Registering UK Limited company in Italy

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

You can, through very convulted means, re register a UK ltd somewhere else. Equally you can register a company from another jurisdiction in the UK.

It's called migrating a company, HSBC are thinking about it if you read the press.

It's horrendously complicated and expensive. Unless you are HSBC you really don't want to think about it.

Finding a UK accountant with a through knowledge of Italian system, or vice versa, is possible, but it is specialist.

You have three practical choices:
- register some type of entity out there - sole trader, italian company. Close uk company of leave it dormant.
- use a brolly of some sort
- use your UK company out there with local registration for taxes, but keeping the company registered in UK (cf the first option of migrating a company registration). Complexity of being in two tax regimes.

[darmstadt]

Pretty sure you can't register a UK Ltd outside the UK but I stand to be corrected.

This is why I've given up on EU working - too many whatifs/maybes/etc where am I tax-resident, where is my Ltd tax-resident, what with all the extra diligence, fees, accountancy, taxation, travel and mostly lower rates seems a bit of a no-go area for me...

I don't know about Italy but its pretty easy to set-up a UK Ltd. in Germany (in German): Gründung einer Limited - Ltd. - IHK Frankfurt am Main

The only difficulty really is:

Every company must have a registered office within the UK which is the official legal address of the company. It must be a physical address (i.e. not a PO Box without a physical location) as Companies House will use this address to send correspondence to.

[dropbaer]

I don't know about Italy but its pretty easy to set-up a UK Ltd. in Germany (in German): Gründung einer Limited - Ltd. - IHK Frankfurt am Main

The only difficulty really is:

Physical address is the least of the problem IMO. There are companies out there who offer physical address and receiving your posts etc. For e.g. google scanmypost

[BlasterBates]

As Darmstadt pointed out UK Ltd's are popular in Germany. It's less expensive to set up a UK Ltd and pay German tax. One of the key reasons is that there is no need to stump up 20 grand of capital as you do with a German GmbH. There is no tax to pay in the UK. German businesses are not setting up UK Ltd's to do business in the UK they do it because it's a good way of doing business in Germany.

I presume the same is true in Italy. However you do it you need the services of an Italian accountant. It's only worth setting up a UK Ltd if it will be cheaper and only an Italian accountant will be able to tell you.