What legal structure to use for your business?

Once you have made the decision to start-up a business, one of the most underlying decisions to consider is, which legal structure the business entity should have. There are a wide variety of legal forms a business can exercise in Germany. Each one of them has different characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages. Most of the English company legal structures have a German counterpart or a similar equivalent. Be aware that there can be a lot of similarities between the German and English legal forms, however there are also several exceptions. These exceptions can cause lots of problems, if they are not taken into consideration at the start-up stage. Most companies in the region of Saarland are organized according to the “GmbH” legal form. This is the German counterpart of the English “limited liability” company. The legal form of your company influences your taxation, liabilities and financing directly. Therefore, before making a decision which legal form to use, you should consider consulting our related experts in the start-up-business-centre, a tax and finance consultant as well as a corporate law firm. Below is a table of all the legal structures in Germany. Note that this is just a simplified overview, which should be used to get a general impression. In reality there are a lot of exceptions that apply to these legal forms, which could alter the usability for your purposes. More information about how to start-up a business in Germany can also be found here .