FAQ: Ground one man business in Germany

Scope

This article is for someone, who already has a full time job in germany but wanna have a small business as part time job (Nebengewerbe).

Limit to my knowledge there is no guarantee for the correctness and completeness of following information.

Where can i get official guide and information?

There are different offices where you can rise your questions. But one office i would like to recommend you is the IHK (Chamber of Commerce and Industry).

On this page of IHK you can find a step by step guide to ground a company.

You can also registry to a free seminar by IHK, such seminar will give one a very good preparation before starting a one man business.

Also google with keyword “Seminare zur Gründung IHK” or “Start in die Selbständigkeit IHK” or “Wann muss man Gewerbe anmelden” will be helpful.

IHK also offer one to one consulting which give the opportunity to ask detail questions.

Which office is for what?

Gewerbeamt (Commercial office)

When you decide to ground one man business, the commercial office might be the first office where you need to go. A registry form (Gewerbe-Anmeldung) for your business needs to be filled there.

Usually your name is the name of your one man business. One can attach a fantasy name to this name, this is allowed be used for marketing for example. It make sense to ask IHK in your city to make sure that the fantasy name which you use is allowed.

On the top right of registry form, below the Title “GewA 1” there is a table cell, where the ID of form will be generated. Some commercial office doesn’t offer this ID, in this case the tax ID will be used as kind of identifier of your sole proprietorship.

IHK

Every company in Germany must be registered in IHK and have their own IHK member ID.

When you submit the register form by commercial office, after few weeks, you should get this ID from IHK via post.

There are also company database from IHK, where you can apply to add your company information to it. (for example: bw, bayern)

Berufsgenossenschaft (Trade association)

Please talk to your commercial office, if you should wait post of trade association for next step or contact them in certain deadline.

Finance office (Finanzamt)

From finance office you will get a tax ID, which is usually the same as the tax ID from your full-time job.

The eTIN or Identifkationsnummer what you get from finance office, can be used when you for example join amazon affiliate or create udemy course.

Depends on how many turnover annually planned (Kleinunternehmerregelung) and where to sell your service and product, a USt-IdNr (Umsatzsteuer-Identifikationsnummer) might need to be applied. If you have the USt-IdNr, it also means, every month a VAT advance returns (Umsatzsteuer-Voranmeldungen) should be submitted to finance office for example by using elster portal.

Some forms need to be submitted to finance office every year, these are like:

. Ust (Umsatzsteuererklärung)

. EÜR (Einnahmenüberschussrechnung)

Rentenversicherung (Pension insurance)

Please ask information from “Deutsche Rentversicherung”, if you are free from the pension insurance. For example, if you monthly not more than 450 Euro earned, you are free from it.

Furthermore, following insurance might be helpful:

Insurance

. Professional Liability Insurance (Berufshaftpflichtversicherung)

. Legal protection trade (Rechtschutz Gewerb)

. Haftpflichtversicherung

. Berufsunfähigkeitsversicherung

Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt

I hope these information are useful for you and any positive feedback is welcome.