EU resident + EU and Non-EU National E-Commerce Setup

[AJ888]

Hello Everyone,

I'm new to this forum and was hoping to find some help here. This is my current situation:

I am an EU and Non-EU national (holding two passports) and have a EU residency at this moment. I am planning to move my residency out of the EU though, to the second country of which I am a national as well.

I am currently starting an ecommerce business (B2C - nothing illegal or strange) for which I am looking for a company setup including bank account and EMI e.g. transferwise (I have read that it is possible under certain circumstances to connect the TW account to stripe). At this moment I am planning NOT to sell to the EU, but this might change in the future.
I have been looking into a HK company with an offshore bank account, but I'm not sure whether this is a good idea with regard to tax benefits or if there are better setups.

It might be important to know that I only plan to draw funds through a management agreement to a personal account once I am resident of the Non-EU country.

Maybe someone could give me some advice on the above situation, especially with regard to a preferred jurisdiction and banking location (both business and personal), while focusing on tax benefits. Privacy is only partially important as I am not trying to hide any income, but am rather interested in a legit way to plan and optimize taxes.

Thanks in advance Everyone!

 

[James Turner]

I think Hong Kong is a good idea in general and if you are doing business outside HK then the local corporate tax rate is 0%. Whether the company profits will be taxable in your country of residence will depend on whether a Controlled Foreign Company regime exists in your country of residence. Further information/discussion will be needed to establish the situation for you personally.

 

[AJ888]

Yes, business will be carried out outside of HK only. I am not sure about the Controlled Foreign Company Regime, could you explain this a little bit more in detail? The country to which i will be moving is Taiwan... I’m not sure about this.
Do you have any advice on a banking setup for a smaller budget? I would like to bank outside of HK for the moment, but would in the same time need a bank that would work with stripe+transferwise for payments.

 

[dutchnik]

Little mark here: for Stripe you need bank details from a Hong Kong bank in order to process payments through Stripe with a HK company. Maybe I can help you out, I have almost the same setup with HK company + bank account within European Union

 

[dutchnik]

And you need to create enough substance outside of your residency country to have tax benefits in a legal way

 

[dutchnik]

By the way, I tried Transferwise with a HK company and it is not working. They let you sign up (everything looks fine), doing their compliance questions, got accepted and in the end you can not use it they can not work with HK.

They accepted these companies because when in the future they can accept their services with HK companies they have a good start with companies already signed up.

 

[myhand]

Ìf you plan to move out of the EU why not do so and open a local bank account where you move to? I assume it is a low tax country anyway??

 

[AJ888]

Little mark here: for Stripe you need bank details from a Hong Kong bank in order to process payments through Stripe with a HK company. Maybe I can help you out, I have almost the same setup with HK company + bank account within European Union

Hi thanks for your input ! Yes maybe you could help indeed, how does your setup look like?

 

[AJ888]

Ìf you plan to move out of the EU why not do so and open a local bank account where you move to? I assume it is a low tax country anyway??

I will do so in a second step, but I am not yet moving. The whole activity is supposed to start before I move - so I would need an „temporary“ setup . Of course, this temporary setup If done well can also function as a tool of risk diversification in long term.

 

[AJ888]

Ìf you plan to move out of the EU why not do so and open a local bank account where you move to? I assume it is a low tax country anyway??

Oh and it‘s not really a low tax country (Taiwan)