Ranking
Easiest Countries for Company Formation
Country ranking by ease of incorporation: procedural difficulty, time, and cost.
Ranking
| Rank | Country | Score | Corporate tax | VAT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | United Kingdom | 99.0 | 25% | 20% |
| #2 | Estonia | 98.4 | 22% | 22% |
| #3 | Singapore | 93.8 | 17% | 9% |
| #4 | Portugal | 83.1 | 19% | 23% |
| #5 | United States | 81.8 | 21% | 0% |
| #6 | Canada | 81.6 | 26.5% | 5% |
| #7 | France | 61.8 | 25% | 20% |
| #8 | Poland | 61.5 | 19% | 23% |
| #9 | Netherlands | 59.7 | 25.8% | 21% |
| #10 | Czech Republic | 43.3 | 21% | 21% |
| #11 | United Arab Emirates | 43.3 | 9% | 5% |
| #12 | Germany | 35.1 | 30% | 19% |
| #13 | Spain | 34.5 | 25% | 21% |
How we calculate this ranking
Combines formation difficulty, formation time, and formation cost.
| Factor | Weight | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Formation procedural difficulty | 60% | Captures the regulatory steps and intermediaries required. |
| Formation time (days) | 25% | Faster is better. |
| Formation cost (normalized) | 15% | Lower out-of-pocket cost is better. |
Normalization: Formation time is converted to a score with a 30-day floor (0 score at 30+ days). Formation cost is normalized against a 5000-unit cap regardless of currency for first-pass comparison.
Related
Other rankings
Sources
- World Bank — World Bank — open data and country profiles (accessed )
- OECD — OECD — economic and tax statistics (accessed )
- Republic of Estonia — Estonian e-Residency programme (accessed )
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