Company

In everyday language, the terms enterprise, company, firm and business are synonyms according to the Duden dictionary. In legal and economic terminology, however, the terms are differentiated; for example, a business can be a system-independent economic unit for meeting external needs, while a company can have one or more businesses and a company is merely a legal form or a form of organization. A company, on the other hand, is technically the name of a company.

The term company is understood differently in different areas of law. In labour law, a company is understood as an organizational unit with which the entrepreneur pursues his economic or non-material purposes. A company can consist of one or more businesses. In the first case, an enterprise refers to the economic component, while the business stands for the work-related process. In VAT law, an entrepreneur is anyone who independently carries out a commercial or professional activity. The definition of an enterprise for VAT purposes is therefore much broader than in labor law.