21–30 of 113 posts
Infinitely easier in the UK: you don't need capital, the forms are simple, it costs virtually nothing and you'll be done in less than a day. https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation/register-your-c...
I advise against.
Is there a reason to not go BVI/Nevis IBC route for a small online startup ? The no accounting/record-keeping requirement should look appealing to many, beside 0% tax :).
Second, if you play by the book (and a lot of people who use these entities don't), you can't control said entity directly from an EU jurisdiction. You need to fly there (or somewhere else with no corporate tax) and do board meetings there.
There are cases where it's worth it, but it almost always has to do with shaving off percentage points of corporate tax from your profits, and not with reducing administrative burden. If anything, if you want to use a company like this (or any foreign company), you need to be careful and understand what you can and cannot do under the laws of your resident country.
The internet does offer some additional opportunities, because it's not location linked and it's often hard to figure out how to tax internet generated revenue. It's easier to do tax arbitrage, but doing it right also requires a great deal of additional paperwork (+ extra overhead expenses).
You should read up on tax law -- the cost of getting it wrong can be high.
There is missing ("Gewerbeamt") and partially wrong information there (the 17.500 VAT thing), so use with caution! My best advice: get a tax-guy. They do all this crap and more and while they come with a price (German tax laws are no laughing matters) it's money well spent and also acts as security because said tax-guy shoulders a lot of accountability (pun intended).
> German tax laws are no laughing matters Which are?
Don't worry, your government representative has some good ideas to improve the startup landscape and internet companies! You'll get a 40% corporate tax deduction for the first 4 years if you crowdfund. There are, of course, specific conditions and regulatory work for the crowdfunding agency which mean no existing one (that anyone here has ever heard of) meets the bar and will essentially require a local operation to…
You can find some more info at https://bkpk.me/estonia-eresidency-digital-nomads
For a lot of big businesses simply looking at a company address where the country has no to bad rep is already a red flag. So you will have to do a lot of convincing work to do if you want to get funding.
Even a UK limited is the running gag in upper management since it needs next to no effort to create one and they are by default a risky to work with. In the past it was a common thing for dubious companies to create limiteds in the UK and this history is what drives the stereotypes of today.
That said I am confident that Germany is not the cheapest option tax wise and there is a lot of paperwork to do to get your company running. On the flip side you will inherently gain more trust with potential customers and investors.
Germany is probably bad option within EU. I would recommend Bulgaria: flat tax rate 10% on corporate income and capital gains. Considerably cheaper office and accounting cost.
At the end of the day, it costs basically the same if you are in UK or in Germany because your cost will be your salary and if you read the advices here you are anyway to small to run some special tax optimization programs.
For Germany because the costs are in my head:
- Notary costs for the contract: 450€
- Registration of the company (chamber of commerce): 150€
- Registration at the city level: 20€
Opening a bank account is free but it will cost you about 100€ to "run" it.
The real added costs are the accounting costs. About 80€/month to take care of the books and the paper work for the salary (inclusive transmission of the salary tax information to the Finanzamt and VAT) + 1500 to 2500€/year for the "end of the year" accounting and taking care of the related taxes.
So, the "company structure" costs are about €2000/year if you go through the services of an accountant (you really must do it in fact).
The real cost will anyway be your salary.
In UK, the taxes on the profit of the company is lower than in Germany, it is here where I would have been pleased to have in Germany at least a small "less than XXX€ no taxes" or a relatively easy way to schedule charges in the future to transfer money from one year to another. If you are a single person, saving for a future project is a bit hard in the current structure. Let say you want to accumulate 100k€ before hiring somebody, you end up with the need to make 150k€ extra on top of your salary to have the 100 on your bank account "free" from tax liability.
There is missing ("Gewerbeamt") and partially wrong information there (the 17.500 VAT thing), so use with caution! My best advice: get a tax-guy. They do all this crap and more and while they come with a price (German tax laws are no laughing matters) it's money well spent and also acts as security because said tax-guy shoulders a lot of accountability (pun intended).
Infinitely easier in the UK: you don't need capital, the forms are simple, it costs virtually nothing and you'll be done in less than a day. https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation/register-your-c...
There is/was quite some founding tourism from EU countries with more complicated laws to the UK. I wonder how the Brexit will affect them.
Now you can start a UG with a 1,- Euro investment (more like 500 Euro min because it still has to cover setup fees). Which I think has made the UK thing superfluous, just complicates things even more.