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Comment by Aulig | Hacker News Reader

Great post, fully agree. Also, if you plan on leaving Germany you can save a lot on taxes if you do it before 100k profits/year and as a Personengesellschaft (without limited liability, so no UG/GmbH).

Basically because the Wegzugsbesteuerung (moving away tax) only affects limited liability entities and Personengesellschaften are only affected by the Steuerentstrickung, which can be minimized by saying your profits are equivalent to a salary you'd be making elsewhere.

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Or keep the GmbH / UG and create a sperarate entity in an other country that has full or partial ownership. Either way, paying some tax law expert, even if expensive is the best advice.

And not having a limited liability entity is actually pretty stupid, for a full catalogue of reasons.

I keep hearing about the concept of a Lichtenstein Stiftung, some sort of trust that “owns” itself but that you can still control indirectly using a trustee. But it feels like one doesn’t actually “own” whatever is in the trust, and it’s unclear how distributions are taxed in North America.

Careful, many countries (especially in the EU) look “through” the trust if there is only the slightest notion of you controlling it.

Generally, in order for the trust to be fully recognized all assets have to be irrevocably owned by the trust and you can’t exercise any control over them as soon as they are transferred.

If you have the means to set one those up properly, you create GmbHs multiple times a week.

Because of personal liability? Looking less legitimate to other businesses? Or what other reasons are you thinking of?

Mainly liability, a UG is liable for whatever amount it was founded with, a GmbH for 25k. A person is liable for, well, an unlimited amount. Which can suck, e.g. you run eCommerce and sales crash. A GmbH is liable for 25k of ooen invoices (or whatever assets the company currently has), a person would owe the full amount.

Plus, a GmbH is a professikbal business, the looks cannot be under estimated.

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