Freelancing ExPats living in Germany
Definition: Freelancers are basically self-employed persons according to German law if they are simply offering their services to one or more companies, regardless of income. A "Freiberufler" status according to German law is limited to certain professions like lawyer, architects, notary and so. Therefore, most likely, you are considered to be self-employed in Germany even if you are "freelancing" according to your own understanding.
ATTENTION: if you are taking on contracts from only one company, you might be in danger to be considered as "Scheinselbstständig" - i.e. pretenting only to be freelancing/self-employed, which can lead to dire consequences to you with demands for public pension and welfare contribtuions from you and/or the contracing company later. When in doubt, contact a tax accountant or other specialized advisor to make sure of your status. One easy way to make sure you are really freelancing/self-employed according to German law is to have at least one employee (spouse, for instance) which you can achieve with a 401-EUR employment contract already!
As a freelancer or self-employed person, you can basically choose from all available forms of health insurance: PUBLIC HEALTH INSURANCE (if you have been pre-insured in a EU memberstate public health insurance only), PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE, both from German and/or international provider. Which option is best for you depends on those factors enumerated above under Basic Information.
The public insuranc option, however, is only open to you as a voluntary membership if you can show proof of prior insurance in another European Union memberstate's public health insurance for the last 12 month or at least 2 years out of the last 5 years. If this is the case, check here for more information about the public health insurance system in Germany and the pros and cons comparison between public and private health insurance here. And the Option/Choice table can also help you to see, if you should lead towards public health insurance anyway or rather consider private insurance solutions.
The new health insurance law effective sind April 2007 will force everyone in Germany , citizens and residents alike, to have a health insurance in Germany after January 2009. One of the major questions we have encountered about this regulation was whether that would make the use of international private health insurances as offered by for instance BUPA, MediCare, Expat HealthCare, ALC and so on impossible after 2009. After a lot of research on this topic we can finally give the following answer to this issue:
According to the information from the "REDAKTIONSBÜRO GESUNDHEIT", a service provided by the Federal Ministry for Health, what happens is this: There will be no “Bußgeld" (fine) if you do not follow this new rule with a German health insurance as long as you or your insurance can pay the bills for treatment/hospital. However, should you fall ill and require treatment and you are not covered by an insurance (i.e. you cannot pay your bills to the hospital/doctor), you will receive only very basic treatment and you will have to pay either the public health insurance or private health insurance dues backwards for all the time you should have been paying in such an insurance (page 8, point 17, Fragen und Antworten: Versicherungsschutz, Redaktionsbüro Gesundheit, V02_02042007). We can derive from this somewhat cryptic phrasing that as long as you have an international health insurance on which you can truly rely on, you need not fear problems with the German authorities. There are however problems with regards to some of the international health insurances offered on the market to be considered when dealing with German authorities:
While the above description is certainly true for all those Expats who have their residence in Germany without the need for a visa and/or residence permit, it is hard to predict if the German immigration offices (Ausländerbehörden) will not start to require German health insurances after Jan. 2009 in the processing of visa applications or renewal of residence permits. What you will certainly need as a part of your international health insurance if you want to stand a chance of continuing use of it is a long-term care/nursing insurance (German: Pflegepflichtversicherung) Our prediction is that for all Expats with visa and residence permit issues, their current international health insurance option will be void if they cannot show proof that the insurance also covers long-term care/nursing. It will be up to your current insurance providers to see whether they want to face the problems setting up such a kind of insurance addendum or if they rather let those clients in Germany go to another insurance company. There is at least one international health insurance we can offer to you which can also offer this form of insurance as well. Whether freelancing Expats with EU citizenship can get around the long-term care insurance will be seen in the future; here we can offer no prediction at all at this point of time.
There remains the question, if you have all three options available, what kind of insurance should you take? A large number of individual factors play a role here, therefore you need the best independent advice you can get yourself because the consequences of making the wrong choice can be dire and very costly. This is where and why our advisory services become so very valuable to you. Therefore please contact us so that we can work out different quotes for you as a base for discussion and selecting together with you the best possible insurance solution. You can either use the contact form, email us at info@crcie.com or call us directly at 0700-226525688. The first set of information and quotes is generally free of charge to you.
