SPEC — ELSTER für Ausländer: The Self-Filing Founder Workshop
One-page spec. Status: launch-scoped, not launched. 2026-07-14.
Customer
English-speaking founders of German UGs/GmbHs (mostly solo or 2-person, pre-revenue or small revenue) who:
- Are legally required to file KSt, GewSt, E-Bilanz, and Offenlegung every year
- Cannot find a Steuerberater (booked out 6+ months) or won’t pay €3–5k/yr for a company with €0 tax due
- Are terrified of ELSTER because it’s German-only bureaucratic UI with zero English documentation
- Are already accumulating Verspätungszuschläge because of the above
Where they live online: Toytown Germany, r/germany, r/Finanzen, r/germantaxes, Berlin/Munich founder Slacks and WhatsApp groups, “Expats in Berlin” Facebook groups, LinkedIn.
Offer
| Product | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Live workshop | €149 | 3-hour Zoom, max ~15 seats. Screen-share walkthrough of a complete dummy UG filing: eBilanz+ → E-Bilanz → KSt 1 + Anlage GK add-backs → GewSt 1 A → Verlustvortrag → Offenlegung/Hinterlegung at publikations-plattform.de (the step everyone misses). Live Q&A. Recording included. |
| Template pack | €49 standalone / included with workshop | Filing-season checklist (the full annual sequence), add-back cheat sheet (Verspätungszuschläge → Z88, Bewirtung 30% → Z90, don’t-double-count-the-prefill warning), Verlustvortrag tracker spreadsheet, Offenlegung “did-you-actually-submit-it” checklist. |
| Filing Season Discord (later, v2) | €99/yr | Community + Joshua’s office hours during March–July filing season. Not in month-one scope. |
Positioning & legal framing
Education and experience-sharing, not Steuerberatung. Steuerberatung (individual tax advice for compensation) is regulated under §§ 2–5 StBerG. A workshop where an entrepreneur demonstrates how he files his own companies’ returns, on a dummy entity, with an explicit “this is not tax advice, consult a Steuerberater for your specific situation” disclaimer, is general education — the same category as a tax book, a YouTube ELSTER tutorial, or a Finanztip article. Rules that keep it clean:
- Always demo on a dummy entity, never a participant’s real return
- Never answer “what should I enter for my company” with a specific number — reframe to “here’s how the form works and here’s what I do for mine”
- Disclaimer on the landing page, at checkout, and verbally at workshop start
- No ongoing individual engagements; the Discord (v2) stays Q&A-about-the-process, not per-company advice
Why Joshua (the unfakeable hook)
American expat who actually self-files KSt/GewSt/E-Bilanz/USt/Offenlegung for two UGs (CHUG + MIA) plus personal ESt with KG flow-throughs — zero Steuerberater, Finanzamt accepts everything. He has already built the trackers (Verlustvortrag tables, § 15a carryforward tracker, add-back cheat sheet) as working artifacts of his own filings. Almost no native English speaker self-files German corporate returns; none of them also run an agent fleet that can turn those notes into a polished template pack in a weekend. The story — “I fired my Steuerberater and the Finanzamt accepted everything” — is a hook nobody else can copy.
Delivery mechanics
- Sales: landing page (this package) + Stripe Payment Links (two links: €149, €49). No cart, no platform.
- Fulfillment: Zoom (existing account or €13 one-month Pro for >40-min sessions), template pack delivered as a Google Drive/Notion link auto-sent via Stripe’s post-payment redirect + confirmation email.
- Workshop asset: slide deck + a sanitized dummy filing walkthrough (screenshots/screen-recording of ELSTER forms filled for “Beispiel UG (haftungsbeschränkt)” with fictional numbers derived from the real pattern).
- Recording: shared with attendees; later becomes a €79 self-serve product.
Month-one plan — week by week to $1,000
Week 1 — Build (agents do ~all of it) - Template pack v1 from existing filing notes: checklist, add-back cheat sheet, Verlustvortrag tracker (sheet), Offenlegung checklist. Agents draft; Joshua reviews 1–2 hrs. - Slide deck outline + dummy-entity numbers. Landing page live (this scaffold → .deploy/). - Joshua: create Stripe Payment Links, pick a workshop date ~3 weeks out, confirm Zoom.
Week 2 — Tell the story - Post the origin story (“I fired my Steuerberater. The Finanzamt accepted everything. Here’s what filing a UG’s taxes yourself actually involves.”) to Toytown Germany, r/germany (r/germantaxes is more permissive for this), r/Finanzen (German-language version), 2–3 Berlin founder Slacks, LinkedIn. Value-first: the post itself teaches the annual sequence; workshop link in comments/profile per each community’s self-promo rules. - Agents draft every post variant per community norms; Joshua posts (his accounts, his voice). - Sell template pack immediately (€49) — no need to wait for the workshop.
Week 3 — Run it - Workshop dry run with agents generating the dummy filing screens. Reminder email to buyers. - Deliver the 3-hour workshop. Record it.
Week 4 — Second wave - Post the “what people asked at the workshop” follow-up (more proof, more reach). Announce workshop #2 or sell the recording at €79.
Math to $1,000: 7 seats × €149 = €1,043 ≈ $1,130. Or 5 seats + 6 template packs = €1,039. Realistic pool: tens of thousands of UG/GmbH owners in Germany with English as their working language; one good Toytown/Reddit thread historically reaches thousands of exactly these people.
Budget: ~€30 (Zoom Pro one month €13, Stripe fees ~1.5%+€0.25/txn, domain already owned). Content cost €0 — it already exists as Joshua’s own filing notes.