Becoming self-employed in Germany

Well, I came here to get away from unemployment elsewhere. I came here to work. I came here because I thought that they appreciated people who work hard, and try and get results. And were not too worried about age as they seem to be in a lot of other countries (see the UK where being over 40 makes you a permanent write-off).

I did not come here to receive the supposedly generous unemployment benefits.

So after losing my position at Procter and Gamble (see earlier posts), I finally decided not to put myself on the dole queue again (no thanks - see above). I looked at ways of becoming a self-employed translator.

Well the story so far - there has been over the past five weeks quite a lot of work and some promising money. The promise though has not yet come to anything despite the work and hours put in, as I am not yet officially anything. That is down to the fact that I have asked loads of people how to become self-employed officially (and checked numerous websites ....), and I could not get an appropriate answer.

Finally this morning - the answer. I went to see the IHK in Frankfurt (a bit like the chamber of commerce in the UK) and explained the situation.

No, I did not want to become a mini-Siemens or a mini-Volkswagen. All I wanted was to become a single person doing translation work for himself. Not being a big enough concern for them to break sweat over, the wonderful lady I spoke to sent me directly to ..... the Finanzamt (the tax office to you).

They gave me a form to fill in, realised that they did not understand my northern English German accent too well, and gave me another one that is typical of the species - long, asks a lot of strange questions, and takes forever to fill out. Anyway tomorrow, I can get this completed and cart it off to them again, become official (how long that will take?), get the VAT (MwSt here) set up, and away we go. Bang, boom, and straight down the road to bankruptcy!

Which is at least a change from the seemingly imposed poverty of the unemployment line .....

And at some point I shall have to deal with accountants (ugh!), and their strange view of the world. A month for an individual on Hartz IV (the local bottom end of the social security ladder) brings in €359. One single initial appointment with an accountant would, last week, have cost me €240. Hartz IV to self-employed via an accountant's office? I do not see it, it is a totally different world where costs and values are involved!

Anyway we will soon be up and running and totally official - and very likely still broke, but broke with my self-respect sort of intact.