Comment by hobofan
What GP outlined was opening up a limited liability company in Germany, which comes with more liability protections than alternative company types, but also more responsibilities, which if you offload them to e.g. an accountant results in a non-negligable baseline cost.
If you were to open a sole proprietorship ("Einzelunternehmen"), or even just a "Gewerbe" for side-hustles, you can also get things up in a quite lean way and with low overhead costs.
> it erase totally the "I cant do this one shot consulting gig a friend ask me to do"
At leas in Germany, I think the bigger (perceived) hurdle is that most employment contracts state that side-gigs need to be announced to the employer, and just going through those motions is too much of a hurdle.
In Germany, there is as well the Freiberufler status for one-off side gigs. I don't know all the details, but my wife used that for a one-off job.