You moved. Your company did not.
A company is generally treated as resident where it is effectively managed, not only where it is registered. If you relocate and keep making the key decisions from your new country, you may have moved the company's position without changing a single document — and you may also have created a permanent establishment there. This is the most under-examined issue in founder relocations.
Who this affects
Any founder or director who relocates and keeps an operating company registered somewhere else. Estonian, Dutch, Spanish and UK entities run from a new country of residence are the pattern we see most.
Why it matters
Because it can be triggered by doing nothing differently. You keep the same company, the same registered office, the same accountant — and simply take the calls from a different apartment. Two tests can then reach it: the destination may find a permanent establishment, and the origin may or may not still treat it as resident. The exposure is created by where decisions happen, and decisions start happening in the new place on day one.
What they actually look at
- Where board and key management decisions are actually taken, not where minutes say they were
- Where the directors are resident and where they physically are when deciding
- Whether there is genuine substance — people, premises, decision-making — in the country of registration
- Whether contracts are habitually concluded from the new country
How it is resolved
- Getting the analysis done against your specific facts before the move, because it is decided by what actually happens afterwards
- Building genuine substance where the company is registered, if it is to stay there
- Or moving the company deliberately rather than by accident, which is a different and better-controlled exercise
- Recognising when a local entity in the destination is the honest answer, and when it would only add cost
The common mistake
Assuming that because the company is registered elsewhere and files there, nothing changed. Registration is not management, and the tests look at management.
When the door closes
Before the move. Place of effective management is determined by what actually happens, and that starts the day you land.
Read next
- When founders actually need a Thai company
- How to leave Belgium tax residency
- How to leave Netherlands tax residency
Which profiles this complicates most
- Tax residency for solo SaaS founders — “I run a bootstrapped SaaS on my own”
Related situations
- I left, but my income still comes from my old country
- I own shares in a company and I am about to leave
Get the permanent-establishment exposure checked before it becomes a fact.