Comment by simbolo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simbolo | Hacker News Reader

Even if you carry on launching this service 'just as yourself', that's being self-employed, or a sole-proprieter, you are the legal entity that is the company, and are personally liable for it. People setup separate legal entities 'companies' because it keeps their liability separate from their personal lives.

People can own many companies and it has no bearing on if they have a full time job with someone else. In your case you would setup a 'Limitada' (Ltd) company and this can be done online at https://www.portaldaempresa.pt

I'm from the UK, setting up a company is easy, cheap. Each year I need to submit a small set of accounts, and a tax return. The first time you do this might seem hard, but it's basically form filling, and after the 2nd time it's much easier and simple.

Concentrate on your product, when you take on investment or make profit, look into setting up a company.

I believe it's common for a developer to have their own company to use to sell all their products over their carears.

Wow, are tax regulations simple enough in the UK that you can reasonably do your taxes yourself for a simple Ltd?

I'd love to see that in my native Belgium!

They most definitely are, although I've never really seen the problem with taxation requirements for BVBAs or even NVs myself. (BVBAs are roughly Belgium's idea of Ltds, NVs are public companies.)

A lot of company regulation in the UK is tiered - there are 'micro', 'small', 'medium' and 'large' categories which need different accounts and auditing, sales thresholds below which you don't need to register for VAT and things like that. The idea being to make it easy to start a company.

However, if you want your income from the business to be counted as your income for purposes of a loan or mortgage, you'll have a much easier time if an accountant can certify that the business really exists! And for a small business you can get the accounts done for £200-300 a year, so I doubt many people do their own :)

yep takes around a week for a full LTD

when my Father set up his consultancy the main concern of HMRC was that he could do the complex task of calculating VAT (sales tax) correctly.

BTW I am being ironic it is not that hard to calculate 17.5%

20% VAT now but there's the flat rate scheme and other complexities to consider...

Yes I believe doing tax/accounts yourself is simple if your tax affairs are simple. All the online book keeping software nowdays is quite sophisticated. I just have to type in what I bought or sold.

The VAT I pay each quarter is just a sum of the VAT I typed in on entry. So generating and submitting the VAT return is literally just one click.

End of year tax is just the difference been costs and sales (profit). In the UK, HMRC, provide you this PDF form where you input the total sales etc, they calculate the tax for you. So it really is just form filling.

I believe being a native Belgium there is nothing stoping you from forming a UK company, nor taking it's profits back to Belgium?

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