I will close my UK Ltd (Fake address used), plus I want to keep my TW business account. Advices needed.

[pedrosilvam]

First, the fact I used a fake address wasn't for illegal purposes, it's the contrary you'll see below.

1 - I formed an UK company two weeks ago because I wanted a legit way of paying myself an amount of money up to the limit of tax exemption in my country. If I receive XX amount in my personal Transferwise account, I'd have to pay tax over that full amount, no matter how much I transfer to my bank account. Of course, I don't pay any tax, because I don't tell the IRS about it, but I just wanted to start playing the good guy.

2 - I used a fake address to create the company. I mean, the house number doesn't exist in the street. Everything went fine, the company was registered without a problem.

3 - I paid £1 to an accounting firm to register the company for me. That was cheap and allowed me to use a fake address successfully, since they system provides the web filling auth code immediately after the company is created. If you form directly with Companies House, they will send you a letter with the code.

4 - Because of that, I can't register with HMRC, since I don't have my UTR code, because that code is sent to the registered office. So, I'd have to sign up for a real registered address service that costs £30 a year. If you live in a developed country, that might be cheap, but for me, the exchange rate from GBP to my home currency is currently at 7.43, so that means 30 + VAT x 7.43 + 6,38% of tax charged directly by my credit card provider. I can pay that of course, but I don't think it's worth, since I have a small business. And with that money, I could pay for 10 months of Netflix, something more useful than an address that I would never use, besides to receive a one time letter.

So, I think it's best to just pay £8 to close the company before it's too late. Because if I wait too much, they could refuse to close it immediately and request me more information. But I'd like to keep my Transferwise business account open, do you guys think that would be a problem? I mean, TW didn't even check my company information, besides asking me the reason I needed the account. They approved it really fast.

 

[CaptK]

It all comes down to how much is it worth to you.
£30 in the grand scheme of things is little to pay even if you are only paying yourself £1000 per year. The account is the most valuable thing in your set up don't f**k that up for £30.

 

[pedrosilvam]

It all comes down to how much is it worth to you.
£30 in the grand scheme of things is little to pay even if you are only paying yourself £1000 per year. The account is the most valuable thing in your set up don't f**k that up for £30.

I really thought I'd never need a real address, but I forgot about HMRC. How naive am I. But you're right, I need to see the pros and cons of closing it.

 

[polonieth]

First, the fact I used a fake address wasn't for illegal purposes, it's the contrary you'll see below.

1 - I formed an UK company two weeks ago because I wanted a legit way of paying myself an amount of money up to the limit of tax exemption in my country. If I receive XX amount in my personal Transferwise account, I'd have to pay tax over that full amount, no matter how much I transfer to my bank account. Of course, I don't pay any tax, because I don't tell the IRS about it, but I just wanted to start playing the good guy.

2 - I used a fake address to create the company. I mean, the house number doesn't exist in the street. Everything went fine, the company was registered without a problem.

3 - I paid £1 to an accounting firm to register the company for me. That was cheap and allowed me to use a fake address successfully, since they system provides the web filling auth code immediately after the company is created. If you form directly with Companies House, they will send you a letter with the code.

4 - Because of that, I can't register with HMRC, since I don't have my UTR code, because that code is sent to the registered office. So, I'd have to sign up for a real registered address service that costs £30 a year. If you live in a developed country, that might be cheap, but for me, the exchange rate from GBP to my home currency is currently at 7.43, so that means 30 + VAT x 7.43 + 6,38% of tax charged directly by my credit card provider. I can pay that of course, but I don't think it's worth, since I have a small business. And with that money, I could pay for 10 months of Netflix, something more useful than an address that I would never use, besides to receive a one time letter.

So, I think it's best to just pay £8 to close the company before it's too late. Because if I wait too much, they could refuse to close it immediately and request me more information. But I'd like to keep my Transferwise business account open, do you guys think that would be a problem? I mean, TW didn't even check my company information, besides asking me the reason I needed the account. They approved it really fast.

Goes to the trouble of setting up a fake company, but thinks £30 is better spent on Netflix. Garbage post.

 

[pedrosilvam]

Goes to the trouble of setting up a fake company, but thinks £30 is better spent on Netflix. Garbage post.

It's a real company though. I provided the accounting firm with ID and address proof. I have nothing to hide. Your post is garbage because it doesn't offer any help at all, and you're a mentor. I know this website has a paid group where people have access to more professional help. So I think, you, as a "Mentor Groug Gold", shouldn't answer people that way because it's bad marketing (I'm a marketing professional). You should be polite and helpful, even though you don't agree with the post, so people will feel welcomed and may pay for your pro plan.

