Can a company be registered in Ireland if all production/value added is done abroad?

blobert

Hi guys,

Let's say my business is making shoes (for example) here in Ireland and selling them on the internet. I'm a registered ltd company in Ireland selling my shoes online to Irish and worldwide customers. I discover that a manufacturer in the UK will be able to produce my shoes cheaper and will be able to send them to my customers for cheaper as delivery costs are cheaper in the UK.

Is it possible to essentially move all the production/dispatch of my products to another country and still be an Irish business? My company would still be based here, and all my payments taken and processed here but everything else would be UK based.

Is this possible? I would have assumed that you have to do a certain % of your work in the country it is registered or add value there otherwise every company would just be registered in the cheapest country they could, regardless of where they actually do their business

Any advice on this would be much appreciated!

Thanks

ankles

You can have a company registered in Ireland, and as long as at least one of the directors is based in the EU the company can do business anywhere in the world. An Irish registered company only means it is registered with the CRO here. Hope this helps.

blobert

Thanks for the quick reply.

I suppose what I should have asked was if it is possible for a company that does the production/value added part of its business in another country to be registered here and pay corporation tax here etc?

Thanks

antoinolachtnai

From your description your value add is in Ireland. The Uk manufacturer's value add is in the UK. they are paying Uk tax on their profits.

Where else does the company itself have employees and plant other than Ireland?

useless

Your Irish company can be involved in the design & marketing of the shoes & hold the intellectual property/trademarks etc in relation to the design. The UK company can be contracted by the Irish company to do the manufacturing. Same as any outsourcing agreement really.

blobert

Thanks for the replies guys.

Company is just me at the moment. Most of the work of the business is outsourced to a company in Ireland at the moment, they make the product and send them out. I keep leftover stock, answer customer service problems, send out replacement products, exchanges etc. Eventually the customer service, keeping spare stock etc would all be done by the company doing the production work here in Ireland and I/someone I hire in future would be devoted to growing the business etc from here in Ireland. So it's unlikely to every need much in the way of staffing independent of whoever is doing the production work.

Was just not sure if it would be OK to relocate all of this to the UK when all that would be left of the business here would be me/someone else managing it here etc.

Sounds like you guys think this would be ok?

Thanks again

dbran

Hi

For tax purposes, the whole thing would hinge on where the centre of management of the comany is. Where are the main decisions of the company taken, where do the directors reside, where are the main contracts with customers signed and concluded. As it appears that this is Ireland then the company will remain registered in Ireland for tax purposes.

There are complex rules which deal with whether the company needs to register for VAT in the other country called "distance selling". Generally if you sell over a certain amount of product into that country then you need to register for VAT in that country and charge that country's VAT rate. This oly applies to sales in the EU.

The company will always be an Irish registrered company with the CRO and is subject to Irish Company law in all cases and not UK company law.

Hope this helps

dbran

EIREHotspur

Why do you think Microsoft & google are here??