Can I use a personal bank account to get paid for my corporation?

[DaveFischer]

Sometimes it can be very hard to open a corporate bank account and I can easily open a personal N26 or Transferwise bank account to get paid in. I live in Southeast Asia, but I'm still officially registered as a tax citizen in Europe, which will change soon.

I have an income of $18k monthly. This is paid by 2 clients, each paying a gross compensation of $9k monthly. So only 2 incoming transactions per month.

If I'll just use a personal bank account, possibly forwarding the income to an offshore bank account that's owned by a Belize corporation. Then I can use the Belize corporation to pay me tax-efficienty and customers would not end up seeing the fact that I am operating through a Belize corporation.

 

[Sols]

No, don't do it. It can cause a lot of problem.

 

[Camille Württemberg]

1. Why not use a top tier Hong Kong or Singapore bank account ?
2. Why not setup a Revolut company account ?

 

[khinkali]

I would be very interested to hear opinions on the main question raised here. There is conflicting advice about using a personal account for a business.

If you invoice a client from your company and the client pays to your personal bank account, can you book the income as the company's income and not your own? When living in UK I was always told that I could receive money to a personal account and have it treated as the company's money, if I am a director. As long as it all goes through the books the right way (e.g. pay the corporation tax and the dividend tax). But I suspect it varies by jurisdiction so any correct answer might be sensitive to the context of the individual?

Also it can have disadvantages; for example in UK you can make payments on behalf of an employer and not be due income tax, but you are technically liable for social security payments. It's up to your tax inspector's personal sense of decency to let you off the ridiculous social security tax if you used your personal debit card to buy a laser printer for your employer.

@DaveFischer depending on your SE Asian country of residence, I think that the issue is less about bank accounts and more about where the business actually happened. If you did the billable work in country X, for a client in country Y and banked the money in country Z, your tax liability is most likely to be in country X. I'm not commenting on whether country X has the resources to chase you for the money of course.