Vollständiges Transkript von „KLEINUNTERNEHMERREGELUNG ab 2025 | Alles was du als KLEINUNTERNEHMER jetzt wissen solltest“. Klicke auf einen Zeitstempel, um das Video an dieser Stelle zu öffnen. Du brauchst ein anderes Video? Nutze den YouTube-Transkript-Generator.
0:00 The small business regulation is a regulation that can be incredibly exciting for many founders and many self-employed people. But it is also a regulation about which there are more errors and myths than probably any other tax regulation. And because the small business regulation will change fundamentally in 2025, I thought I would take this as an opportunity to record an entire video about the small business regulation. The most important thing in advance: the small business regulation is regulated in Section 19 of the Sales Tax Act. Section 19 is nice to know, but what is more important is the part of the sales tax law. The small business regulation refers exclusively to sales tax. The small business regulation means
0:48 that you do not have to show sales tax on your invoices, nor do you have to submit an advance sales tax return, nor do you have to submit sales tax returns. However, the small business regulation has nothing to do with income tax or trade tax or any other type of tax and also nothing to do with the obligation to do bookkeeping and so on. And probably the most common confusion of terms that occurs in Germany as a whole are the two terms small business and small business. The whole thing is often used interchangeably, not just by the self-employed, but unfortunately also by an incredible number of websites out there. But that is fundamentally wrong. A small business is a self-employment that takes advantage of Section 19 of the Sales Tax Act and does not report sales tax. Small businesses refer more to regulations
1:37 from the German Commercial Code (HGB), i.e. from commercial law, and describe businesses that are not registered in the commercial register. The differences between the two terms are easiest and clearest when it comes to freelancers, because by definition freelancers are not small businesses, but they can take advantage of the small business regulations . Therefore, please always pay attention to the definition of terms when dealing with such details, otherwise you may simply get the wrong answer from the other person, be it the tax advisor or in the comments section. But let's get to the criteria. Who can actually use this? You can take advantage of these small business regulations if you had a turnover of less than 25,000 euros in the previous year and
2:23 a turnover of less than 100,000 euros in the current year. This means that you look at your sales every year and on January 1st of each year, i.e. before you have made your first sales, you look at the sales of the previous year. And if you had a turnover of less than 25,000 euros in the previous year, then you can still take advantage of the small business regulations in the current year. Now a few of you will sit up and say, wait a minute, I don't have a previous year at all. What do I do now? Then you have a turnover of 25,000 euros for the year you were founded. This means that if you have a turnover of less than 25,000 euros this year, you can also take advantage of the small business regulations in the year you founded your business. And then this small business regulation means that you have nothing to do with sales tax. You don't show any sales tax, you don't make any advance sales tax returns, or any sales tax returns. You simply have nothing to do with sales tax. But there is a very central disadvantage. On the
3:11 cost side, you can include your expenses, the invoice that you receive from your service providers, your suppliers and so on. In most cases, sales tax is included and you cannot claim it. Because if you don't submit advance sales tax returns, then you have no way of getting the sales tax you paid back from the tax office. And this is regulated by default in the sales tax law in such a way that this is possible. If you are interested in the entire sales tax system for the self-employed in Germany, then take a look at the video at the top right. I took a very detailed look at German sales tax law and explained all the basics. And now you might be thinking, well, then that's the small business regulation not so attractive anymore. And that's true. And especially for start-ups or phases of self-employment, where you primarily invest, meaning you may
3:59 initially have more expenses than income, the small business regulation is actually financially less attractive in most cases. And then it can definitely make sense for you to waive this small business regulation. That's how it works. This small business regulation is voluntary. You don't have to choose them. What is important, however, is that if you are below these sales limits and consciously decide to still pay sales tax, then you are binding yourself for five years. This means you can't now switch back and forth every year as long as you stay within these limits. And a very common question that I hear in this context is who is actually allowed to use this? And there are no restrictions so far. So you can take advantage of the small business regulation as a freelancer, as a tradesman, but also with a partnership, a UG, a GmbH and so on. This means that it is not
