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Comment by tomschwiha | Hacker News Reader

IHK is responsible for local advertising and recruiting and acts as a middle agency beween government and industry.

They give sometimes interesting talks and you can reach out for assistance. Not much to complain about for the price imho.

Just because you don't need it on your own doesn't mean other founders or existing companies don't need it.

With the foundation of a company you have some obligations and this one is one of those - strengthening the local market. (If you can't afford 150€ or 0,129% percent of your profit your business is not sustainable (referring to your value question)).

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The classic argument, if you can’t pay XXX$ for some bullshit someone else invented and that doesn’t belong in 21st century, then you’re business is not sustainable. IHKs exist for the sole purpose of lining their fat pockets on other people’s hard work, like other professions in Germany, notary included.

> Just because you don't need it on your own doesn't mean other founders or existing companies don't need it.

Then they should be free to hire them on their own dime.

> and that doesn’t belong in 21st century

That's your opinion.

> Then they should be free to hire them on their own dime.

Cool thing of living in democracies is that people can propose and campaign for these changes. Maybe Germans like it as it is and it's their business?

Having lived in Germany for 5 years.. I think you hit the nail. Germans don’t like things to change. They like what they have as it makes business predictable and decisions easy. And if that means getting behind… so be it.

This flippant comment completely ignores the known problems with getting rid of rent-seeking behavior. Those that benefit from it will try very hard to keep it and the vast majority that are harmed, but only by a small amount, will not organize and campaign aggressively for its removal.

So it's very possible that the system is not liked by most Germans, but the dynamics are such that it stays the way it is.

> because you don't need it on your own doesn't mean other founders or existing companies don't need it

We can invert this logic on IHK itself. If it can’t sell itself in a manner than sustains it’s finances, it, itself, is not sustainable.

I hate paying taxes and fees. I understand anyone trying to evade or reduce them as much as legally possible. But the fee the IHK imposes is so little I honestly don't care about.

For 1.000.000 € profit its 1.400€. Literally some rounding errors or customer not paying thats not worth the hassle to discuss.

Two items:

1. 0.14% of profit is not a rounding error.

2. The true cost is not the 1400€. It’s the time you waste dealing with it, your availability of which does not increase with revenue.

Dealing with the IHK, like in paying one single invoice per calendar year? Not that I ak very happy with paying my IHK fees for a basically non-operating company, but the actual effort of dealing with them is like 5 minutes every 12 months.

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