Because many of these posts are a work in progress, I’ve created a German Freelance Visa Facebook groupto help answer any individual questions as they arise. Please feel free to ask your questions there or in the comments below, and if you’ve successfully received your visa, please pass your knowledge along by helping to answer questions as well. Thanks and please join here!

Two overlooked forms for the visa application are the Capital Budget (Finanzierungsplan) and the Profit/Loss (Ertragsvorschau) forms (these are referred to as the Financing Plan and Revenue forecast respectively on the appointment website so don’t get confused!). These are used to demonstrate that you have enough money to support yourself before your freelancing gigs in Germany are up and running, and you have a plan to keep yourself afloat when you. Most importantly, these demonstrate you will not be dependent on German social services and instead, contributing via taxes.

These forms are relatively straightforward and were not heavily emphasized in my interview, however some numbers you will have to take your best guess at. It’s not easy to predict how much you will make ahead of time in freelancing, but make your best good faith effort and don’t stress out too much about the numbers.

Capital Budget

The Capital Budget form shows your starting point as a freelancer in Germany. This includes liquid funds (cash), assets like real estate, business-related loans, and any outside capital contributed to your business plan. A lot of these entries make more sense for self-employed persons, so if you’re like me, you’ll likely just end up completing the cash portion. Fill in these numbers to the best of your ability and just know the interviewer will use these to approximate how long you can sustain yourself without any income during your time in Germany. Want the full picture? Check out this PDF for the Complete Capital Budget Form.

Profit and Loss

This form is definitely the more complicated of the two. It is intended to show your business projections over the next few years. If you’ve been freelancing outside of Germany, you should be able to complete most of these numbers pretty easily, just remember to convert to Euros! If you’re just starting out, you’ll need to do some research in your field to determine rates and expenses, but again, just do your best.

The first section of the form simply asks for sales and cost of goods for those sales. Cost of goods/purchased goods really shouldn’t apply if you’re selling a freelancing service (e.g. language tutor, web designer, consultant). If you’re selling physical goods, this definitely will apply but you should probably be applying for the self-employed visa rather than the freelancer visa. Fill in your approximate gross sales (minus goods if applicable) and add them all up appropriately. In my case, I only filled out #1 as I didn’t have any secondary activities to use #2 for.

Note: Everything should be in THOUSANDS of Euros so $50,000 would be written as 50. Also if you’re from the US, commas and periods are flipped in numbers so $5,000.25 would be $5.000,25

The next section is dedicated to expenses. Again, if you’ve been freelancing for a bit, you should be able to reference past numbers, but otherwise, make your best guesstimate. I don’t have an office space so I didn’t include rent, cleaning, heating, or energy, but know you can include these for both true offices/coworking spaces and home offices. Fill in these individual rows (again in thousands of Euros) and add them together for the “Total Expenses” row. From here, take the final row from the last section (Total gross profit/loss (item 1+2)), subtract the total expenses you just calculated and put this number in the “Operating profit/loss” row.

This last section is definitely the worst: Taxes. As an independent freelancer, I’m expecting to only need to pay personal income taxes, so I filled this in under “Other business taxes” at the max rate of 42% (I’m playing everything very conservative here). If you know more about your tax situation or know you will have to pay additional taxes, definitely do your research and complete these sections. Unfortunately, I am not the person you should look to for advice on this front. However, if you find answers out there you think should be included, please let me know in the comments below or in the Facebook Group and I will update accordingly.

From here, subtract each tax line from the “Operating profit/loss” number we just completed, and enter your net profit/loss in the last line of the form. Want the full picture? Check out this PDF for the Complete Profit Loss Form

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