Sending an employee to Germany? Here’s a guide to get you started. By Rob Hyde.

• Editor’s note: This month we’re introducing a new feature that gives you the latest information you need to know if you’re sending an expat to a given country. Country focus includes an overview of the government attitude towards
  Registration (Anmeldung)
• Residence permits 
• Working permits 
• Applying for the work permit 
• Tax in Germany 
• Recent tax rulings

Although Germany has retained many of its own quirks and local laws, it is gradually adopting and implementing the policy that any EU citizen is to be treated as a German citizen. And once the residency permit is obtained, work permits follow soon after without any hassle.

This brings both advantages and disadvantages. Obtaining work permits is relatively fast and easy for those from other member states, but it also encourages a discriminatory policy against expats from outside the EU (see later notes on working restrictions for non-EU citizens). It also means that citizens from other EU countries such will be subjected to German-style bureaucracy, which may seem highly unnecessary and even perverse.

To some degree, citizens from many EU countries are used to having to identify themselves, with many people such as the French carrying and using national identity cards. This is not at all the case in other EU countries such as the United Kingdom.

It is therefore difficult for many British expats in Germany to accept that they are breaking the law if they do not report to the police and inform them where they are living — a legal duty reserved only for paedophiles in the UK.

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