, I think Estonia is your best bet right now. I don’t think (IANAL) you would get into trouble for having a permanent establishment – you’ll just have to still deal with the DE tax office. But if EU-INC really can unify the processes for all countries, I’m all for it! > The whole process is so clearly setup to discourage people from actually forming companies. By the way, it’s really backwards in Estonia. I’ve seen zero sole proprietors when I was living there – everybody just opens an LLC.
ErikBjare 8mo ago
Those requirements should include "estimated setup & recurring administrative costs for businesses of size x to comply should be lower than y" in some way.
dzonga 8mo ago
UK has been the easiest place to form a LTD but UK sucks with reporting requirements - now they even require IDs for directors if EU-inc can have incorporation costs of less than 30£ - then no reporting requirements if say revenue is under 200k then yeah its a win and no other BS like notaries etc
- breakingcups 8mo ago
  What's bad about requiring IDs for directors? Surely you'd want to verify their identity?
truekonrads 8mo ago
You can start a business in Estonia in 2-3 days and get e-residency there. Sample incorporation business (no affiliation): https://enty.io/en/incorporate-estonia https://enty.io/en/incorporate-estonia Go Estonia!

egorfine 8mo ago

> a company should be able to register in x days Which EU bureaucrats will fully pass by treating this as "a company should be able to register in x days once the full set of documents has been collected".

moritzwarhier 8mo ago
Companies are treated like persons legally and while I'm sure there is too much bureaucracy in many places, I'm also sure that there are important documents that should be required. For example to make sure that a company can be held responsible when it breaks the law. There are already enough loopholes to disconnect legal responsibility from profit-taking, and not every company is benign. Sure, if the documents cannot be acquired in X days for other reasons, that would undermine the tagline. But I don't think that's the main risk. Let's not forget that some requirements make sense. In Germany, the government recently decided that some minor applications to local governments must be answered within X days or else are automatically approved. But "minor" is important here... great for a small business that applies for a permit to renovate there outdoor seatings or whatever. I wouldn't want for company foundings to be auto-approved without submitting the legally required documents.
- egorfine 8mo ago
  There is a huge spectrum between "require impossible documentation" and "require none". Germany and EU are heading towards the former.
  - embedding-shape 8mo ago
    Literally the whole effort this submission, is about is moving a tiny step towards "require none" but not go all the way, compared to how it is today. You chose the wrong submission to comment that on, in any "new regulation in EU" submission that might have been appropriate, but this move is quite the opposite of what you say is happening.
    - egorfine 8mo ago
      > this move My point is that this move will not happen. I don't believe EU can overcome a huge and extremely motivated army of bureaucrats.
    - philipallstar 8mo ago
      This isn't an EU move, is it?
      - embedding-shape 8mo ago
        > This isn't an EU move, is it? What, exactly, do you mean with "EU move"? I guess technically it's a "European Commission" move, but overall it's a European and EU move, unless "move" has some specific meaning to you.
  - Bewelge 8mo ago
    German here. That's not true. What crazy documentation do you require? An ID, proof of residence, and a business plan? (edit: you don't even need a business plan) That being said, everything about the process is annoying and you always have the feeling that you're doing something wrong or forgetting something. Together with some ridiculously slow processing times, it's the perfect combination to frustrate you and I'm sure it ultimately reduces innovation. But in reality, getting all the paperwork together is probably a couple of hours of work. You can buy services that do it for you for a couple of hundred Euros.
sbacic 8mo ago
Which in itself wouldn't even be a problem if lack of said documents caused your submission to automatically fail validation right at the start. Instead, a real, live person will need to review your request to verify that it indeed includes a full set of documents, said documents are genuine and "correct" (despite most of them already being issued by the government!) before approving your request.
- egorfine 8mo ago
  And given the founding principles of bureaucracy, no set of documents is ever correct because there are at least two contradictory regulations on any given topic.

egorfine 8mo ago

> My worry is that the end result will require Yes it will. The vast army of bureaucrats in any country does whatever is in their power to make sure their specific requirements are included into the process. What do you mean they would like to open a 3D printing workshop with no Environmental Impact Study done?!

