Spring 2018 | How to navigate through the legal jungle

Berlin’s up and coming food scene is bursting with activity and countless restaurant are opening their doors every week. The colorful mix of locals and expats are hungry for great restaurants with interesting food concepts and a relatively low cost structure; this in turn leaves a lot of space for creativity. However, opening a food business in Berlin is not just fun, it can mean dealing with a confusing map of German bureaucracy and the abundance of laws.

In this seminar we take your hand and stand by your side, when it comes to handling all the German paperwork. We help you navigate through the legal jungle and show you where to start, which authorities to apply to, and everything else in between that you need to know to be on the right side of the law.

Some of the important topics we will cover include:

• Legal forms: When you are planning to open a business, one of the first questions that you need to have in mind is the choice of the legal form. What are different legal forms in Germany? What are the PROS and CONS for one or the other? How do you register? Who and what needs these forms?
• Financial plan: What should my financial plan include? How should I structure it? Who do I target?
• Terms of employment: What are the terms of employment in Germany? What are the PROS and CONS for one or the other? (be aware: Scheinselbstständigkeit!)
• Important insurances & other important departments: There are insurances in German that are mandatory. Find out which ones they are and learn more about the important registrations you need to do when opening a food business in Germany.
• Taxes: Before retaining a tax adviser, it’s helpful to know the frame the German Finanzamt is offering you. What are the different taxes you have to pay? What’s the bookkeeping you need to do?What actually is the frame of the German Finanzamt?
• Bookkeeping: 7%? 19%? When does which percentage apply? What do I need to know when managing my cash? How does my P&L help me manage my success? How does a tax audit in gastronomy look like? What do I have to prepare?

Hamburg-based tax advisor Marc Zietemann (on the left)specializes in gastronomy specific taxes and advises more that 150 people in the industry.