 

[JustAnotherNomad]

I don’t understand your intention. You set up a UK company because you want to pay yourself a small salary to pay tax on in your home country. But are you aware that the UK company has to pay tax in the UK? Or is it your plan to only move a small amount of money into the UK company, so that there will be nothing left to tax, once your salary has been paid?

 

[pedrosilvam]

I don’t understand your intention. You set up a UK company because you want to pay yourself a small salary to pay tax on in your home country. But are you aware that the UK company has to pay tax in the UK? Or is it your plan to only move a small amount of money into the UK company, so that there will be nothing left to tax, once your salary has been paid?

You're almost right. My intention was to pay myself a salary, but since I think it could be suspicious to have a variable salary, I decided to pay royalties then. I create digital content, so I have the right to receive 100% of the royalties. And after checking some sources, including the Cambridge University, I concluded in that case no withholding tax is necessary. So, I could pay myself all the profit as royalties for all the content (including softwares) I create.

 

[pedrosilvam]

UPDATE:

Thanks for the above replies. I decided to close the company. I'll rethink my strategy next year. I really don't want to pay £30 a year for an address service with additional fees for scanning. Besides, those service will probably require my passport, but mine is expired. I think my national ID won't be enough, as it was to form the company with the accounting firm. The costs to keep the company running would be: £13 (annual return) + £30 registered address + $25 domain renew fee. That's about 500 BRL for me. Too much for my taste.

 

[polonieth]

It's a real company though. I provided the accounting firm with ID and address proof. I have nothing to hide. Your post is garbage because it doesn't offer any help at all, and you're a mentor. I know this website has a paid group where people have access to more professional help. So I think, you, as a "Mentor Groug Gold", shouldn't answer people that way because it's bad marketing (I'm a marketing professional). You should be polite and helpful, even though you don't agree with the post, so people will feel welcomed and may pay for your pro plan.

I just don't understand why if you clearly earn a pittance, you are looking into offshore options with fake addresses and are then struggling to find £30 to get a legit office address. You'd be better off putting your time into earning more and paying your home countries tax. Then figure the rest out later when it might be a viable pursuit to reduce taxes or move somewhere else.

 

[pedrosilvam]

I just don't understand why if you clearly earn a pittance, you are looking into offshore options with fake addresses and are then struggling to find £30 to get a legit office address. You'd be better off putting your time into earning more and paying your home countries tax. Then figure the rest out later when it might be a viable pursuit to reduce taxes or move somewhere else.

The last digital product I created sold 400 copies in a week, and it costs $10. I have a catalogue of more than 20 products. It's not only because we have the money to pay, we should pay. It's just a percepetion of what's worth and what's not. An UK company actually doesn't provide many benefits. No real bank accounts, for example. It only allows me to create a TW account. But thanks anyway.

 

[JustAnotherNomad]

But how would this have worked anyway? Say you earn 16k per month (4x 4k/week) - then all of that money would have gone into the UK Ltd. - and then you would have paid yourself 1k as a salary for example? Well, on the remaining 15k you would have paid UK taxes...?

 

[galadrel]

The last digital product I created sold 400 copies in a week, and it costs $10. I have a catalogue of more than 20 products. It's not only because we have the money to pay, we should pay. It's just a percepetion of what's worth and what's not. An UK company actually doesn't provide many benefits. No real bank accounts, for example. It only allows me to create a TW account. But thanks anyway.

TransferWise bank account is a very real bank account, besides you could open Tide business UK account. And comparing this to Netflix is quite dumb I have to say, most people do this for the longterm thus they know that paying 30 gbp is nothing in what they'd get in comparison.

 

[Btraveler]

First, the fact I used a fake address wasn't for illegal purposes, it's the contrary you'll see below.

1 - I formed an UK company two weeks ago because I wanted a legit way of paying myself an amount of money up to the limit of tax exemption in my country. If I receive XX amount in my personal Transferwise account, I'd have to pay tax over that full amount, no matter how much I transfer to my bank account. Of course, I don't pay any tax, because I don't tell the IRS about it, but I just wanted to start playing the good guy.

2 - I used a fake address to create the company. I mean, the house number doesn't exist in the street. Everything went fine, the company was registered without a problem.