4:45 tied to the legal form, but if you meet these sales requirements, all of you can take advantage of this small business regulation and thereby save time in accounting. And that brings us to a purely practical question. Namely, what actually happens if you exceed these sales limits? We have the limit for the previous year . So you have to have a turnover of less than 25,000 euros. This is relatively logical if you make over 25,000 euros in sales in a year, for example 30,000. Yes, then you look at your accounting on January 1st of the next year and see, oh, 30,000 euros in sales. So from January 1st of the corresponding year I will no longer be a small business owner. And then you simply start writing sales tax on your invoices and submitting advance sales tax returns. But what about the second limit? Because you not only have to stay under 25,000 euros in the previous year,
5:32 but you also have to stay under 100,000 euros in the current year. What then? And that has actually changed in 2025. Anything over 100,000 euros is taxable . So you can invoice up to 100,000 euros in the current year as a small business owner and the sales that then go beyond this 100,000 euros, i.e. 20,000 euros in my example, you then have to declare sales tax for this. This means that as soon as you exceed the limit of 100,000 euros, you are no longer a small business owner from that day on. Then you have to declare sales tax immediately. And of course that means that you have to keep an overview of your accounting on a daily basis, because you have to know when you will come across these 100,000 euros. And that’s why I recommend an accounting program. This always shows you at first glance whether you are above or below. You can find a few recommendations
6:19 in the video description below. A few of you will now say, ah, that sounds attractive, maybe that sounds more attractive than before, I want to do that. How do I do it then? If you are a founder, you fill out the tax registration questionnaire at the very beginning. And there is a field. And that's where you check the box. And this hook says, I want to take advantage of the small business regulations. This is basically the requirement for founders. But you can do the whole thing later. You can apply for this informally. Informal means there is no form. This means that a simple email, a letter or perhaps even a call to the tax office is enough. Then you tell them here, guys, this is what my sales look like. I meet both requirements and I would like to take advantage of the small business regulations in the future. The important thing is that this only works at the turn of the year. So, for example, you could contact the tax office at the beginning of 2025 and say,
7:06 I would now like to be a small business owner. Then this will apply from January 1st of this year. And if you're a small business owner, as we've already talked about, you actually have to do nothing with sales tax. So you don't write sales tax on your invoices. A little note for the bills perhaps. Not only do you not have to declare sales tax, you also have to include a small information text on your invoices. For example, no sales tax statement according to Section 19 of the Sales Tax Act or no sales tax statement because of the small business regulation. Something that is not required by law, the way you phrase it. I'll write two or three sentences in the video description below. You can just copy it out. It is important that you write this on your invoices, otherwise your customers may say that the invoice is incorrect and they will not pay your money. And of course we want to avoid that. And then you don't have to make an advance VAT return, quarterly or monthly. You
7:54 also don’t submit sales tax returns. And on the cost side, you unfortunately have no option to have the sales tax refunded to you by the tax office. With the e-invoicing requirement, which will be introduced piece by piece between 2025 and 2028, there is a specific invoice format. And that’s where small business owners have a small advantage. In the future, invoices will have to be issued in e-invoice format. So it has to be an XML invoice or a ZUGFeRD invoice. And if you don't receive an e-invoice or a ZUGFeRD invoice, then you don't have any input tax deduction. This is of course very unfavorable for self-employed people in general. For you as a small business owner, this e-invoicing requirement may actually not matter at all because your invoices do not contain sales tax. And actually, when you receive the invoice, it doesn't matter to you because you don't have any sales tax claim anyway.
8:39 So you can't get this sales tax refunded anyway. Therefore, when checking incoming invoices in the future, you don't really have to pay attention to whether you have received an you don't have. That means you can actually ignore the e-invoicing requirement for now. Of course you should keep this on your radar because your independence may grow at some point. But for here and now, this whole e-invoicing issue can't really matter to you. And this brings us to a very central question. Namely, for whom is this small business regulation actually worthwhile? I already mentioned that in some scenarios it is actually more financially attractive to forego this small business regulation. This is always the case when you have more expenses than income, because you will then primarily receive sales tax refunds from the tax office.
