73 percent of founders demand faster and simpler regulations. The DIHK explicitly supports the goal of significantly accelerating company formations in Germany and fully digitizing the process. The political objective of enabling startups to be established in 24 hours aligns with the expectations of many entrepreneurs and sends an important signal about Germany's attractiveness as a business location. However, achieving this goal requires a true paradigm shift:

• The state should fully manage legal obligation identification. Founders should be able to describe their venture without having to examine complex regulations themselves.
• The startup process should be organized as a fully digital end-to-end service, featuring seamlessly integrated procedures instead of fragmented sub-processes.
• The once-only principle should be consistently applied: Data should only be entered once and automatically exchanged across authorities.
• A state-operated backend should be combined with multiple user-friendly and highly visible front-end access points. Especially at the beginning, when clarifying ventures, it's crucial that qualified institutions assist founders and shape the access points to the administrative startup system, ensuring the process proceeds without delays.
• The German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (IHKs) play a pivotal role here: They are already the primary contact for founders across the region and possess extensive experience in venture clarification. Systematically and visibly involving them would enhance procedure quality and reduce queries.
• It is also crucial that startups are not just formally but also economically operational. This includes promptly issuing tax numbers and providing immediate access to all relevant follow-up processes.

The reform package timeline of four weeks to issue a tax number, as stated by the governing coalition, is far too long and falls short compared to federal and state initiatives aimed at enabling startup formations within 24 hours.

61% call for improvements in this area. The planned tax reform should provide relief not only for sole proprietorships via income tax but also for start-ups, which are frequently established as limited liability companies. This primarily includes bringing forward and bundling the already decided corporate tax reform into 2027 and 2028. The corporate tax rate should be reduced in two stages from 15% to 10%, instead of the currently proposed five 1% reductions beginning in 2028. While the steps towards income tax reduction in the coalition’s reform package would benefit low and medium incomes, they penalise businesses when they begin to grow—especially through the planned increases in the 'wealth tax.' Overall, the proposed tax increases primarily affect medium-sized enterprises.

Additionally, a change of course is needed in social charges: non-insurance benefits should be financed entirely from the federal budget to stabilise payroll taxes and avoid placing further burdens on employment.

The policy should also address these areas decisively:

• Raising thresholds: The small business threshold, below which companies are not required to declare VAT, should be significantly raised beyond the current €25,000—ideally up to the maximum €85,000 permitted under European law.
• Simplifying tax procedures: Particularly, the income-expenditure accounting for small businesses should be further simplified.
• Improving predictability: Tax burdens should be predictable for founders, for example, through simpler and more transparent advance payment regulations.
• Strengthening loss offsetting: Improved tax loss offsetting would provide targeted relief for start-ups with high initial costs and reduce liquidity shortages.

The objective must be a tax law that is founder-friendly, understandable, and predictable—especially in the first few years.

32% of founders, startups, and young businesses are calling for easier access to funding programmes.

Consequently, policymakers should:

• Systematically simplify and make funding programmes more flexible,
• Create digital platforms for applications, evaluations, and approvals,
• Bundle funding offers transparently and tailor them to the intended audiences,
• Review rigid criteria and align them more closely with startups' needs.

Digital processes reduce bureaucracy, increase transparency, and enable faster decisions. This allows founders to focus more on their entrepreneurial activities.

To promote self-employment, better legal frameworks are needed, particularly for the many solo self-employed individuals in Germany. There is no statutory definition of self-employment, and consequently, it is often difficult to distinguish between self-employment and dependent employment. Furthermore, there is no uniform evaluation catalog for the status determination procedure by the German Pension Insurance Fund, which creates legal certainty for solo self-employed individuals and their client companies.

This increases the risk of 'bogus self-employment'. This occurs when an activity appears to be self-employed, but, upon determination by the German Pension Insurance Fund, is classified as dependent employment. 'Bogus self-employment' can affect all sectors and businesses, regardless of size, that work with (solo) self-employed individuals – for example, the creative and event industries, as well as the education sector, particularly adult education.

Should 'bogus self-employment' occur, both the commissioning companies and the solo self-employed individuals face significant financial consequences. Beyond substantial social security contributions for up to four years in cases of non-intentional actions, additional default surcharges and back payments of wage tax may become due. Criminal consequences should also not be overlooked. It is understandable that the issue of 'bogus self-employment' causes significant uncertainty. Therefore, it is necessary to reform the legal regulations, which are associated with significant legal uncertainty.

The growing significance of women's entrepreneurship requires targeted adjustments to the framework conditions.

Policy-makers should:

• Enhance and promote awareness of secure solutions for self-employed women who wish to become mothers,
• Expand childcare options further and ensure coverage during non-standard hours and holidays,
• Make parental allowance more flexible, especially for those with fluctuating incomes,
• Allow for higher supplementary earnings,
• Reduce bureaucratic hurdles,
• Encourage solutions to cover business interruptions.

Flexible models are especially crucial to better align entrepreneurship and family life, thereby attracting more women to entrepreneurial roles.

Politics should actively promote social recognition of entrepreneurship. This includes making self-employment visible as an equal and attractive form of earning a living. Economic contexts should be conveyed at an early stage – for example, in schools – to foster understanding of entrepreneurial activities. Such a social climate strengthens the willingness to start new businesses and contributes to greater dynamism in Germany as a business location in the long term.

The energy question is also viewed very clearly: 21 percent of founders see high energy costs as a central obstacle. Energy prices affect not only liquidity in the short term but also long-term growth prospects, location decisions, and the willingness to expand or scale business models.

15 percent of respondents demand better connectivity to fibre-optic and mobile networks as well as more efficient digital administration.

Finally, 6 percent of respondents cite access to well-qualified specialists as a key issue.

The Bundeswehr should evolve from being merely a procurer to becoming an innovation partner, further accelerating its planning and procurement processes. Anchor contracts would provide planning certainty and thus incentives to establish production lines. Startups rarely fail due to a lack of ideas for prototypes but rather due to challenges in further developing prototypes in collaboration with the Bundeswehr as the end-user, financing these updates, and pre-financing production lines for scaling. Therefore, public funding programs should support the process towards market maturity.