How can I register a UK business without providing a business address?
You don't have to provide your personal home address per se. You can provide a legal address where Companies house can send across paper correspondence to. Companies house legally requires an address because directors are liable to their shareholders(even if you are the only shareholder) and to stop them from disappearing just like that with shareholder's money. Moreover your birth date will also be visible on websites which provide comapnies information. You can ask these websites to stop sharing your personal information. Every company must have a registered office within the UK which is the official legal address of the company. It must be a physical address (i.e. not a PO Box without a physical location) as Companies House will use this address to send correspondence to. To incorporate a private limited company you need at least one director, who has to be over 16 years of age. You may also have a secretary, but this is optional. The information you will need to supply for each officer includes: You may also have officers that are companies or firms, and for these you will need to supply the company or firm name, its registered office address, details of the legal form of the company, where it is registered and if applicable its registration number.
Normal high street accounts certainly are available to non-residents. I have several, and I haven't been resident in the UK for fourteen years. However you do need to open them before you leave. They need identification. Once you have one open, the same bank should be able to open other accounts by mail. The disadvantage of course is that you will pay tax on your earnings, and while you can claim it back that's an unnecessary piece of work if you don't have other UK earnings. I would take the risk of an offshore account, assuming it's with a big reputable bank - the kind that are going to be bailed out if there is another collapse. An alternative might be a fixed term deposit. You lock up your money for three years, and you get it back plus a single interest payment at the end of three years. You would pay nothing in tax while you were gone, but the whole interest amount would be taxable when you got back. Banks has to complete KYC. In case you want to open a bank account, most will ask for proof of address. I also feel it is difficult for bank to encash a cheque payable to a business in your account. Opening a bank account in the name of your business or alternatively obtaining a cheque payable to your personal name seems the only alternatives to me. You need to file foreign qualification in any State you have physical presence in (warehouses, offices, etc). Including the State from which you personally operate (if it is not Nevada). You don't need to register in States to which you ship products. I see no reason why a US ID would be mandatory anywhere in the UK. I'm sure they have their own tax IDs in the UK. However, if the gallery requires US persons to submit US W-9 - then yes, you're covered under that requirement. Seems like it's more dependent on who you want to be your supplier.  The times I've been involved in requesting this, each company had its own application form.  They usually need proof of business activity, which gets back to SpecKK's answer. Most US states have rules that go something like this: You will almost certainly have to pay some registration fees, as noted above.  Depending on how you organize, you may or may not need to file a separate tax return for the business. (If you're sole proprietor for tax purposes, then you file on Schedule C on your personal Form 1040.)  Whether or not you pay taxes depends on whether you have net income.  It's possible that some losses might also be deductible. (Note that you may have to file a return even if you don't have net income - Filing and needing to pay are not the same since your return may indicate no tax due.)  In addition, at the state level, you may have to pay additional fees or taxes beyond income tax depending on what you sell and how you sell it. (Sales tax, for example, might come into play as might franchise taxes.)  You'll need to check your own state law for that. As always, it could be wise to get professional tax and accounting advice that's tailored to your situation and your state.  This is just an outline of some things that you'll need to consider. "If you have a business web site, using firstname.lastname@businessdomain.*x* would be the best choice. Using an @gmail address should be a second choice.  If gmail is your only option, though, I would strongly recommend avoiding the aka.username portion. If firstname.lastname@gmail.com isn't available (and, for most people, it no longer is), using something such as FirstinitialLastname.businessname@gmail.com would be a much better option (for example, John Smith with Example Enterprises would be JSmith.ExampleEnterprises@gmail.com).  If you're looking for an email address to use for purposes such as a resume / CV or similar documents, then I would suggest to try to find a variation that includes your first name and last name on gmail. You can use your middle initial, as well, if necessary.  John Curtis Smith could have any combination such as jcsmith, john.c.smith, johnathan.smith, johnathan.c.smith, j.curtis.smith (though that last one will imply that John prefers to be called Curtis), and similar.  Also, and I say this as honest advice from someone who has been in charge of hiring people in the past, if you're concerned about professionalism, you'll want to ensure your grammar and spelling are impeccable. A quick glance at your posting history makes me think you're a Brit, or are currently living in England, so working on your English skills will be important. People will find it difficult to take someone seriously, otherwise, and a poor first impression via text or email can easily cost you whatever it is you're trying to establish, *especially* if you aren't the only person attempting to establish yourself for that position.  You have several errors in your post (""I just a question,"" ""approriate,"" ""buisness,"" and a lack of sentence structure and punctuation in general).  It may seem silly to concern yourself with typing properly in a post on Reddit, but think of it as practice in a medium (text and typing) where repetition is key. If you're used to typing poorly, it'll take a lot more effort to type well when it counts, and you're more likely to miss an error that could cost you a job or client.  Good luck to you!  ^^^In ^^^before ^^^mentioning ^^^spelling ^^^/ ^^^grammar ^^^and ^^^missing ^^^something ^^^in ^^^my ^^^own ^^^text." Not sure about the UK, but if it were in the US you need to realize the expenses can be claimed as much as the income. After having a mild heart attack when I did my business taxes the first time many years ago, a Small Business Administration adviser pointed it out. You are running the site from a computer?  Deductible on an amortization schedule.  Do you work from home?  Electricity can be deducted.  Do you drive at all?  Did you pay yourself a wage?  