Offshore company?

godsakes

Hi

I am currently a VAT registered sole trader who provides online advertising services to clients based mainly outside of the EU. To minimise my tax liability I'm looking to setup a Ltd company later in the year - but I was wondering if I could go one step further by setting up an offshore company and pay 0% tax.

Can anyone offer any insight? - can you open UK bank accounts with an offshore company? are there issues in paying yourself a wage? Can you claim back VAT? (or rather advise companies not to bill you VAT).

Thanks

Pennywise

If you actually "run" the business in the UK, it will be taxed in the UK regardless of which country you register it.

If you remain personally UK resident, you will have to pay UK tax on anything you receive from it, i.e. on dividends and wages.

So if you intend to stay resident in the UK and run your business from within the UK, you won't actually achieve anything.