9:27 But for whom is the small business regulation actually a good solution? And it is very important to consider who is your customer? Because if you have corporate customers, they don't care whether you declare sales tax or not. Because you can get the sales tax amounts that you invoice you back from the tax office in your advance sales tax return . But if you have end customers, i.e. consumers, as customers, then of course that makes a difference. Because if you don't have to declare sales tax, your prices are simply lower. And this means you could either offer cheaper than the competition or at the same prices as the competition. But you will earn more from it. But if you want to be self-employed as your main job, then honestly, hand on heart, a turnover of 25,000 euros isn't that much. Your profit will be even lower. And I
10:15 'm assuming that you don't want to maintain your livelihood at this level for long. You can't really make a good living from it. And that's why my personal opinion is that the small business regulation is particularly exciting if, firstly, you are self-employed on a part-time basis and secondly, you are an end user as customers. In this scenario, the small business regulation is a real simplification. A simplification for bureaucracy, not necessarily a financial simplification. And at the end of this video I would like to address two special features. And one is a tax trap. Many small businesses don't even have this on their radar. Because as a small business owner you have nothing to do with sales tax. I've said that countless times. But there is a scenario in which, as a small business owner, you actually still have to pay sales tax. This is always the case if you
11:02 are a customer of a company that comes from another EU country. For example, you place advertising on Google or Facebook or Instagram, i.e. meta corporations. Google and Meta have their European headquarters in Ireland and essentially run their European business from Ireland. And if, for example, I place advertising on Instagram or YouTube, then I pay money to an Irish company. And this scenario means reverse charge. And in this constellation it actually means that as a customer I have to worry about sales taxation. This means that I actually have to pay sales tax in Germany. It doesn't matter to me at all if I'm subject to VAT in Germany, because I have to pay this VAT on the amounts that I paid to Google, but I also have an input tax deduction at the same time. That means,
11:48 ultimately I calculate plus 190 euros, minus 190 euros and then I pay that. So zero. As a small business owner, you have no input tax deduction. However, you still have to pay the sales tax. This means that if you place advertising on YouTube, you actually have to pay an additional 19 percent sales tax on these 1,000 euros to the German tax office and have no way of recouping these 190 euros. I have already looked at this whole topic step by step in a separate video and told you what you can do. I'll link that to you at the top right. The only thing that is very important at this point is that if you do business in another EU country, please be very careful, especially if you are a customer, because it can actually result in taxes being incurred even though you actually have nothing to do with it have to do with sales tax. And now let's turn the whole case around. You
12:36 are the service provider, i.e. the company, and you have a customer from another EU country. And if you have such Reverse Charge 13b sales tax cases, then you no longer have any worries because your sales always fall under the tax exemption of the small business regulation. This means you don't have to worry about reverse charging and so on . But there are still other scenarios where you make sales abroad. And that wasn't actually that easy in the past. The nice thing is that from 2025 these small business regulations will be very, very similar across the EU. This means that you can also take advantage of the small business regulations in other countries. At least if you had a turnover of less than 100,000 euros in the community area in the previous year . This means that there is not only a German small business regulation, but also an Austrian, a Danish, a French one and so on. And you can
13:24 then actually carry out sales in other countries without having to worry about how you do sales tax in these other countries. In fact, these problems occur quite often, for example with dropshipping and so on. This means that you can now take advantage of small business regulations virtually across the EU . It is important that you register for it. You get a small business identification number from the Federal Central Tax Office. And you actually have to report your sales quarterly . Explaining all of this goes a little beyond the scope of this video. If this is exciting for you, please write me a comment under this video. Then I'll record a video just for international business as a small business owner. But if you have any other questions, please write me a comment under this video with your questions and I'll be happy to help you. And if you're now looking for an
14:11 accounting program to monitor your sales, a business account, a tax advisor, whatever, you'll find all of my recommendations below in the video description. By the way, it's also worth subscribing to this channel. Because if there are any legal changes regarding small business regulations and so on, you will always be the first to find out here. You can find my recommendation again here. And otherwise just watch another video on this channel. There's really, really a lot to discover there . For example this one or this one.
