Working as a freelancer in Germany

This item is aimed at all freelance expats who earn their own income in Germany. More and more of them come to Germany with German companies, they offer freelance services or they start their own companies. When you work, you have to earn money, and paying taxes in Germany is a complicated process. German taxes, but things are getting more and more confusing, so I will limit this contribution to a brief summary of what happened.

As full-time employees of a German company, self-employed persons must enter into a special relationship in order to register their company and pay the monthly VAT. Before you take care of documents, registration, taxes, etc., you also need a good understanding of what you need to understand as a freelancer, self-employed and self-employed in Germany.

The liberal profession is a specific form of self-employment limited to a certain number of liberal professions. These professions are associated with all kinds of scholars, academics and creative services. The spectrum ranges from doctors, architects, journalists, lawyers and programmers to dancers. The Income Tax Act defines here two types of freelancer, one for full-time workers and the other for freelancers.

The Artist Freelance Visa is offered to artists who plan to reside in Berlin but not in another city in Germany. The difference between the work visa and the artist visa is that you have to pursue a profession related to art or journalism in order to be eligible. It may happen that if you are not sure whether your freelance profession really falls under the category of an artist visa or not, you can send your application to your Federal Employment Agency and it can take up to three months to review everything.

As an expat, you must ensure that your German residence permit allows you to pursue a freelance activity without being restricted to mere employment. There are four main conditions for the fact that if you do not fulfil them, you are unlikely to enter the country and forget your residence permit in Germany.

In addition, you must declare your self-employment and may need to file a tax return with the Federal Tax Office (Bundesbank) and the German Tax Office (BKA).

Before you become self-employed, you need to understand what work would fall under your legal status as a freelancer. To qualify as a freelance IT specialist, you must meet certain requirements, and you must also meet certain requirements if you are a registered company. If you donate, you have to be set up by a commercial company instead. Whereas income from gainful employment is subject to the employer's income tax, income from self-employment must be taxed separately.

This is the responsibility of the tax office, which decides in individual cases whether previous experience as a self-employed person can also be regarded as work experience.

You are not expected to achieve an income of more than 50,000 euros in the current year or a total of 60,500 euros in the next two years.

With a proper visa, you are legally permitted to pursue a freelance activity during your stay in Germany. You are not an employee, but you are self-employed - self-employed by re-entering the country. By being self-employed, it means that you technically own your own business and are not employees.

Nationals of other countries need an appropriate residence permit to enable them to work independently. You must prove that your self-employed visa or residence permit application already has a customer in Germany.

Show that you are already working for the company and that the company wants to hire you as a freelancer for a period of at least three months or up to six months.

So you have the opportunity to find fantastic freelance gigs, but you have to register. Make in Germany is a state-owned website for professionals who want to move to Germany. The German portal freelance, the largest freelance job site, has more than 1.5 million jobs available for freelancers in the country. Existenzgründer is another state-owned website that provides you with a detailed guide on how to become a freelancer.

The decision as to where you would like to establish yourself as a freelancer for your German company is a very personal decision and can depend on the industry and the type of customers you address.

In this article, we discuss the steps you need to take to establish yourself as a self-employed or freelancer in Germany. The first thing to know is that the self-employed and freelancers have slightly different conditions when applying for residence. As you can see in detail below, the self-employed must also provide a document when applying for a residence permit.

The German freelance visa has slightly different procedures and requirements that you must fulfil in order to obtain it, as well as other requirements for the self-employed.

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