We live in the time of huge technical opportunities opening to everyone new potential of additional ideas, including business ideas, additional earning opportunities and revenue sources which can be realized via internet by investing few hours per week.
However, with this topic many are all at sea and ask themselves whether they would be allowed to moonlight at all when holding a full-time employment contract.
Well, good news first: in Germany it is not generally prohibited to have a side job as a freelancer or an entrepreneur if you are engaged in a full-time job. Actually, you can work for a company and build up your own business in parallel.
What you would need to pay attention to is the fact that your side job should not enter into competition with your employer.
As an example:
If you work for a company producing and selling medical equipment and you decide to offer technical support for the same kind of equipment in your side job, this might create a conflict of interest and alert your employer. In the worst case, this could even lead to a termination of your employment contract.
If, however, you work for a real estate agency and engage yourself in your free time in offering language courses, both activities are very much different.
Another point to keep in mind: you are still a full-time employee and should not try to do your side job sitting at the computer of your main employer during your working hours. This could result in a conflict of interest and – as in the example above – in the termination of your employment contract in the worst case.
It is always advisable to carefully read your employment contract to avoid any pitfalls in this regard.
The possibility of a side job or freelancing applies, by the way, also to students.
Here we would leave the area of the employment law and switch to another level of complexity, namely if you are a foreigner holding a work permit for Germany or a temporary residence permit for study purposes and being of a nationality from outside of the European Union.
In this case, you should look not only at the formulations of employment law. The immigration law could eventually put additional restrictions on your creativity.
In many cases, foreign specialists holding a residency permit and a work permit in Germany are restricted in their earning activities. You can see it in the comments of your work permit where you can find something like “only employment work is permitted, independent work is not allowed” (as an example). Sometimes, even the change of the employment to another company might not be allowed.
Does it mean that you may not develop your business creativity and test it in a real environment?
Well, you might still be able to do so. But it would require some additional steps from your side, namely getting permission from the immigration authority for a side job as a self-employed person. And this is – again – equally applicable to employed staff and foreign students.
During your appointment for permission application, you need to pay attention not to request just permission for a freelance or entrepreneur’s work. In this case, the chances are about 99% that it will be declined because the officer will assume that you want to change the main purpose of your stay in Germany.
You will need to stress that the main purpose of your stay will remain unchanged, but you would like to be able to do just few hours of independent work per week or month and it would definitely not impact your main employment or studies.
The officer needs to be convinced that your small side job will have no impact on the main purpose of your stay (for example, for students it is the regular time to complete your studies). If the regular time for your studies is 4-5 years and you get so deeply involved into your entrepreneurship that you have no time to visit the lectures and courses and after 7 years you are far from being ready yet, this might cause some issues with the visa extension.
The permission for such kind of a side job can limited in time (for example, X hours per year max.) and you should pay attention not to spend more time on your self-employed job than permitted.
An important reference to get this kind of permission is hidden in the Section 21 (self-employment) point 6 of the German Residence Act: A foreigner who will be or has been granted a temporary residence permit for another purpose may be permitted to pursue self-employment while retaining the aforesaid purpose of residence, if the permits required pursuant to other provisions have been issued or the authorities have indicated that such permits will be issued.
German Residence Act in English can be found here: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_aufenthg/englisch_aufenthg.html
Along with the proofs of planned self-employed activities (like business contracts) you might need to fill in a questionnaire. An example can be found here: https://frankfurt.de/auslaenderangelegenheiten/-/media/frankfurtde/microsites/microsite-auslaenderangelegenheiten/pdf/formulare/sonstige-formulare/fragebogen-selbststaendige.pdf
The immigration office can also ask you to sign the declaration that you were informed about the formalities and rules and that the main purpose of your visa remains unchanged. An example of such declaration:
Keep in mind that depending on the region and the city the questionnaire can be different. Get in touh with your local immigration authority to get more information on required documents.
As you can see, even holding a temporary residence permit with a dedicated purpose of the stay, you still can get permission for self-employment which would allow you to test your business ideas officially and without any risk of getting your residence permit revoked because of illegal activities.