whynotmaybe 8mo ago
You know that EU bureaucrats do what each country want them to do right? Each time the Commission comes with a new rule, most countries agree with it. And if its an "unpopular", the game for each gov is to blame the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6481969.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6481969.stm
- egorfine 8mo ago
  > You know that EU bureaucrats do what each country want them to do right? I'n not entirely sure about that. The vast majority of entrepreneurs are complaining about unrealistic requirements and inconceivable burdens in Germany. Certainly no one wants any of this. Yet somehow the rules pile up.
  - hvb2 8mo ago
    You said > In Germany And then > Yet somehow the rules pile up. Which is just German culture as much as food is Italian. If you want rules for everything I'm hard pressed to think of a more regulated country than Germany. And the populace, in general, might scoff at how long things take but absolutely want to understand what the process is... So yeah, you can't have it both ways
    - egorfine 8mo ago
      > hard pressed to think of a more regulated country than Germany. Unfortunately the influence of Germany over other EU countries is quite strong in terms of regulations. Absolutely no one wants more regulations, yet they slowly pile up in the whole EU. I live in Poland, where regulations are incomparably more sane than those of Germany, but even here it slowly grows.

te_chris 8mo ago

Truly, this is one of the greatest losses of the UK leaving. For both parties. Advising EU startups on where to incorporate that isn’t London could be so much simpler.

whateverboat 8mo ago
What about Luxembourg?
- embedding-shape 8mo ago
  If you have to setup a company today, and want the easiest path to EU-wide SaaS, probably Estonia is the way to go, very easy for EU citizens (don't know how the experience would be from outside, if it's even possible).
  - psychoslave 8mo ago
    Interesting https://eurosaasedge.substack.com/p/the-estonian-saas-formula-europes https://eurosaasedge.substack.com/p/the-estonian-saas-formul...
  - MrJobbo 8mo ago
    Too bad that Estonia won't exist after 2027...Russia will gobble it up alongside Latvia and Lithuania.
    - embedding-shape 8mo ago
      Yeah, such a shame Estonia isn't in NATO nor the defense clauses of the EU, so they're sitting there all alone at the border...
  - Tangurena2 8mo ago
    It seems easy enough for US residents as well: https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/ https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/nomadvisa/ Checking the requirements, it seems to me that any "first world" citizen would encounter a low barrier for entry, with exceptions for Russians ("second world" citizens).

logicchains 8mo ago

>My worry is that the end result will require notarized declarations of honour, financial plans stretching decades into the future, 30 page business plan documents, reams of corporate governance documents, and tons of other nonsense to protect against the perceived risk that someone who failed at starting a business once fails a second time. That sounds like a really good use for AI.

regularfry 8mo ago
"It is a mistake to optimise something that should not exist in the first place." - Elon Musk (apparently, although I would be astonished if Deming or Ohno hadn't said something similar)
- amunozo 8mo ago
  I agree, but us individuals cannot change the system that easily. But we can use these tools.
ThePowerOfFuet 8mo ago
>That sounds like a really good use for AI. No, it is not a really good use for a word prediction engine.
- miki123211 8mo ago
  In Europe, there are two parallel realities which coexist, have some influence over one another, but are ultimately somewhat separate. There's the real reality, and then there's the reality as it is perceived by the bureaucratic apparatus, the "upside down." It's important to realize that everything in the "upside down" must be consistent with the rest of that reality, but not necessarily with what actually happened in the real world. The closer your activities get to the government and government scrutiny, the more true that description is. Did John have to go somewhere on Monday and finish his work on Saturday instead? He could have filed for time off and then gotten special permission to work on Saturday, but that's far too many forms with far too many signatures. It's just easier to pretend (on all documents, yes all of them, the "upside down" demands consistency) that he did in fact work on Monday and did not work on saturday. Americans call it fraud, Europeans call it Tuesday.

