[notpushkin]

You can open an Estonian company with 0.01 € capital. It will look ridiculous in the registry, and you will still be liable for the remaining 2499.99 € personally anyway, but it is possible. I’ve seen a couple 100 € companies, which is more reasonable I guess.

You can also declare that you’ve paid the capital in, without any proof required for small amounts (up to 50k € IIRC). If you lie about it, I suppose you’ll be personally liable for everything, so definitely not worth risking it. Just put in like 500 €, set it aside on the business account, and don’t touch it.

(IANAL)

[metadat]

Then it’s not an LLC, though. Personal assets exposed.

[notpushkin]

Up to 2500 €.

You could put in 2500 € in capital – then your personal exposure will be zero. In practice, I don’t think it’s a meaningful difference, you will just have to keep the whole 2500 € on the company balance by the end of each FY. (Unless you wanna deal with non-monetary contributions!)

If you put in 500 €, you’re liable for 2000 € personally, but you don’t have to keep them for your annual report. (It also means your company looks a bit riskier, since you might not have the 2000 € personally, so you might have trouble getting credit or whatever, but otherwise I don’t think it’s a big deal.)

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Edit: to the author: you should really look into Estonia (or any other sane jurisdiction mentioned elsewhere in the thread). You can still set up a KG (or a sole proprietorship), then put an Estonian OÜ in front of it. Costs something like 300 €, can be done online (you’ll probably need an e-residency card, an Estonian e-signature thing for foreigners, which is another ~150 €). Annual reports are fairly easy if you keep your books properly. And you’ll need an address in Estonea which is also like 125 €/yr. No additional taxes most likely (but check with a real accountant).

[markvdb]

Substance in Estonia is usually required. A rented address does not suffice for that.

[notpushkin]

Could you elaborate, please? I’ve thought the whole point of e.g. the e-Residency program was to bring in business that’s not substantially tied to Estonia.

[markvdb]

Substance would be real activity happening in Estonia: - Where are the decisions made? - Where is the work being done?

Why would I otherwise pay 66% in taxes in Belgium when I could just set up an Estonian ltd, get limited liability and pay 0 until I take anything out?

[petesergeant]

Still a limited-liability company. "You might be personally liable for up to €2,499.99" is not anything like the same as "your personal assets are exposed to all company debts".

[arethuza]

That sounds a bit like the UK concept of a Company Limited by Guarantee - which is used by a lot of charities.

Edit: I'm not a lawyer either!