[matt4077]

If you actually look at the meat of the article you'll notice that all it takes for the setup is about an afternoon with a notary and 500 Euros. Yearly expenses are mentioned by the author somewhere in this threat, and he says 2000 Euro pa, but note that they're talking about a business that must do at least 6-figures revenue (otherwise VAT reporting wouldn't be on a monthly basis). For a minimum shell company, you can easily get by with a few hundred, and the burdens scale at below O(n), so it never becomes economical to chose a different jurisdiction for for the administrative burdens.

[atemerev]

It's not expensive, but quite time-consuming. :(