PurpleRamen 8mo ago

> Huge amount of risk and cost on founders Better than potentially putting risk and costs on other companies, the country and/or it's citizens. > nonsense to protect against the perceived risk It's not a perceived risk. No rule is made without cases.

pjc50 8mo ago
> No rule is made without cases I can generally reverse engineer from the UK Companies Act what the cases were, but many EU countries have much more onerous requirements for what seems like no good reason? Perhaps the cases were too long in the past and things work differently now? What risks are we talking about, anyway?

mytailorisrich 8mo ago

There really is no reason for it to be longer, more expensive, and more complicated than what exists today in, say, the UK where you can do it all online for about £20 (or is it £50 now?) and complete in a matter of hours. This is really down to individual countries' red tape and suspicion. The risk element is also not at all attached to forming a company (hence why it can be so simple and quick), it is with funding and finance. So banks will want to see a business plan but the company registration office does not, or should not, care.

baby 8mo ago

Having a startup in the US is a huge mess due to all the states and taxes, if Europe can make everything digital AND easier, it's a no brainer for us to move our company there.

bluecalm 8mo ago
>>Having a startup in the US is a huge mess due to all the states and taxes, In EU you will need to deal with VAT basically from day one (10k EUR of revenue). In US you will not deal with it until you can afford it as thresholds are very generous.
- niemandhier 8mo ago
  At least in Germany, this is not correct. You do not have to pay that unless: You earned more than €100,000 this year or more than €25,000 last year.
  - alibarber 8mo ago
    But there is no threshold for cross-border selling in the EU. Fine if you're selling widgets at a market in Germany - but if you sell software abroad, make sure you're following [each] one of the 27 VAT codes correctly. (From what I understand - would love this to be wrong)
    - yujzgzc 8mo ago
      Following US sales tax has way more complexity. In my county alone there are many different rates depending on the city in which the sale is made. Even just finding out authoritatively which jurisdiction to pay taxes to is nontrivial, practically impossible to solve without dedicated software.
    - friendzis 8mo ago
      > Fine if you're selling widgets at a market in Germany - but if you sell software abroad, make sure you're following [each] one of the 27 VAT codes correctly. Yes. > But there is no threshold for cross-border selling in the EU. Kinda, but misinterprets the VAT itself. Basically, VAT is paid at the point of sale and local thresholds apply.

xattt 8mo ago

> a complete application should be no longer than y pages The monkey’s finger curls. All contract text is now sized at 2 points.

miki123211 8mo ago

I think what's even more important is that the costs for founding and maintaining such an LLC should scale with revenue, including scaling to 0. In many EU countries, you still have to pay social security and/or health insurance, even if your company brings in no revenue. This isn't supposed to be a problem, as you're not really supposed to officially start a business unless you cross specific revenue thresholds. However, that doesn't work in practice if you're offering your services online, as many payment gateways in Europe will not deal with non-business accounts.

trueismywork 8mo ago
Startups but definition have no revenue. Its also a chicken and egg problem. Having a revenue means having a company and vice versa. Unless you're in very old fields, which explains lack of new tech companies in Germany
- friendzis 8mo ago
  > Its also a chicken and egg problem. Having a revenue means having a company and vice versa. How would you pay your employees making the product/service that will eventually bring in the revenue? That's what "own capital" is for. Typical LLC/JSC will have at the very least one employee -- the CEO -- and that will bring one minimum wage worth of expenses (sort of). There are legal entity types that can function without employees with shareholders sort of self-employing, but those are not universal across the EU.
  - jandrewrogers 8mo ago
    In the US, it is common for a small startup company to have no employees. Your role and title with a company is separate from your official employment status. This is where concepts like "sweat equity" come from. You can be an owner and work on a company without being an employee or receiving any compensation. Creating a company in the US comes with no real obligations to do something with it. This is beneficial. It allows small companies to bootstrap without incurring the complexity and cost of having employees until they have enough revenue or capital to justify that expense.

