In the UK it used to be one form and a fee of £25 or something like that. I think, nowadays, that's probably just done online as well.
In the UK it used to be one form and a fee of £25 or something like that. I think, nowadays, that's probably just done online as well.
But I understand the admin has gone up significantly. Though I presume AI is pretty good at generating the boiler plate bureaucratic work (privacy policy, anti slavery statements, etc).
You don't need that stuff for setting up a company, I've only come across those if we are going through due diligence with a (B2B) client.
That won't get you a VAT ID, which is the key thing he says he needs to be able to bill people outside of Germany. It is significantly cheaper than 9k EUR and faster than 6 months to get in the UK, however.
It is free to become VAT registered and only takes a few days for the VAT number to be assigned and posted to you.
Do you really need a VAT ID though? There is the “reverse charge” mechanism, which IIRC you can use until you sell a lot in any given country. (IANAL)
It is somewhat annoying dealing with accounting and reporting for reverse VAT as a customer.
Not a dealbreaker in itself, but the sort of little thing you don't want to build a stack of. Shady PO-box address, Yahoo contact email, expired ssl certificates etc.
Both parties having a VAT ID is actually a requirement to be able to use reverse charge: https://vatdb.com/reverse-charge/
Okay, it’s way more complicated than I imagined then!
But if you’re not liable for VAT in a given EU country yet, I suppose you can then just skip it? There are some countries with low thresholds (like 15k € in Cyprus or 0 € in Belgium) but if you’re keep clear of those, do not cross thresholds anywhere, and are doing B2B only, you’re in the clear, right?
Yep, it is straight-forward.
The hard part, I heard, was closing a UK company!
For a small company with 0 assets and one owner which has ceased trading, I believe you can just abandon it, stop filing and wait for it to be wound up - but check this!
It's honestly not hard either. Certainly doesn't require any face-to-face interaction or anything.