Set Up a UK Company From Abroad

The short answer

Yes, you can. There is no residence requirement and no nationality requirement to be a director or a shareholder of a UK limited company. Your company must have at least one director aged 16 or over and at least one shareholder — the same person can be both — and it must have a UK registered office address. That is the whole of the residence question.

What has changed is not who may own a UK company, but how they must prove who they are.

Identity verification: what changed in November 2025

Since 18 November 2025, identity verification at Companies House is a legal requirement, introduced under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. There are two routes:

• Directly with Companies House, using GOV.UK One Login.
• Through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP) — a business supervised by a UK anti-money-laundering supervisor and registered with Companies House to carry out identity checks. TaxDigit is an ACSP.

New directors verify at appointment or incorporation. Existing directors provide their Companies House personal code on the company’s next confirmation statement, and people with significant control have their own verification window. Existing directors and PSCs are working through a transition period that runs to November 2026.

What you will need

• A company name (we run a free instant availability check)
• A UK registered office address — we can provide one
• At least one director, aged 16+, of any nationality or residence
• At least one shareholder and a share structure
• Details of anyone with significant control (usually 25%+ of shares or votes)
• Identity verification for directors and PSCs — carried out by us as an ACSP

Incorporation itself is usually a matter of a few working days once documents and identity verification are complete. It can vary with the company type and the nature of the business.

What happens after incorporation — the part people skip

Forming the company is the easy half. The obligations start immediately, and they do not pause because the owner lives elsewhere.

• Corporation tax. Register with HMRC and file a return each year, paying tax on the company’s profits.
• Annual accounts. Filed at Companies House, to the applicable accounting standard.
• Confirmation statement. Filed each year, now carrying identity-verification information.
• VAT. Registration is required where turnover crosses the threshold, and can be worth doing voluntarily before that.
• PAYE and payroll. If the company employs anyone in the UK.

We are appointed as your agent with HMRC and Companies House, so the letters, the deadlines and the filings come to us — not to a registered office you have never visited.

See also: UK accountant for non-residents · UK accountant for Dubai residents · Company formation (ACSP)

Subsidiary or branch?

If you already have a company overseas, there is a decision before incorporation: set up a UK subsidiary, or register the existing foreign company as a UK establishment (a branch). They are taxed differently, they file differently, and they carry very different transfer pricing consequences. The choice is difficult and expensive to reverse.

Broadly, a subsidiary is a separate UK company with its own limited liability and its own tax return; a branch is the same legal entity operating in the UK, with the parent exposed. Which is better depends on your profit profile, your treaty position and what you intend to do with the UK business in five years. We advise on it before you incorporate, not after.

Frequently asked questions