[ecshafer]

The author can surely understand it. And this system is what is keeping Germany and many European countries from propelling their economies forward by reducing market dynamism. Its not a coincidence that China, US and many other countries, which have more dynamic markets and large GDP growth let you set up a company in a day.

[jeroenhd]

Registering a private limited liability company in the Netherlands costs around 400 euros. If you can file all of the taxes and other legally required paperwork yourself, you can be set up in a week or two. You will be a salaried employee of your own company, though, with a minimal salary you will need to rake in.

The combination of "no personal risk whatsoever, minimal funds/risk coverage, maximal profit extraction" doesn't lend itself well to places with basic regulations.

Capital investments in Europe are definitely not as easy to obtain as in the US for various economic, cultural, and historic reasons, which all led to some pretty weird laws here and there, but the extra week it takes to set up a business isn't the cause.

The reason this all took so long and was so expensive is simple. As the author states:

> I wanted real limited liability

They wanted two different companies with different setups to get out of having to save up the funds or find investors while also paying the least amount of tax possible. They set up a two-company system with all the risk in one and all the earnings in the other. It's like one of those tax dodging schemes the multinationals like, except within a single country. That comes with overhead.

Funnily enough, they then end with:

> Which leaves the only real question. Why 25,000 at all? It is my company and my risk.

Weird to think it would be their own risk if they spend so much time, money, and effort setting up a system that explicitly removes all the risk from them.

All of this feels like it was based on a business plan generated by some over-eager AI that tried to optimize to tick as many boxes as possible, ignoring the real-world consequences of those choices.

[markvdb]

> If you can file all of the taxes and other legally required paperwork yourself, you can be set up in a week or two.

Is realistic in the Netherlands to try and fulfill all formal paperwork requirements?

In my native Belgian city, outsourcing that be from ~3k€ excluding VAT/year for the very simplest CIT liable structure. That's excluding 409.3€ corporate social security contribution and 148€ provincial tax. That makes for about 300€ ex. VAT before you can start to earn anything at all. Unless you can fulfill all accounting yourself.

[jeroenhd]

People do it. I think the time and learning resources it takes to do it all yourself is probably not worth it for a company trying to make it big, especially if you stack your BV inside of a holding inside of a stichting to get something similar to the OP tax-avoidance-cum-risk-reduction strategy.

The risk of making a mistake and getting hit with a huge fine, as well as all the time wasted on crunching numbers and reading tax code, probably makes it very difficult to justify doing it yourself if you have a profitable business. If you do not make the money you need to make paying an accountant make sense, I think setting up a BV would probably not be the best approach.

Getting things like payslips right (you have to pay yourself a defined minimum wage and that means paying income tax and getting all the payslips correct if you set up a BV) may seem simple, but there's a reason companies pay good money to have that all taken care of. Just simple things like the possibility of a 53 week year can trip up someone who is just starting out.

But at the end of the day, plenty of people do their own paperwork, deliver the taxes themselves, and file the yearly required documents. It's neither impossible nor illegal to do it all yourself, just often unpopular.

[markvdb]

Of my many many acquaintances with Belgian CIT liable companies, exactly one used to do their own taxes. They still outsourced salary payment though. That is even trickier than taxes. There's an entire sector specialising in wage administration...

[asyx]

No he doesn't. You can register a Kleingewerbe at the Gewerbeamt online ([1] for NRW) and start right away. You can create an UG (literally supposed to fill the gap between a GmbH and a Kleingewerbe) within 2 weeks depending on the notary. And those 2 weeks come from the fact that the notary has better stuff to do than a UG registration and therefore probably doesn't make time specifically for you.

If you want to start a business and you don't need to pay for an office or whatever (because you can actually use those 25k for something), you can literally start over night. If you need a proper company that limits your liability, you can literally start in 2 weeks.

[1] https://service.wirtschaft.nrw/unternehmensgruendung/gewerbe...

[tchalla]

Amazing, so you start a business which doesn’t have the same benefits as a if business and it takes “only” 2 weeks plus a notary.

[selfmodruntime]

I have registered a GBR before and I would not do it again. The risk due to personal liability is too high.