Expansion from Germany to other countries (outbound cases)

Do you want to sell your products or offer your services abroad with a German company?
You may already have customers abroad who would like to have permanent contact persons for your company in their own country or general terms and conditions and liability in accordance with local law before they place larger orders.
Then it is no longer enough for you or your employees to be there from time to time.

The number of questions increases with expansion

Perhaps you should have registered as a VAT entrepreneur there long ago.
This mainly affects companies that sell via online portals such as Amazon.
Perhaps an employee has been on site for too long and has to be registered for income tax there.
Or you were obliged to pay social security contributions for them abroad?
Perhaps your construction or assembly site has been there for more than 6 or 12 months or your “information office” sells your products and you had already established a permanent establishment there without knowing it.
If so, there is a risk of penalties and double taxation and it is important to check what needs to be done beforehand.

Representative office, registered branch or subsidiary?

There are now various options such as a representative office, a registered branch or a subsidiary. When it comes to a subsidiary, the question arises:

What is the best legal form? Which legal form is highly regarded, which is less so?
How long does the formation process take?
How expensive is the formation and what is required?
Do you need a foreign partner or managing director?
Where do you have to register?
What are the usual wages in this country?
How high are the taxes?
How high are the hurdles for setting up a bank account?
Does a managing director have to be on site?
Can I relocate individual business areas such as production there without triggering taxes in Germany as part of the transfer of functions
Can I transfer profits or my equity back there without any problems?
How long will it take and how expensive will it be to liquidate the company?
What equity capital regulations may have to be observed?
Under what conditions does the managing director have to file for insolvency?
Can I move the registered office of my company or the place of management abroad?
Can I save taxes by paying license fees to a foreign patent company that belongs to me?
Should I set up my own company abroad or should I take over an existing company/competitor there?

Questions upon questions.
It is important to know the answers to these before investing large amounts of money abroad. Otherwise you can easily “burn” money or managing directors can become (personally?) liable. This is because in Germany, conditional intent is also considered intent. Anyone who believes that damage is possible and accepts it without intending to cause it is acting with intent. This means that (even foreign) managing directors are not protected if, for example, something was omitted and you claim not to have known something because it is different in your country.
You are then expected to do some research or hire an advisor. Not every D&O insurance policy pays out in the case of intent and tax evasion can be punished with imprisonment.

Use the Benefitax One-Stop-Shop

You don’t know who you can trust abroad and are looking for competent contacts? If your available time for clarifying questions about foreign investments is limited, the answers found on the Internet are confusing or outdated or your foreign language skills are not perfect, use us as a central point of contact. Our employees are trained in dealing and communicating with business partners abroad. With us, you have reliable contacts to consultants all over the world. We make sure that your questions are answered. We are happy to translate and explain the experts’ answers to you. This eliminates communication problems and time-consuming and expensive trips and prevents you from falling for dubious consultants.

We don’t know everything either, but we do know where we can obtain trustworthy and up-to-date information. On the one hand, we have access to fee-based databases. Secondly, through our membership of the GGI consultancy alliance, we have access to over 600 law, tax, auditing and management consultancy firms with a total of 30,000 employees in over 125 countries. Our colleagues not only help with planning, but also with the implementation of your plans, e.g. founding/registering a company abroad or fulfilling its tax obligations.

If you are planning to acquire a competitor abroad, competent lawyers or auditors can carry out a due diligence review of the target company on site. Geneva Capital Group’s M&A advisory firms can help you to find a suitable company and make contact with it anonymously on request.

Come to us. We will be happy to help you expand abroad.

Expansion from Germany to other countries (outbound cases)