Personal tax rates are higher, at the same time you get better (and cheaper) healthcare.
Corporate tax rates are indeed higher in Germany. At the same time, there are lots of funding opportunities for startups from communal, national and EU business development programs, that can be seen as sort of a tax break.
Hiring is probably harder, since programmers are generally less interested in startups and prefer safe corporate jobs (outside of Berlin). Wages are significantly lower in Berlin than in West German cities. Firing is much harder than in the U.S.
firing employees is in germany not really difficult, especially not for startups. every employee must serve a 3-6 months test period until he gets a professional contract. during the test period you will see, if the employee is performing well or not and you can fire the person easily the next day, if you want.
and hiring people in germany is much easier than in the valley or in new york, where you have huge competition from the big ones like google, facebook etc...
Setting up an UG (sort of like a private partnership) has become relatively easy (couple days) and cheap (couple hundred bucks), while a GmbH (LLC) or an AG (corporation) is still a lot more complex and costly (min. 25K EUR capital brought in for a GmbH).
Corporate tax rates are indeed higher in Germany. At the same time, there are lots of funding opportunities for startups from communal, national and EU business development programs, that can be seen as sort of a tax break.
Hiring is probably harder, since programmers are generally less interested in startups and prefer safe corporate jobs (outside of Berlin). Wages are significantly lower in Berlin than in West German cities. Firing is much harder than in the U.S.