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Comment by helge5 | Hacker News Reader

Just a small clarification: You are still "selbständig" (self-employed) if you do a "Gewerbe". The thing you don't get easily is a so called "Freiberuf", particularly if you don't have an engineering degree (though I managed to get it).

Tax wise it is actually almost easier to do non-EU business than doing business in Europe, because there are no VAT issues involved (and there are no tariffs on those things). You just invoice the net value.

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The difference between "Gewerbe" and "Freiberufler" ist quite grey. I'm the software field I have often seen the distinction between creating software on your own (creative/artistic work - freier Beruf) vs. implementing other's requirements (production - Gewerbe) but in each case it depends on the tax officer looking at the files.

Yes, unfortunately. With a degree in CS you might get away with Katalogberuf: no Gewerbe, no Gewerbesteuer

You don’t need a degree anymore. Experience comparable to a degree, documented with proper work contracts and references gets you there too. Source: myself, not German citizen, living and working in Germany as Freiberufler (alongside other things).

Can you go more into detail regarding the tax stuff? Who pays the VAT then?

In countries that have a tax agreement with Germany (e.g. Canada), the Reverse Charge procedure is used; you signalise that on your invoice. In that case, the customer is obligated to pay the VAT in their country and you bill the net amount. However, that depends on the service/product sold. If you re-sell development services, for example, you still have to pay VAT in Germany on a part of the amount billed while the rest is covered by Reverse Charge.

In addition, as the US has no VAT (sales tax is different from VAT), reverse charge then leads to no VAT being charged at all.

Puh, I'm not a tax consultant, ask yours how and why that is. But you don't put VAT on off-EU invoices (not even within different EU countries I think). It's just net.

I think the reasoning is that a VAT - value _added tax_ - requires that the other party also pays VAT (you only pay the difference, the "value add"). Which simply doesn't happen if you are outside your own country. In "regular" cases this is compensated by tariffs, but there are none for consulting/dev AFAIK.

But again: ask you tax consultant :-)

In my understanding, if you have a client outside of EU, you can invoice them without VAT. It's the client's responsibility to pay VAT in their own country.

So that's what I do, and on my "Umsatzsteuererklärung" form, there is a field for income that is VAT-free, where I put basically everything.

thanks for catching my mistake! I'm blaming auto-correct. :)

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