Do I need to be present, physically, at the local trade licensing office to perform the trade registration, despite the form being available online (Part 4 of Founding a Company)

Introduction

In this fourth article - if you have not read it, start with the first article - I continue telling you about the highlights of incorporating two companies in a holding structure in Germany. This article focuses on the registration with the local trade licensing office.

In follow-up post(s) I'll continue with Creating an Opening Balance Sheet and further highlights until finally having both companies ready.

Hi 👋

This is Kai Mindermann, the CEO of NuInnovate - with the vision of creating a world where every improvement serves a meaningful purpose. Just wanted to quickly say: Enjoy your day!

Overview

For most commercial businesses, regardless if you are doing it as a natural person or with a company, you need to register with the local trade licensing office (Gewerbeamt) and pay commercial / Municipal trade tax. As this is a local registration the process is different depending on which trade office is responsible for you. It's not fundamentally different, but the form to fill out and the surrounding automation are!

Also, important is that you need to do this for each permanent business establishment (Betriebsstätte).

Despite that there was significant documentation for my municipal, I didn't manage to find any online form or process. That's why I used the provided form and filled it out on my computer.

Filling out the application form (GewA 1)

If you see the form for the first time it might take you a while to fully understand each field. Especially as it is in German, though there are forms available in English which make it easier to read, yet on the form they even state that you "Please only use the German form!".

I don't want to emphasize filling out the form too much here, but these were the significant entries in my opinion:

• Date of beginning of registered activity: Here I put the founding date from when I was at the public notary
• Number of persons employed at the time of the start of the business activity (including temporary helps, spouse or partner of the owner; excluding owner): Here I put None

After having filled everything out, I printed and signed the form.

Transferring the form content into the tool

With the printed out and signed form I drove to the local trade licensing office and waited a bit until it was my time. I handed over the form and also the excerpt from the commercial register as well as my ID. After my ID was verified I thought we were done, and I could leave.

But it took much longer than I thought. You should know, the trade licensing office I needed to go to is from a rural small municipal. The woman at the desk also expected this to be a registration for a natural person not for a corporation. She informed me that it's not that common for them to handle applications for corporations.

Yet I was more surprised that the form I filled out had to be put into the same form just within a software tool. And that tool was, let's say not very usable.

It took a while to figure out how to move forward within that tool and to provide all the information that was needed to finish it.

I'm not sure if I'm glad that I did not send it via email and could make sure it's handled properly or that it took more effort than expected.

At the end, when all information was entered correctly, it was printed out 4 times and I had to sign all 4 applications again. One was for me and the others were for them and the tax office etc.

For the registration of the operative company I already planned with a little more time which also was required, as it was not the same person handling the application.

But also that worked out, and I could take, again, the registration at the trade licensing office with me!

How I would've expected it to be like

I would have expected the application process to let me once fill in the form online via a tool where I authenticate with my government ID. Then it would be in a state where they check the application and let me know about any changes that are required to be done by me. Afterwards, or if everything is there, I had expected to receive confirmation of the application within the tool. Maybe the process and tooling already exist for others, e.g. the municipal Stuttgart mentions that they also have an online form/process. Also, I chose to not sent it via mail or email, so maybe that would have workout as well.

Next steps

So far I already covered a few aspects which I discovered, learned and experienced:

• Introduction, watching videos and researching the holding structure
• Making the actual step of going to the public notary and signing the certificate of incorporation
• Virtual Office/Address and Terminology for the different kinds of addresses and locations for the various forms and documents
• (This article) Do I need to be present, physically, at the local trade licensing office to perform the trade registration, despite the form being available online?

In the next post(s) I'll highlight the next steps, some of which I did not comprehend quickly in the - for me - necessary detail:

• Creating an Opening Balance Sheet, Eröffnungsbilanz, from the bookkeeping software, correctly
• Does the Holding Company really need to calculate and submit (pay) the sales tax pre-registration, Umsatzsteuer-Voranmeldung (USt-VA) after every quarter, despite not doing a lot other than waiting (for years) for the returns of the operative company?
• Why won't the bank open a bank account for the Operative GmbH after opening one without problems for the Holding Company? (Part 7 of Founding a Company)
• Delayed assignment of VAT ID / USt-IdNr because of possible consolidated VAT group / umsatzsteuerliche Organschaft?

Disclaimer

The content provided in our articles is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Readers are encouraged to seek professional advice from qualified professionals regarding their specific legal or tax situations.