Working from Germany as a United Kingdom resident

At a glance

Rule coverage

What the rules say about Germany

The rules below are the ones most likely to shape a stay in Germany, in plain words and with the source behind each one. Your own report tells you which of them apply to you.

1. Significant issueMoving your company

   Moving yourself can accidentally move your company's tax residence too

   Section 10 AO fixes a company's place of management wherever its centre of top level management sits. A founder or director who relocates to Germany and keeps running a foreign holding or operating company from a German home office risks making that company German tax resident on its full worldwide profits, not just PE taxable on a slice. This is the number one exposure for a founder moving to Germany with an existing company.

2. Significant issueRight to work

   A visa-free stay or Schengen visa gives no right to work in Germany, even remotely

   Germany takes the strictest position in Western Europe here. A tourist entry or Schengen visa does not authorise any gainful activity under section 2(2) AufenthG, including remote work for a foreign employer with entirely foreign clients and no German source income. Working from a German address on a tourist stamp is formally an offence under section 95 AufenthG, not a grey area.

3. Significant issuePermanent establishment risk

   Running the company from Germany can make the whole company German resident

   Section 10 AO looks at where the centre of top level management sits. A director who relocates to Germany and runs the company from a German home office can make the whole foreign company German tax resident on its worldwide profits, not merely liable through a slice attributed to a permanent establishment. This is triggered by the person, not by any German customer, asset or activity.

4. Significant issueTax residency

   A stay over six months makes you resident from day one, even across a year end

   Section 9 AO treats a continuous stay of more than six months as a habitual abode from the very outset, so the whole period becomes taxable, not just the days after the threshold. The six months do not need to sit inside one calendar year, a stay that straddles 31 December still counts, which defeats the usual trick of splitting a stay across the new year.

5. Significant issueResidency routes

   There is no inbound tax break, worldwide income is taxed from day one

   Germany has no non-dom regime, no impatriate regime, no inbound flat tax, no remittance basis and no time limited tax holiday of any kind, making it the largest European economy without one. Compare the Netherlands 30 percent ruling, Portugal's IFICI, Spain's Beckham regime or Italy's flat tax regimes, Germany offers none of it. The only inbound reliefs are ordinary deductions, a second household deduction and a relocation cost allowance, not a regime.

6. Significant issueCrypto tax and legal status

   Trading like a business loses the one year exemption entirely

   There is no bright line test, but employing staff, renting office space, using significant borrowed capital, trading for third parties or running at business like scale can tip you into gewerblich, commercial, classification. Industrial scale mining, active validator staking, volume margin trading and NFT production for sale are the activities most likely to cross the line. Losing private investor status costs the one year exemption completely, plus a Gewerbeanmeldung, trade tax and full business accounting.

What tends to surprise people here

• A visa-free or Schengen visitor stay gives no right to work in Germany, even remotely
• Keeping an available dwelling can trigger tax residency with no day count at all
• No inbound tax break exists, worldwide income is taxed from day one of residency

Tax treaty between United Kingdom and Germany