Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

- only if your idea is already profitable beyond ramen profitability, i.e. you can quit the job and survive from the income, and you have a financial buffer for ~1-2 years

- hire an accountant, 100EUR/month and you don't have to care about taxes that much, unless you go wildly profitable

- LLC/GmbH is a better idea than having your life on the line if SHTF (though corporate veil might require at least 2 partners in some countries/states)

- Estonia doesn't seem very recommended lately (the only easy part is to get e-citizenship but the rest seems to be overly complicated). UG in Germany might be what you need, but your taxes will still be around 50%. Did you think about moving to Switzerland/Luxembourg instead?

- think about having a company in Delaware for flexibility reasons. International taxes are more complicated though and Germany would still be your tax domicile, and demanding its share of your profits while bombarding you with unending bureaucracy, often years after

"only if your idea is already profitable beyond ramen profitability"

I don't know if this applies in EU, but in the US, incorporating would give the separate benefit of protecting your personal assets in the case your company was sued. So, it might be worthwhile even if you aren't profitable.

I was given the same advise. Specially if your business is using a unique skill to solve the problem (e.g: ML, .. etc)

> in the US, incorporating would give the separate benefit of protecting your personal assets in the case your company was sued

Be careful with this advice and consult a lawyer. Incorporating alone does NOT guarantee protection of your personal assets.

In my non-lawyerly understanding, single-member LLCs offer particularly fragile protection.

See "piercing the corporate veil" [1]

[1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/personal-liability-p...

> - only if your idea is already profitable beyond ramen profitability, i.e. you can quit the job and survive from the income, and you have a financial buffer for ~1-2 years

But how would you make it there without being incorporated? Or does this applies to have an LLC only? How would you issue invoices to your first customers without having a legal entity?

In Germany, you don't need a separate legal entity for that. The legal entity is you, as a person. (Also called Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts, GbR, or Einzelkaufmann, depending on the details.)

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