seec 8mo ago

They won't be able to solve the problem. The only reason all those roadblocks exist is to control/regulate everything in a way to ensure the maximum possible taxation. At the same time, bureaucrats get to justify their existence, pretending to do meaningful work while they only take from productive people. You can't even say they manage to regulate actual problems; they only reinforce the big players. The cookie consent banner nonsense and ongoing legal fight with Apple (and GAFAM in general) didn't bring anything of value to end consumers. Cookies haven't disappeared; they have just become a major annoyance that you have to spend a lot of time clicking on and tracking hasn't been reduced, quite the contrary. The iPhone is still a locked-down device, with Apple maintaining a monopoly on software access as well as repairability (their repair program is such a joke that they should be tried for contempt if the EU actually had any power). Bureaucracy is just cancer, and the EU is fully metastasized; there is not much that can improve until a major failure happens. If you want to create a business, you have to pay the bureaucracy before you even make a single cent. Business has become more profitable to the government than the actual business owners; those thriving are the big ones who can afford to play the lobbying game and engage in regulatory capture and offload most of the cost on the taxpayers while profiting overseas.

Gravityloss 8mo ago

Yeah, since there's lots of countries and some are very dynamic and modern, maybe they could act as early adopters. But don't stop there: if it works for the early adopters, others could also apply their lessons. For example Estonia is often mentioned in electronic government etc.

torginus 8mo ago

Is this a true problem in EU (or indeed anywhere)? I don't think starting a company is the bottleneck, it's mostly the inordinate amount of regulations one has to comply with, as well as the strenuous laws around letting workers go, while making people work as contractors being also frowned upon. I'm not sure how any one these is going to change.

wolvoleo 8mo ago
Those things are as designed. This is good. We don't want "at-will" employment like in the US. We want to have rights as employees. We want to have social welfare. We want our free healthcare. It's not a bug it's a feature. We don't want an American-style society. Current developments should be enough reason to understand why (and the understanding that Trump's backers are part of a huge group of people on the low side of the wealth gap). If anything we have too much of that already hence the rise of extreme right here too. It's a result of the austerity movements after the 2007 crash. But this new regulation doesn't invalidate employee rights no. It's just about registration and incorporation.
- WarmWash 8mo ago
  The EU has a borderline stagnant economy, couldn't defend itself from Russia, facing population collapse, totally whiffed on the tech scene explosion in the last 25 years, now also missing out on AI. European social obligations are expensive, yet nobody seems to really want to stress about creating new sources of wealth. At some point Europeans need to look in the mirror, and understand that the last 30 years has been a vacation, and even worse, there is now a whole generation who was born on vacation and thinks it's the norm.
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
    We can defend ourselves, it's just that the US didn't want a too-powerful Europe until trump. In particular nuclear. They heavily pushed against that. We'll have to scale this up now but it is not a big problem. Population collapse is a good thing. We already have too many people in this world, causing environmental and housing issues. We can't keep ever growing as humanity, stabilisation or even a reduction is very good. It'll cause some short term cash flow and elderly care issues but we'll deal with that. And AI so far is more of a hollow promise and hype. It's not a race, the way America is approaching it it's inevitably going to lead to a bubble collapse.

