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Comment by atemerev | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, no. The bureaucracy of opening and running a business here is staggering (and the minimum starting capital for opening an analog of LLC is more than $20,000, and more than $100,000 for a corporation). Perhaps you have heard that there are few taxes in Switzerland; this is not true (and also a lot of obligatory social security payments for the each employee which are almost impossible to manage without a dedicated company to help running your accounting, which is quite expensive). There are many rich people and investments funds, but barely anyone understands how venture capital works. Switzerland is not a country which attracts risk takers. I tried to build startups here for the last 10 years, and I am exhausted.

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> Perhaps you have heard that there are few taxes in Switzerland; this is not true

Can you expand? In Germany, the VAT tax ranges between 8% and 19% (temporarily reduced due to Corona). In Switzerland it's between 2.5% and 7.7%. Is it the customs you have to pay for importing things?

Very true. In 1996 I incorporated as a British Virgin Islands offshore exactly because of the upfront capital requirements. It was easier than doing it in Switzerland.

Starting a GmbH theoretically requires 25.000 € in Germany, but you only have to pay in half of that in the beginning. I think in Switzerland it's similar?

If you don't want to invest 5-10 T€ to start a company you can look into Estland's eResidency programme, which enables you to start a limited liability company there, giving you access to the EEA market as well.

It is not about capital, it is about the bureaucracy (and Germany is not the easiest country to open a company, too).

Since a few years you can start a GmbH for 1 €, but in the case of hitting Germany's chapter 11 analog (Insolvenzverfahren) you have to pay up to those 25k€ until limited liability kicks in.

You have to fund only half of it in the case of an AG. For GmbH the 20k are the minimum, although it doesn't have to be cash.

In Germany one can start an Ug and convert to a GmbH later. There is bureaucracy though, almost everything has to be done at a notary, in person. And they will expect you to speak German. Have done it as a non-German speaker though (pre Corona). In terms of the difficulties one has running ones own company succesfully, it does not rank high. But it is easy to complain about I guess.

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