[king_phil]

One more comment that saves quite a lot of money in the phase where you are building your company: DO NOT APPLY FOR VAT TAX EXEMPTION!

If you are in the initial investment phase and you have more bills than earnings, you'll get 19% of the bills back from Finanzamt. You'll pay 19% of your invoices, too, but if thats less, you're saving.

If you're starting to earn, the Finanzamt will remove the exemption anyways.

Don't know if that makes sense for an outsider, but just read it up and thank me later.

[charlesdm]

Having a VAT exemption can be interesting in some cases though. Say you sell goods to EU consumers through an entity, you can sell them legally without VAT. That's quite a competitive advantage when getting started.