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Comment by sokoloff

2 years ago

Surely the requirement that a limited liability company has some minimum assets is reasonable for exactly that reason. You wouldn’t want someone to be able to form a company whose liability was limited to couple hundred Euros of assets the company was formed with.

10 comments

sokoloff

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lucakiebel  2 years ago

That’s exactly what the UG (haftungsbeschränkt) does, you can set one up with (theoretically) 1€ (though in practice it’s more like 250€), and you then have a GmbH with lower liability

  • harha  2 years ago

    Yeah but pay many thousands per year for filing taxes etc and spend years to dissolve. Along with all the personal liability as director.

    UG is a massive scam in that sense, definitely not what’s advertised.

SkyAndSand  2 years ago

Well, isn't that exactly what is happening if you set up a US LLC or a UK LTD? You get limited liability and can set up the company with a couple hundred dollars or pounds. Why would that be a problem in Germany but not in these jurisdictions?

  • weinzierl  2 years ago

    You can set up a UG for quasi nothing in Germany and it would be roughly equivalent to a US LLC or UK LTD with no capital. Thing is that almost no one does and the reason is that it is hard to do business as an UG because lack of trust as GP said.

    I can't tell you why it is like that in Germany, but I'm curious why it isn't like that in the US and the UK.

    • ng55QPSK  2 years ago

      (german here and part time owner of a business as GbR - a rock band). I think it clearly comming from another tradition, businesses in germany start as person/owner funded than as externally funded. But the mentioned UG was to help change this state. Still, most partners/contractors would like to see a GmbH.

    • mytailorisrich  2 years ago

      The UK hasn't got something similar to UG because it does not need to.

      They made Ltd companies simple and cheap so that there is no need to complicate things like in Germany and most European countries.

      Since the vast majority of companies are Ltd companies there isn't any connotation attached to them. You can just look the company up to check how old it is and to convince yourself of its 'trustworthiness'.

  • ElevenLathe  2 years ago

    IANAL but I think the answer for US single-member LLCs is that if you were ever to actually say, cause 100k of damage to somebody else's property through the actions of your single-person LLC and they were to take you to court, the judge would quickly find that the liability passes through to you, so it's not really all that different from a sole proprietorship (aka just doing business as yourself) in that regard.