I needed one step only, and certainly no tax advisor. Most costly is the health insurance, but you can skip the Gewerbe Anmeldung and taxes and insurances with doing systems SW.

You only need a GmbH if you invest money, don't do that. You only need a notary for that. I didn't even need a second bank account.

Sure, there are lots of middlemen who are more than happy to take your money to navigate this broken process, and tax advisors are probably #1 on the list :)

That being said, even throwing money at a tax advisor won't reduce the 16 steps to 1. More like 5-10.

You'll still have to to go the notary yourself, you'll still be opening the bank account yourself, you'll still be subject to Handelsregister spam and fake invoices, etc., etc.

Why not step 1? For 90% of software developers sole proprietor is enough (note: I don't live in Germany but in a country with a similar system). GmbH is a pretty heavy solution for larger companies.

German system is more complicated than it should be, but I think this is a bit overblown because of the stereotype.