[pentacent_hq]

As someone who as founded companies in Germany, I can understand a lot of the frustration with some parts of the process. It does indeed feel archaic that the notary has to read everything out aloud and the process for opening a bank account is maybe not terribly compicated but still more complicated than it needs to. The fact that getting a VAT number can take so long is also really infuriating.

With that being said, it seems like the author received some poor advice from their law firm:

1) If the author mostly does consulting and contract work, a sole proprietorship would have been the better option as many others here have already pointed out.

2) The UG & Co. KG construct is unnecessarily complex for a small company; it does have some advantages but if they really wanted a limited liability company, they should have used the "Musterprotokoll" (standard protocol) for setting up a UG; that would probably have cost less than €500. Lawyers love to suggest GmbH/UG & Co KG though because it means more fees for them.

3) The advice they got regarding the name was almost certainly incorrect. First of all, "case law" is not really a thing in civil law countries like Germany. The company name usually gets checked by the local chamber of commerce (IHK) and while there are some rules (you're not allowed to just call your company the equivalent of "Supermarket Co", "Plenty UG" would have almost certainly been fine. And if the IHK says it's fine, the court will accept it too.

Anyways, now that you have your company, I wish you all the best with it. You have exciting times ahead and the frustrating bit is (almost) over :-)