suggestion for freelancer

[albx]

Hi,

any advice on the ideal set up for a freelancer?

sorry if my question is stupid, I've only recently started to think/read about it, but how do you then retrieve/use the money from the business?

So far, what i saw/understood would involve becoming resident of a country that does not tax income earned abroad (panama/portugal)

thanks

 

[JohnLocke]

You want to grow your business and then find a location for your company. If this is a low volume business or a startup it makes no sense to go offshore with your business unless you have other reasons for it which you then should explain.

 

[albx]

Thanks for the reply. it is not a startup, i've been freelancing for about 2 years now. Initially the pay was really crap and I worked only few hours, but now I am doing it full time and sometimes the weeks can be very long. So to grow the business even more I would have to hire.

There are mainly 2 reasons for my interest:

- I did not think things through when I started. I traveled quite a bit but never bothered to change my fiscal residency. I started freelancing while abroad and since the pay was crap, I just opened a foreign bank account and got paid there. But as things picked up, I saved some money there. Then, I went back home and set up a company in my country. But now I am starting to stress out though, and probably naivly hope that if I leave, they won't bother with that extra bank account.

- Even if, as a relatively small business, the difference between offshore or staying local may not be that great (depending on the options, it could be up to 20k), every little helps. It took me a long time to enter the job market and so I need to plan for my retirement myself, I also need to plan for the case the business dries up/stoppes (all things for which, locally, I would have to pay for but not be entitled to)

So, how do go about finding a location for the business? I was about to ask a company found online, only to find a topic in here mentioning they were best avoid

 

[anticfc]

What's the capital tax where you live? If that tax is OK with you, and assuming you are subject to CFC rules, then an option could be a CFC-pool, a partnership with other freelancers. That could possibly keep costs down.