[phphphphp]

The majority of complications when going through a process like this come from tax considerations: if you're not taking this action as an immediate tax minimisation strategy, you do not need to worry about things like goodwill valuations, selling your app to the company etc. and instead you can just transfer the ownership by virtue of reassigning the ownership from you to your company on whichever platforms record it -- as you describe.

Regarding your email address and business name: a business name can be changed, and there's no importance associated with the domain name you use so this is a non-issue. You can register a new domain that mirrors your current, for example if you use `example.com` you can register `example.limited` in addition and use that when you feel it's appropriate if you'd like there to be a clear distinction.

Ultimately, none of this really matters for a small consultancy company. The volumes you're describing are negligible, and any competent accountant will have had extensive experience with this situation so they'll hand-hold you through the entire process, or you can save yourself money and use a neo-accountant like Crunch (crunch.co.uk) which provides all the advice and insight that you're looking for in their documentation.

The most important thing to understand is that in the UK, all company information is public. If you don't want the business finances exposed, then registering as a limited company is a bad idea: anybody can look up your accounts.

[simontrl]

> come from tax considerations: if you're not taking this action as an immediate tax minimisation strategy, you do not need to worry about things like goodwill valuations, selling your app to the company

Can you explain more why this doesn't apply to me here? One reason for me going Ltd is to minimise tax by keeping money in the company when I'm personally getting towards the higher tax bands.

Edit: When should you mind about finances being exposed? I'd rather people I know don't look it up but besides that, what does it matter?

[phphphphp]

Sorry, for clarity, I mean tax minimisation of existing liabilities. You (based on your description) do not have an existing liability that you're looking to minimise, rather, you're looking to minimise future liabilities. Property is a common example of an asset that someone may wish to transfer into a Limited company to minimise existing liabilities (for example, stamp duty). If your business was something you'd acquired personally (i.e: you paid £500k of your own money to acquire from a third-party) and you were still in the red on the acquisition which was influencing your tax situation, that would be an example where you'd want to consider tax minimisation in the process of forming a Limited company.

[simontrl]

> You (based on your description) do not have an existing liability that you're looking to minimise

So I've not borrowed any money, or bought anything over the years for business use besides domain registration, email hosting, web hosting, laptop and phone. The SaaS does have value without me though so I think it's sellable if that's relevant.