TacticalCoder 8mo ago

> It's inordinately difficult and expensive to start an LLC or SA in some EU countries. Totally. One of the biggest and most horrific aspect of it is the KYC/AML. We regularly read articles explaining that drugs are so out of hand that several EU countries, like Belgium, are becoming narco-states: these are front page, major newspaper, stories. We also read articles explaining that cash bills from petty drug dealing are "necessary for the underground economy of the poor oppressed people". Official numbers say 2% to 5% of the world's global GDP is tied to criminal activities. So major drug trafficking is ongoing and that money is definitely being laundered. Yet when regular people like myself want to open a company, the gates of the KYC/AML hell do open. Bureaucrats and many people at various institutions like banks, notary, etc. do believe that the KYC/AML meant to catch actual criminals is actually a greenlight to go full stasi-mode on everyone. Things go, literally, a bit like this: stasi agent: "Source of funds: where do the 50 K EUR of capital come from?" honest person: "I sold at 600 EUR shares of Meta I bought at 60 EUR in 2015 (making that up), here's a printed copy of both the buy order at the bank in 2015 and the copy of the sell order, at the same bank, 10 years later." stasi agent: "Nice try! Where did the 5 K EUR you bought those Meta shares with in 2015 come from?". The above is, literally, happening. It happened to me. It happened to people I know. At one point I had no trace because I had to go so much back in time that the bank wouldn't give the proofs anymore: and it cost something insane like 25 EUR / month per account to get old infos. So for say four accounts we're talking 1 200 EUR per year to ask for old bank statements. I'll remind everyone that a principle in many EU countries is that if there is no suspicion of fraud there's a delay after which the IRSes cannot legally go back. They have to prove that there's potential fraud to be able to go back more than, e.g., 7 years. But the stasi-agents working in KYC/AML at banks, notary, etc.? They believe they have a mission to make regular's people life hell. Oh and a good one: you think it's bad that legitimate citizens to denounce illegals? You wanna me to tell you about the phone numbers the governments put in place in many EU countries so that citizens can denounce other fellow citizens "because they believe they're frauding the IRS"? How's that one? Where's the outrage? In my native country of Belgium I heard that at least one in every four solo-preneur ("independant") / entrepreneur has been the subject of at least one such denunciation. Stasi. Also totally counter-productive: when everybody is a suspect, nobody is. I see on LinkedIn people whoring their profiles to would be employers by boasting about how many SARs denunciations they made (Suspicious Activity Reports). Stasi agents. And then don't get me started on people who are just bitter and sour because, in the EU, they may be net 3 K to 5 K EUR a month, and yet are authorized to KYC / AML on people owning Porsche and Ferrari, hundreds of thousands or millions of EUR worth of equities/investements, expensive real estate, etc. These people cannot comprehend, in their own little minds, surrounded by people limited the same way they are, that there are people out there who are just legitimately more succesful than they'll ever be in life. Their bitterness and jealousy turns them into little stati agents. Bank menaced to not only not open my company's account but to close not just my account but also my wife's account. I had then to spend three weeks, full time, while my wife was on vacation (I sent her on vacation and stayed to produce the papers for the stasi), to produce a 49 pages (49 fucking pages) document full of proofs going back more than 10 years. Only to create a company and bring 50 K EUR in capital. Just fuck this entire system. You simply cannot hate bureaucracy enough. > It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it. It's some countries it's near mission impossible. A friend of mine who had the equivalent of a LLC in Belgium who was then acquired by an US company spent 10 years to close the belgian entity. And it's much worse than that: while they refuse to do what's necessary to close it, many taxes are due and keep on coming each year. But of course those did manage to close a company or who know someone who closed a company are going to say: "I had no issue, so there's no issue". All of this really does feel like a dystopian bureaucratic nightmare, in the style of the Brazil movie. It'd be nice if more movies were produced in that genre for it's badly needed to at least be able to vent off with some well-deserved satire.

erispoe 8mo ago

You don't need business plans and all that stuff. The problem in Germany for instance is that a GmbH needs 25k of capital + expensive notarization. These are the only two things that need improvement.

Jean-Philipe 8mo ago
Came here to say the same. Founding a company in Germany is way to complicated and expensive... same for dismantling a company. I don't understand why you need a notary for everything.
- anonzzzies 8mo ago
  Clear right? Because of notaries? They are powerful as everything official goes through them. They also do nothing usually; their underpaid underling presses a few buttons, enters a few names (often wrong the first time), prints and so on and then notary reads and signs. Money made. Luckily this has been changing a lot that some notaries smelled a rat coming and started to go for mass market, heavily undercutting all others for standard contracts; in some cities I have seen these type of places eating all the other ones. They are fast and cheap until you need custom stuff.
rmoriz 8mo ago
You can start an Unternehmergesellschaft (UG) within days with a template. However tax filing burdens will costs you around 2000€ baseline a year without having a single Euro of revenue let alone profit.
anonzzzies 8mo ago
In NL at least some of that changed; no more payment. It used to be 19k guilders and after about half in euros. Now nothing. The rest still the same.

