Hello,

I have a question regarding the Einbürgerung and becoming a private / self-employed:  I applied for the German citizenship few months ago, and I am still working for my employer for which I worked for the last several years (it is a permanent full-time position).

My question is: if I decide to quit and start my own business (I have Niederlassungserlaubnis so no restrictions on what i could do, so I could be self-employed) would it affect my citizenship application (which might take still some months to complete)?

If I switch to self-employment, I might not have profits for the first several months most likely and I would self-fund this time from my savings, but I do not know if this affects the citizenship application process negatively.

If somebody had an experience with this, it would be great to hear if this worked

Thanks!

I would advise you not to. You are obliged to notify your Bürgeramt for every change in your life that will happen during your application and I made my application for citizenship some 5 years ago, being self-employed and let me tell you this: the documents they will ask you to present are way more complicated and time consuming to produce than if you're employed. And you will need to get yourself a Steuerberater because only his writing on your revenue and what you can bring to the table is relevant and not what you would present yourself and to produce those documents, you will have to pay your Steuerberater... Better safe than sorry, wait til you get it and then do what you want.
But my words are not gospel words, so it will be your decision on this one.

D.