Best EU country for consulting activity

[offtopic]

Hi. Not looking for spoon-feeding here, but after looking at each EU country tax regime, my vision is blurry and I'm looking for external expert insights who are "in the business".

EU citizen.
Consulting activity.
Targeting 80kEUR/y revenues for first year.
Main customers : France / Poland / Germany / Belgium

1/ Should I set up a company or be sole trader ?

2/ In both case, what are my best EU country choice taking in consideration:
* Best equilibrium in between incorporation and maintenance fees
* My customers are going to ask me for (corp or personal) certificate of residence and VAT number so I will need both of them ASAP to get paid. Cant wait 3 months...
* Euros currency countries if possible
* I dont mind living in the sun (South Europe), but would rather avoid living under the rain (North Europe)
* I want to have cheap airlines connection to my main customer countries

Additional note:
* I'm not a fan about living in UK and Ireland, but would be open to use those 2 as far as they can provide certificate of residence even if I'm not living there.
* Country with a good english practice (I dont want to spend tax-optimized income on translators...)
* I wouldn't mind living in South Europe...
* I'm open to a holding&subsidiary solid building (both in or not in same country), as far as set up costs are reasonable and bulletproof to current moving international tax landscape.

Thanks!

 

[offtopic]

Also, I have a old HK company which I had from past years living in Asia and which I'm not able to use now that I'm back in EU as my EU customers are asking me for certificate of residence (that obvisouly I can't give...).
Can I use this HK as holding of a EU subsidiary, if it makes any sense?

 

[CoinMaster]

Can I use this HK as holding of a EU subsidiary, if it makes any sense?

sure you can, if you have all the documents for this company and it is still in good standing you can use it! Have you renewed it and also done all the accounting stuff a HK corp requires?

 

[offtopic]

sure you can, if you have all the documents for this company and it is still in good standing you can use it! Have you renewed it and also done all the accounting stuff a HK corp requires?

Yes, of course. It is up-to-date.

In the case I can use HK as holding, what EU country will be the best to set up subsidiary without too much (administrative) problems ? (It really sounds Western Europe tax authorities of my B2B customers dont like them dealing with Cyprus and Malta...)

 

[lostman]

I would go for a Cyprus company for trading in this case. Even better is a Seychelles Holding company that owns 100% of the shares in an Cyprus company!

 

[moneymaster]

I would go with a Cyprus company if you operate in Europe, it's even more trustworthy and there are huge differences and + benefits compared to Bulgaria and Malta and even the Baltic countries.