Mike, you're right on all accounts. Let's gather some elements:
- You're speaking of Durchgriffshaftung, i.e. first of all, a German GmbH is 25.000 euro (about 30- or 31.000 bucks), which is way higher than corporations in other countries.
- Then, you can of course establish a Ltd., on cheap, in G.B., but both your revenu and that of the Ltd. will be subject to German taxes, if you then create a Ltd. & Co. KG with it or just have an official establishment in Germany with it, or even if you don't declare it to German authorities, which would be illegal.
- From the above, you see that the problem is not the form of incorporation, but the residence (here: Germany) of the managing director.
- The same applies to that Durchgriffshaftung (as you correctly state yourself): Wherever you incorporate your legal entity, and in whatever form, you are liable both by German law, and especially by German jurisdiction, which is the real problem here, since by German law (and contrary to the taxation issues), you would NOT be subjected to boundless, personal liability for non-German entities, but German judges like to hand over their non-State-paid compatriots to crooks worldwide on a silver platter, i.e. without legal foundations in the official texts, they illegally apply any text which pleases them anywhere by extension.
- This situation will certainly not improve by the imminent - and classified! - E.U.-U.S. commercial treaty: U.S. lawyers will specialize in pursuing European inventors (!) for alleged violations of U.S. "patents", the quotes being for the fact that in the U.S., you can file "patents" for anything, incl. both insignificancies and things that ain't even new - and European, especially German, judges will be eager to serve those U.S. vipers fully.
- The fact that there are almost no one-man developing shows inWestern Europe, and especially in Germany, is NOT due to the (inexistant) fact that European ain't as good in software as people from other countries, but at some time in their thinking process, they all face this same legal problem, and refrain from losing their very existence (and without their house, their wife, and their children, taken away by their wives).
- On the other hand, there are lots of one-man sw shows both in East Europe and in Russia, and also in the Far East, not by any "programming superiority" over there, but simply because Chinese judges will not eat the asses of U.S. crooks, as German judges would happily do, but laugh upon them, and the same would be true in Russia, whilst I'm not so sure anymore, for the future, for any E.U. country in Europe's east.
- Very often, you don't even will get the address of these Eastern developers, and they are right in withholding it.
- It's just SOME European developers who take the risks, and yes, they are taking big risks.
- You also will observe that a surprisingly share of (even rather tiny) German software venues are incorporated in (high-cost) Aktiengesellschaften (public holding companies), which in Germany is the only (and very expensive) way for avoiding total personal liability when being sued.
- The utmost obscenity in all this being the fact that your state of residence takes an incredible part of all your income, even for your sales in Nigeria, whilst then ruining you when some crook (even from Nigeria) comes and sues you in your own country.
- In my (West European) country, normal people pay 80 p.c. of their income to the state, whilst the real rich pay nothing, or then, 2 p.c. to the state of Luxemburg instead, as do some "international" corporations doing BIG business in Europe and especially Germany - when politicians are U.S. whores, that's what it all ends up to. Thus, the underlying problem is the fact that Europe is finished, with Germany being finished thrice, by the psychology of state-paid Germans. Well, it had been state-paid Germans who ran the camps, no? (Western) European governments systematically govern against their own people, and as for Germany, you see that phenomenon of the State, tenfold.
- In other words, incorporate your Ltd. or whatever in any exotic country of your choice: As long as you reside in a country that feeds its population to the wolves, both the taxman and any crook worldwide will tear you down where you live.
- Thus, some, very rare, West European software developers deploy other, exotic stratagems in order to avoid both liability, and taxes, but that means you shouldn't be enrolled any more in the population registry of some Western European shit country:
http://www.just-grea...are.com/aboutjg.html :
"Jan Goyvaerts was born and raised in a town called Heist-op-den-Berg in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. Just Great Software was originally established there. Nowadays, Jan lives with his wife in Phuket in southern Thailand. Just Great Software's street address has moved with him. Still, Jan spends the larger part of his day in the global virtual world of the Internet, where his business thrives."
In other words, since getting a pen pal in some exotic country as your nominee / cover would be both insane and illegal, emigrate (perhaps, for a start, to Czechia (which is unknown to the spellchecker of this forum, which you can take as a good sign for getting away with "it": Or then, some day, pay with your life for YOUR OWN INVENTIONS and hand it all over to crooks, legally entitled by your own shit authorities which will have ransacked you all those fearful years before.
And beware, in this forum, there are unfortunately some people who happily take the side of governments - of governments of ANY mindset.
