The best country to incorporate in
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This document is work in progress. I still don't have a clear recommendation for this in 2025.
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For various reasons, I've needed to open entities in various countries over the years - thus far those have been: Ireland, the US, Hong Kong, and the Netherlands. Every time, I end up surprised at how much work and money is required simply to not get in trouble with the government. Some things I learned:
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Most entity opening services (E.g. Stripe Atlas) focus on how easy it is to file the initial paperwork. This ends up being a trivial consideration over the long run. Said another way - don't make a decision on where to incorporate, based on how easy the business opening process is.
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Managing companies in countries that don't natively speak English creates a substantial amount of friction. Yes - you can use google translate, but when you receive 12 letters from the Belastingdienst and have to photograph & translate every one, it becomes a pain. Then when google translate doesn't work on the sites you use to manage the entity like Tellow or Enty, every touchpoint you have becomes a pain.
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You will need an accountant. Finding ones that are A) Reasonably Priced, and B) On the ball, is not that easy. Our agency has about 20 active customers per year, and the most affordable-yet-good company we could find comes in at around 5k per year.
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Table
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Taking these things into consideration, this was the table ChatGPT spit out for me. I'll come back and go deeper on this at some point.
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Cayman: My guess is that what you save in admin & tax burden, you end up paying in fees to administrators, but would love to look into this more. Additionally Stripe doesn't currently support [Outlying Territories](outlying territories) and Cayman is a British Territory, so you wouldn't be able to use Stripe.
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