sschueller 8mo ago

I agree on application costs to be less but I believe a company needs to bring some capital. In Switzerland you need to pony up 20k in startup capital for a GmbH or 100k for an AG (ignoring the 50k work around), it belongs to the company but guarantees some security for customers and vendors that you aren't just going to take their money and run. In Switzerland you don't even need to collect VAT until you make at least 100k a year so I find requiring some capital ok.

jaggirs 8mo ago
You can pony up however much money you want and show customers the founding document that says the amount the company was started with. I believe it's usually publically available even. Forcing certain minimum amounts is just arbitrary gatekeeping and prevents companies that don't need that 'trust' and don't have the money from being created.

trollbridge 8mo ago

Didn't Estonia solve this problem?

stevenally 8mo ago

In the USA California, Texas, Delaware etc all have different company registration and compliance processes. This has not damaged the business environment. It should be left to each EU country to decide how to manage their company compliance processes. Those companies can then easily trade all over the EU. You can easily set up a company in Ireland. The EU does not to over reach with one-size-fits-all regulations. That will eventually lead to it's dissolution. It needs to concentrate on maintaining a free trade area.

lazide 8mo ago
Each of those places (besides Delaware, kinda) has economies larger than a large chunk of the EU.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago
  Yeah, we've realized that, that's why we keep iterating on the union :)
  - lazide 8mo ago
    My point is rather than almost anything can be made smooth if you have enough $$ pointed at making it so. One of the biggest issues with small economies is that they don’t have the capital spent to make it easy to do things yet; which is friction that helps keep them small.
    - yencabulator 8mo ago
      This is so ridiculously contrary to a Northern European existence that it's just funny. US is ridiculously more bureaucratic with lots of back office papers shuffled around by humans. US tax filing is hard to even describe to someone who never lived there. Official procedures can be made smooth by valuing them being smooth.
      - lazide 8mo ago

melenaboija 8mo ago

I am a European living in the US and my god I am tired of hearing this over and over again. If your biggest hurdle to start a company is the paperwork you’ll have to do for one week, you better think of something else. And yes, there are other way bigger issues in my opinion, such as financing and even social support.

nickff 8mo ago
If the paperwork ended after one week, it wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
- melenaboija 8mo ago
  I don’t understand why people pretend there’s no paperwork to do in the US. Not only that, but different states have different processes. I think there are some misconceptions about the US and tend to over idealize, especially around paperwork and taxes. And I think it’s precisely that misconception that makes it appealing to foreigners and makes it an attractive place to be an entrepreneur. And again, yes, objectively it’s easier, but I don’t think that’s the main reason the country is successful in this aspect.
  - nickff 8mo ago
    I agree that paperwork requirements exist on a spectrum, and I am only familiar with the requirements in a few different jurisdictions (though I've read a few comparisons with a wider variety). The USA's success is definitely not entirely due to a lack of paperwork requirements, though I believe the paperwork requirements are something of a microcosm of other issues in each jurisdiction.

lossolo 8mo ago

> There needs to be UX requirements on the process from day one against which the end result is judged. (E.g. "a company should be able to register in x days", "a complete application should be no longer than y pages", "application costs should be less than z euros"). It was announced you will be able to create company fully online and will have it ready in max 48h.

wicharek 8mo ago

In my experience it is very easy and pretty cheap to start a LLC in Poland.

jandrewrogers 8mo ago

> It's even difficult and expensive to _stop_ an LLC and dissolve it. In my experience this is at least as important. Everyone focuses on the process of creating companies, which is now relatively streamlined in many European countries. The real, massive difference between the US and EU is how hard it is to shutdown a company and the legal implications of that. I was shocked at how unreasonably slow and painful it can be to shutdown a company in Europe the first time I did it. Many countries effectively treat it as a criminal proceeding. Sometimes startups just fail, that is the nature of startups. In the US shutting down a company is almost as easy as creating one.