3 - I paid £1 to an accounting firm to register the company for me. That was cheap and allowed me to use a fake address successfully, since they system provides the web filling auth code immediately after the company is created. If you form directly with Companies House, they will send you a letter with the code.

4 - Because of that, I can't register with HMRC, since I don't have my UTR code, because that code is sent to the registered office. So, I'd have to sign up for a real registered address service that costs £30 a year. If you live in a developed country, that might be cheap, but for me, the exchange rate from GBP to my home currency is currently at 7.43, so that means 30 + VAT x 7.43 + 6,38% of tax charged directly by my credit card provider. I can pay that of course, but I don't think it's worth, since I have a small business. And with that money, I could pay for 10 months of Netflix, something more useful than an address that I would never use, besides to receive a one time letter.

So, I think it's best to just pay £8 to close the company before it's too late. Because if I wait too much, they could refuse to close it immediately and request me more information. But I'd like to keep my Transferwise business account open, do you guys think that would be a problem? I mean, TW didn't even check my company information, besides asking me the reason I needed the account. They approved it really fast.

Maybe you've created the company to have accounts in name of that company and want to close it for to cash in money without legal obligations? (after the closing)

 

[Silvio]

If 30 GBP is too much for you, you should focus on your business and not your taxes

 

[tacokai]

You will only get trouble once TW will ask you for some updated documents for your company, otherwise you won't have any troubles to just get rid of your UK company.

Very easy process.

 

[NicolasMaduro]

Will TransferWise have obligations to report shady stuff when a business account have been actively used after the Company was striked off? If so then it sounds like a bad idea

also wouldnt surprise me if TransferWise have some kind of active API to monitor the UK ltd they have opened/open bank accounts for?

 

[avalanche]

First, the fact I used a fake address wasn't for illegal purposes, it's the contrary you'll see below.

1 - I formed an UK company two weeks ago because I wanted a legit way of paying myself an amount of money up to the limit of tax exemption in my country. If I receive XX amount in my personal Transferwise account, I'd have to pay tax over that full amount, no matter how much I transfer to my bank account. Of course, I don't pay any tax, because I don't tell the IRS about it, but I just wanted to start playing the good guy.

2 - I used a fake address to create the company. I mean, the house number doesn't exist in the street. Everything went fine, the company was registered without a problem.

3 - I paid £1 to an accounting firm to register the company for me. That was cheap and allowed me to use a fake address successfully, since they system provides the web filling auth code immediately after the company is created. If you form directly with Companies House, they will send you a letter with the code.

4 - Because of that, I can't register with HMRC, since I don't have my UTR code, because that code is sent to the registered office. So, I'd have to sign up for a real registered address service that costs £30 a year. If you live in a developed country, that might be cheap, but for me, the exchange rate from GBP to my home currency is currently at 7.43, so that means 30 + VAT x 7.43 + 6,38% of tax charged directly by my credit card provider. I can pay that of course, but I don't think it's worth, since I have a small business. And with that money, I could pay for 10 months of Netflix, something more useful than an address that I would never use, besides to receive a one time letter.

So, I think it's best to just pay £8 to close the company before it's too late. Because if I wait too much, they could refuse to close it immediately and request me more information. But I'd like to keep my Transferwise business account open, do you guys think that would be a problem? I mean, TW didn't even check my company information, besides asking me the reason I needed the account. They approved it really fast.

Is your time that went into writing all that stuff cheaper than 30 GBP? If no, then probably you already lost that money in equivalence of your time for this discussion lol

You literally exchanged around 100 GBP worth of your time for saving 30 GBP

 

[isyet]

Print the form (DS01) on this link.

Strike off a company from the register (DS01)

Use this service to apply to strike off a company from the Companies House register. It costs £8 to apply online, or £10 for a paper application.

www.gov.uk

Put 20 GBP and the form in a letter envelope. You can also write a GBP check if you wish. Submit Companies House. I did it that way. They really shut down my company. This was in 2014. I don't know if anything has changed now.
Good luck.

 

[CaptK]

Print the form (DS01) on this link.

Strike off a company from the register (DS01)

Use this service to apply to strike off a company from the Companies House register. It costs £8 to apply online, or £10 for a paper application.

www.gov.uk

Put 20 GBP and the form in a letter envelope. You can also write a GBP check if you wish. Submit Companies House. I did it that way. They really shut down my company. This was in 2014. I don't know if anything has changed now.
Good luck.

Yes still the same process or you can do it online also

 

[Mark Rucken]

This is a terrible original post. I would be ashamed to post something like that.