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Comment by fl7305 | Hacker News Reader

That sucks. I can see how it costs thousands of euros per year to do the annual financial statements, but 15 000? Is that common, or were there special circumstances?

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nothing special i think this is on the cheap side, does not even include lawyers or any huge fights, just a "normal" shut down. Remember you have to include work time of founders that would be spend earning money otherwise. If germany forces you to do 2 hours filling out forms for bullshit you have to include your hourly wage to get the total costs. Usually everything in germany assumes "work to deal with government bs" is free and does not exist, which is of course absurd.

Thanks. How much of the 15 000 was external costs to an accountant, public notaries, authorities, etc, and how much was the internal wages?

The numbers I have seen for external costs range in the low thousands, but maybe that is wrong?

it was nearly 100h of work for me, took ~2 years and the pure cash cost was nearly 10k. i dont remember what was for accounting, notary etc. but i think its really fair to simplify this as saying it cost 15k.

So you basically just made up a number to make it sound worse?

I did not make up anything. it was nearly 100h (so i did not even use a high hourly rate for estimating) of work for me, took ~2 years and the pure cash cost was nearly 10k. i think its really fair to simplify this as saying it cost 15k. I am really fed up by people downplaying the cost of labour imposed by ruthless beurocrats and i think its toxic to banalize this.

That's not how things work, you can't just make up some hourly rate and then bloviate about it like it's an actual cost.

Yes, time spent is a problem, but then communicate it in form of TIME SPENT, not just inflate the costs into some arbitrary number so you can make it sound worse while whining. It's dishonest.

Its not a madeup number, if his hourly rate is genuinely high, then its perfectly valid.

Time is money, and government isn’t supposed to get any discount coupon on it.

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