I am from the UK, so I am biased. I've also never used Stripe Atlas myself so I am ignorant of how easy or hard it is to wind things up there.
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Stripe Atlas appears to tie you in to a bunch of services(?) and I'm guessing it would be hard to re-incorporate in another state for friendlier tax treatment or whatever, whereas a UK Ltd company doesn't tie you into anything and the regulatory fees are minimal.
Most of the expenses are in business banking and accountancy services once you start making money. It only costs £12 ($16) to register a company in the UK, and then £13 ($17) each year for the annual filing.
Business banking will cost £5-10 ($7-13) each month. Accountants will cost a lot more, and you may not need them if you're a small company prepared to do all your own bookkeeping, etc.
Our tax laws are uniform across the jurisdiction and we have a lot of double-taxation treaties set up with other countries, as well as a culture that accepts foreign ownership of companies.
The hardest part would be acquiring a business bank account because of the Know Your Customer anti-money-laundering regulations and checks, but that can be dealt with by most banks and you don't need to visit the UK or live here for that.
A UK Ltd would give you a lot of flexibility, and is easy to wind up if things don't pan out. I don't have any experience of Stripe Atlas so can't comment on the ease of winding the company up there, but it seems difficult based on other comments in this topic.
I used neither. Not sure about the lock in, but the Stripe cloud credits seem very generous.
Isn't business office required in the UK? Also mail forwarding if one is outside of the UK. It is still way lower than anything I researched, but all these service costs keep adding up and I can't help wondering about some real nasty landmines further down the road. Like what happens when something goes wrong? Getting caught up in some legal matter in a foreign country I have no presence in nor any knowledge how their legal system works sounds like a recipe for disaster.
> The hardest part would be acquiring a business bank account because of the Know Your Customer anti-money-laundering regulations and checks, but that can be dealt with by most banks and you don't need to visit the UK or live here for that.
Which british banks allow remotely opening a business bank account without visiting the UK?
It's very easy to open a UK limited company online and it costs £12 plus £13 a year subsequently. If your business activities are simple you can file accounts through HMRC (tax authority) website without any software or necessarily needing an accountant. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-use-hmrcs-free-f...
