5 questions · about a minute

Ireland or the UK: which should you pick?

Where you incorporate changes your tax rate, your filing burden and, occasionally, whether you get taxed twice. Answer five questions and you'll get a reasoned view rather than a headline rate.

Question 1 of 5

Where will board decisions actually be made?

Not where you'll register — where you and any co-directors will physically be when you decide things.

What it weighs, and what it can't.

The tool weighs the factors that decide this for most early-stage companies: where the board actually sits, expected profits, development spend, the EEA-resident director requirement, and where your customers are. It runs entirely in your browser and stores nothing.

What it can't weigh is the rest of your situation — where you want to live, what your investors have already told you they expect, whether you have a co-founder in another country, or what you've already committed to. Those routinely outweigh a few points of corporation tax.

It also can't settle tax residence, which is the question most likely to cost you money if you get it wrong. Residence can follow where a company is centrally managed and controlled rather than where it is registered, and that turns on facts a five-question form has no way of establishing.

Keep reading.