Well, if you employ self-employed people in your company and after a while you or they get audited and it turns out that you are their only customer, the will be classified as employees of your company. As a result you may have to pay social insurance, pension fees, etc. for the all time they have been working for you, which can be a hefty sum and may break your neck as a small company. Oh another problem that I had not mentioned is that it's extremely difficult to fire people once you have reached a certain size (I think 10 employees or something).
One of the most important rules in Germany for startups: Employ as few people as possible. And I am not joking.
As someone who was CEO at a German company with more than 10 people: this absolutely overblown. Some people just want to larp US-style at-will firing power fantasies.
It's actually surprisingly easy to still fire people, you just have to have valid reasons: employee didn't come to work, employee works badly (Schlechtleistung), employee yells at customer, lack of work to do at the company etc. You just have to create the paper trail and follow the clearly defined process for firing (i.e. it has to happen at least two times, and you had a stern talk with the employee about it (Abmahnung).
You can also still fire employees without given cause in the first (up to) 6 months of employment.
What you definitely can't do is discriminate against employees, e.g. fire pregnant women because they are pregrant, fire migrants because they are migrants and so on. You have to have an actual, factual cause.
Also let's be clear with the concept of Scheinselbstständigkeit: This is simply a hedge against companies engaging in tax fraud by pushing people to be self employed when they really aren't. Scheinselbstständigkeit only triggers if a person gets over 80% of their revenue from a single customer, over a longer time, and has other things that hint at employee status, e.g. an own desk and company mail account, has to ask for holiday and so on. Simply having a large contract for e.g. 4 months with a single customer won't trigger Scheinselbstständigkeit.
> What you definitely can't do is discriminate against employees, e.g. fire pregnant women because they are pregrant, fire migrants because they are migrants and so on. You have to have an actual, factual cause.
In reality you just cant say that is the reason. If you fire the pregnant woman within the first 6 months you conveniently don't have to say anything.
You also get the inversion, we have to fire the migrants within 6 months.
I think the argument was that if someone worked for you for a few years as a freelancer and they suddenly become your employee you might be stuck with each other. Firing them will be much more suspicious. What to do with the other clients now that you are employed?
What is also kinda lame about the uncertainty is that freelancing may require much more dedication and working strange hours that might not even be legal as an employee.
I don't know what the solution is. Perhaps we need to merge the different formulas and adjust the salary.
One of the most important rules in Germany for startups: Employ as few people as possible. And I am not joking.