Any paperwork, fax communications, bank fees that you had to endure as work expenses? I am not an accountant, but chances are you legally lost quite a bit more than you made in a new web venture.  Discuss it with an accountant for the details and more importantly the laws in your country.  I could be off my rocker. "We use Cater Allen for our business banking (recommended/introduced by our accountants so we've saved the standard ""minimum funds per month"" limit) which was set up all remotely - our accountants sent us the forms (which you can get from Cater Allen's site), we photocopied the identity documents (driving licence etc) and sent them off. Within a couple of weeks we had the account open. Cater Allen hasn't got any physical branches, so that's ""one way"" of working around the ""come into a branch"" solution - pick a bank without branches! Girobank (which became Alliance and Leicester Business Banking and then became part of Santander) used to allow all account creations remotely - but that was back in the 90s and I've got no idea if Santander still do. Since you've setup an Ltd company, you are probably looking for an accountant too (even if it just to do your year end or payroll) - ask them for their recommendations." Surprised that no one has mentioned **Dun &amp; Bradstreet** yet. A lot of small businesses require a D&amp;B number for various reasons (getting an extended verification SSL cert, applying for government contracts, etc). D&amp;B numbers are *free*, but the D&amp;B sales guys will lie and threaten you about expensive up-sells over the course of many phone calls before you can actually get it. Then once you have the number, they send this bullshit spam saying that your credit report has changed, but you got to pay to know what they're saying about you. Sorry for the rant, just D&amp;B is the scummiest company I've dealt with in a long time. As an LLC you are required to have a separate bank account (so you can't have one account and mix personal and business finances together as you could if you were a sole trader) - but there's no requirement for it to be a business bank account.  However, the terms and conditions of most high street bank personal current accounts specifically exclude business banking, so unless you could find one that would allow it, you'd have to open a business bank account. If you mostly do work for businesses/individuals who are VAT registered it's a no-brainer to become VAT registered yourself... Although you will have to charge your customers VAT (and pass this on to HMRC) because they are VAT-registered they will reclaim the amount so it won't actually 'cost' them anything. At the same time, you can reclaim all the VAT you're currently being charged on your business expenditure (business equipment, tickets to business events, business software, accountancy/other business services you pay for, web hosting etc etc etc) However, if most of your clients are not VAT-registered it's not worth you registering. You would have to charge your customers an extra 20% (and they wouldn't be able to claim it back!) and you would have to pass this on to HMRC. Although you could still claim for goods and services you purchase for business use, essentially you'd just be another tax collector for HMRC. That said, at the end of the day it's up to you! VAT returns are quarterly and dead simple. Just keep a spreadsheet with your invoices (output tax) and receipts (input tax) and then do some basic maths to submit the final numbers to HMRC. No accountant required! The short Answer is NO, HMRC do not like disguised employment which is what this is as you fall under IR35 you can bill them via an umbrella company and you should be charging the contractor rate not a permie rate.  http://www.contractoruk.com/ "The HMRC has a dedicated self-help/learning site that is helpful here: It's important to tell HMRC that you are self-employed as soon as   possible.  If you don't, you may have to pay a penalty.  You don't want to pay more to HMRC than you have to as it is a waste   of your money. Your business has started when you start to advertise or you have a   customer to buy your goods or services.  It is at this point that your business is 'trading'. You cannot   register before you start trading. For example, if you advertise your business in the local newspaper on   15 January but do not get your first customer until 29 March; in this   case, you have been trading since 15 January. You must tell HMRC within six months of the end of the tax year in   which you start self-employment.  You must therefore register by 5 October.  But it's best to register well before this so that you do not forget   to do so. The HMRC also has a YouTube channel with help videos, and ""Am I Trading or Not?"" might be of particular interest to you. Most of the registration is based around the concept of starting to work with the intent to make a profit. By the letter of law and regulations, you should register within six months of the end of the tax year you started to avoid any potential penalty. However note that the situation is different based upon your intent. If you begin making/putting up videos online as a hobby with the hope that you can make something to help you defray the basic costs involved, and the total amount you make is relatively small (say, less than 500 pounds), you will not be classified as ""trading"" and likely have no need to register with HMRC.  As soon as you begin to get in regular payments, maybe a single payment of a significant size, or multiple payments for a similar service/item, you are vastly more likely to need to register. From my reading you would likely be safe to begin putting up videos without registration, but if you begin spending a large portion of your time over an extended period (multiple months) and/or begin getting payments of any notable size then you should likely register with the appropriate services (HMRC, etc). As is the case in both the USA and UK, simple registration is pretty cheap and the costs of little/no income are usually pretty minor.  Also note that the HMRC trading and self-employment regulations are unusual compared to many US laws/institutions, in that you are explicitly permitted to begin doing something and only register later. So if you start doing videos for an entire tax year + 5 months and make nothing significant, you'd seemingly be fine to never register at all." Work under UK umbrella company.  By this you are thinking of creating a new legal entity in UK, then its not a very great idea. There will be lot of paperwork, additional taxes in UK and not much benefit.  Ask UK company to remit money to Indian savings bank account   Ask UK company to remit money to Indian business bank account Both are same from tax point of view. Opening a business bank account needs some more paper work and can be avoided.  Note as an independent contractor you are still liable to pay taxes in India. Please pay periodically and in advance and do not wait till year end. You can claim some benefits as work related expenses [for example a laptop / mobile purchase, certain other expenses] and reduce from the total income the UK company is paying