Comment by thruflo
2 years ago
I’ve founded companies in the UK, US and EU. I’d recommend the UK.
The cost of a limited company is £12. It’s formed in a day. Use https://www.ukpostbox.com if you need an address.
The legal system is well known and entrepreneur friendly. Accountancy and company admin are simple and relaxed. HMRC is supportive. You can pay dividends on a flexible schedule.
There’s a very large ecosystem of financial support, innovation grants, incubators, accelerators, angel networks and VC firms.
Flip to the US for later stage funding. Nice problem to have.
Needless to say, IANAL, this is not financial advice, crayons, etc.
I would have seconded that up to the botched implementation of Brexit, now there are many areas of increased risk because (a) certain things are not yet sorted out (increased uncertainty) and (b) the process is antagonistic and politicized instead of cooperative, so the issues are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
The UK is still a relative good countries for starting up, just not as good as it used to be.
if you're selling services it's been sorted since Jan 2020: there is no deal
(if you're selling beef, cars or washing machines then yes there's potential uncertainty)
also you get into double trouble with VAT-MOSS system
As someone who tried UK, opening a bank account not being a UK resident and without proof of existing UK customers was extremely challenging.
That is interesting! Which bank did you end up with finally and how did you convince them? Couldn’t you use something like Wise in the beginning?
At the end I ended up reincorporating in my country of residence. Which was a pity. But in the UK everything was extremely easy until it wasn't, I got spooked by that and preferred not to take further risks.
I've looked into the UK multiple times and it definitely sounds very attractive. It seems that OnlyFans and Hopin (https://hopin.com/) were both started as UK LTDs. Downsides (as you mention) are probably access to US investors and potentially issues with VAT because of Brexit.
Just out of curiosity - did you experience any issues selling to EU customers because of Brexit?
How comparable is Ireland? It’s still common law but also still part of the EU. Was considering Ireland to incorporate with a Brazilian friend, I’m from Belgium. Belgian is like Germany. Not a good country to incorporate. Would have preferred the UK but Brexit complicates everything.
I haven’t started a limited company in Ireland, but I have looked into it. I was interested for pretty much the same reasons you are - I wanted English language, common law and EU.
From what I could find, using a service company to sort everything out - company registration, bank account, legal address, first year taxes filed etc - the cost was around €1000. The same service in the UK is much cheaper.
I guess this only matters relative to the size of your business. At the time I was only looking for a small holding company, with not much revenue initially.
I wouldnt recommend the UK, I've had a bank account frozen for no apparent reason, even to this day I dont have anything official to say why it was frozen, but you get stuck in a legal loophole where you cant complete a complaint to the banking ombudsman until you have exhausted the complaints process of the bank. Problem is the bank wouldnt speak to me. First I knew was when my card wouldnt work trying to buy a laptop!
Accountants, if you can get one to take you on, they do what they want, I always wanted my accounts done within a few months of year end but they always dragged it out to the last minute. Poor advice at best.
Layers, had a good one once but he retired to France.
The Police are absolutely useless when they want to be but they will fuck you over when they see fit. Dont ever speak out against the British, you'll get done over in more ways that one, and thats from someone who was born in the UK!