Hello!

I am Oliver and I am an entrepreneur from Germany - my most well-known company is OpenRegulatory, which offers compliance software for medical device manufacturers. I founded the company with my savings and it has been profitable since its inception in 2020.

Since 2025, I have been dealing extensively with the German exit tax, as I plan to move to Thailand to join my girlfriend.

Before, I only roughly knew that this "exit tax" thing existed and thought it could be solved somehow. Far from it - the German exit tax is so restrictive that many entrepreneurs like me practically cannot leave the country.

This is because the tax office demands such a high tax from GmbH owners when moving out of Germany that many simply cannot afford it.

If, for example, you own a GmbH with an annual profit of €100k (which, relatively speaking, is not much), the tax office usually values this GmbH at €1.35 million (!), which leads to a tax burden upon departure of approx. €460k.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I claim that an entrepreneur of a GmbH with €100k annual profit doesn't just have €460k lying around in their savings account..

However, since I still wanted to move away, I took this as an opportunity to delve deeply into the subject and speak with many tax advisors (at sometimes absurdly high hourly rates).

(Meanwhile, my own tax advisor refers to me more as a "colleague" and less as a "client" - whether that is good or bad is a good question)

In the meantime, I have met many other founders in Germany who are thinking about moving away and are currently being prevented from doing so by the exit tax. Many were initially just as uninformed as I was.

This prompted me to share my own notes on the exit tax with others - initially in a small group, now on this website. Furthermore, I have also shared my notes on conversations with tax advisors and roughly rated the tax advisors according to competence.

So I hope that my notes on the exit tax help you and that you save many thousands of euros in tax advisor fees.

Finally, the obvious disclaimer: I am not a tax advisor - this website is essentially just sharing my own notes as part of my exit tax research. Logically, I am not allowed to offer individual tax advice; for that, you still have to contact a tax advisor in the end.

Nevertheless, I look forward to an exchange of experiences with entrepreneurs - so feel free to write me an email at any time if you have any questions or are also thinking about moving away from Germany!