jan_Inkepa 8mo ago
I've been told by a lawyer that a common sensible step in closing companies in Germany is to first...reseat the company in the UK ... (at least pre-brexit - not sure if things have changed). Think of how bad and expensive the process has to be for this extra step to be worthwhile.
- anonzzzies 8mo ago
  I have been trying to close a UK company for the past 2 years (created post brexit). And reseat, as others say, is not as easy; the gravity of decision making has to be in the country of incorporation; if your main shareholders and directors are physically in Germany and you reseat the company to where-ever, Germany is going to see and act like this is a de-facto German company. Hence you gain nothing, you get more paper work.
  - jan_Inkepa 8mo ago
    >Hence you gain nothing You're saying you get nothing, but you perhaps underestimate how time-consuming and expensive even the easiest company shut down in the Germany is. (I had a very smooth process winding down my company in the UK - you have my very sincere sympathies that things are a bit rockier for you). >if your main shareholders and directors are physically in Germany and you reseat the company to where-ever, Germany is going to see and act like this is a de-facto German company. Hence you gain nothing, you get more paper work. Looking online, here's a german tax-advisor who talks about the strategy of liquidating your company by first merging it with a uk company, saying you can close a company in 4-6 weeks by this process (though they recommend against it after brexit for liability reasons, but mention Ireland and malta as options). In germany you have a year of waiting, and lots of additional notary/accounts work. (OTOH, I don't know how you get it down to 4-6 weeks and avoid the uk's company house gazette notification period - they must pick a different kind of company - if your fees for closing down a company in germany are going into the thousands (or tens of thousands) for notaries, liquidators fees, and the like). https://www.stmatthew.de/brexit-gmbh-sitzverlegung https://www.stmatthew.de/brexit-gmbh-sitzverlegung Once again, not my specialty area, I just...wanted you to know that it does happen, is a specialty area of work for some companies, and it's presumably not irrational behaviour.

Daniel_sk 8mo ago

Dissolving an LLC is a in ideal case a multi month process. It's often easier and cheaper to just keep the LLC as zombie instead of trying to dissolve it.

adamcharnock 8mo ago

Agreed. The one bastion of sanity in all this is (/was) the UK. I formed my first company there, 18 years ago, online, in 30 minutes, for around £20. I then moved to Portugal and started not one but two companies there. The whole process is so clearly setup to discourage people from actually forming companies. Everything from the attitude of all involved ("are you sure?!"), to the practical bureaucracy and costs involved. I thought perhaps Portugal was just an outlier. But then I moved to Germany. And just wow. Definitely worse. Rounds of paperwork, notary offices, and fees. A process taking weeks. And for a GmbH a minimum investment of €25k. Sure you can form a UG. company for €1, but that effectively just announces "don't trust us, we're tiny" (IMHO). It is something that really saddens and frustrates me with the EU. Edit: And sure, you can form an Estonian company. But then you have to try and fly under the radar with regards to the 'permanent establishment' rules.

notpushkin 8mo ago
> And sure, you can form an Estonian company. But then you have to try and fly under the radar with regards to the 'permanent establishment' rules. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you want to do some tax optimization shenanigans, then yeah, don’t think it’ll work for you (if you’re in the EU, at least). But if you just want to set up a small to mid-sized company without dealing with German bureaucracy, I think Estonia is your best bet right now. I don’t think (IANAL) you would get into trouble for having a permanent establishment – you’ll just have to still deal with the DE tax office. But if EU-INC really can unify the processes for all countries, I’m all for it! > The whole process is so clearly setup to discourage people from actually forming companies. By the way, it’s really backwards in Estonia. I’ve seen zero sole proprietors when I was living there – everybody just opens an LLC.

ErikBjare 8mo ago

Those requirements should include "estimated setup & recurring administrative costs for businesses of size x to comply should be lower than y" in some way.

dzonga 8mo ago

UK has been the easiest place to form a LTD but UK sucks with reporting requirements - now they even require IDs for directors if EU-inc can have incorporation costs of less than 30£ - then no reporting requirements if say revenue is under 200k then yeah its a win and no other BS like notaries etc

breakingcups 8mo ago
What's bad about requiring IDs for directors? Surely you'd want to verify their identity?

truekonrads 8mo ago

You can start a business in Estonia in 2-3 days and get e-residency there. Sample incorporation business (no affiliation): https://enty.io/en/incorporate-estonia https://enty.io/en/incorporate-estonia Go Estonia!