GmbH Running Costs in Germany 2026: Annual Fees and Accounting

For a small GmbH with €600,000 revenue, €30,000 profit and 5 employees, the costs on this page come to about €3,230–€15,940 a year, or about €9,580 at the midpoint of each fee range. Almost all of it is the tax adviser. Official fees add only about €300.

That is not the full cost of running a company. Rent or a registered address, legal advice, insurance, banking and the managing director's time come on top, and no official source sets them.

German tax advisers charge under the Steuerberatervergütungsverordnung (StBVV). For most recurring work it sets a range, as a fraction of a full fee looked up in a table by the value of the work: turnover for bookkeeping, the mean of balance sheet total and revenue for the annual accounts, income or turnover for tax returns. Payroll is a flat range per employee and month.

The adviser picks a fee within each range by the scope and difficulty of the work (§ 11). A higher or lower fee can be agreed in writing (§ 4 and § 4a), so treat the scale as a benchmark for quotes rather than a fixed price.

A GmbH with €600,000 revenue, a €150,000 balance sheet, €30,000 taxable profit and 5 employees. On those figures it is a micro company under HGB § 267a, so it needs no audit, no management report and usually no notes. The table applies the StBVV ranges to those figures. Fees are before VAT.

A GmbH with a site in Germany belongs to its local Industrie- und Handelskammer (IHK) (IHKG § 2) and pays a base fee plus a levy on its trading profit. Each of the chambers sets its own rates every year, so the cost depends on where the company is registered. Unlike sole traders and partnerships, a GmbH gets no allowance against the levy.

A GmbH must file its annual accounts with the company register (Unternehmensregister) within twelve months of the year end (HGB § 325(1a)). The filing fee depends on the company's size class, and there is a small annual fee for keeping the register. Separately, every GmbH pays an annual fee for the transparency register of beneficial owners.

A company's size class decides what it must prepare, file and have audited. It is small if it stays within two of three limits: a €7.5 million balance sheet, €15 million revenue and 50 employees on average. It is a micro company within two of €450,000, €900,000 and 10 employees (HGB §§ 267 and 267a).

Small and micro companies need no statutory audit (HGB § 316) and no management report. Micro companies can also skip the notes to the accounts if certain details are given under the balance sheet (HGB § 264).

These costs are real but vary too much to put a reliable figure on. Get quotes for each before comparing a GmbH with an Employer of Record:

• Managing director: a GmbH must have at least one (GmbHG § 6). Whether that person is paid, and how much, is up to you.
• Registered address or office: rent, a serviced office or a business address service.
• Legal advice: shareholder resolutions, employment contracts and changes to the articles.
• Insurance and banking: business liability cover, D&O insurance and a German business bank account.
• Setting the company up and winding it down: notary and commercial register fees are one-off costs not covered here, and the share capital of at least €25,000 must be paid in (GmbHG § 5).

An EOR at a common published starting price of US$599 costs about €6,300 per employee a year. On the sourced costs above alone, a GmbH starts to pay off from about two employees, and later once you add the costs with no official figure. In Germany the 18-month limit on employee leasing often decides the question first: see AÜG and EOR in Germany and the EOR vs local entity guide.