[matt_o]

Well, my "self-employement" form was actually 8 pages long and it featured a lot more items than address, name, purpose and processing it took about 4 weeks. To be fair, I could start my business as soon as I sent that out, but I could not invoice clients until I got the reply, which included my new tax number. This is how it works in Germany. Add on top of that the mandatory monthly VAT tax reporting.

That is a significantly higher cost of entry when compared with an Ltd/LLC, not to mention a sole proprietorship.

[matt4077]

Here's the sole proprietorship form, it's actually one page: http://www.hamburg.de/Dibis/form/pdf/Formular-Gewerbeanmeldu... – but obviously it depends a lot on the individual circumstances (like the tax ID you need for cross-border transactions). VAT is annoying, but it's only monthly if you're above 120000 Euro or so. We've started only filling in our revenue (which I can get within a few seconds) and file the tax we paid to suppliers with the yearly declaration. It's much faster to do it all in one go.

[matt_o]

I had to fill out this form: "Fragebogen zur steuerlichen Erfassung" and I have to report my VAT using the Elster system monthly, even though my VAT is always 0 (my clients are all outside of the EU).

I went this way after consulting some other folks in Berlin and a tax consultant that I found myself. I'm kind of surprised that there's a different, easier way to go. Thanks for sharing the information.