How to Start or Buy a Business in the UK as a Foreigner

The UK sits near the top of most rankings for ease of doing business, and for good reason. Company law is clear, courts are reliable, and the market, particularly in London, connects you to clients and investors across Europe and beyond. None of that means the process is without friction, particularly for foreign nationals who don’t know where the complications tend to hide.

Here’s what the path actually looks like.

Registering a Company

Companies House allows non-residents to incorporate a private limited company entirely online. No UK passport, no visa, no physical office required. Registration costs £100 and most applications go through within 24 hours.

You need a registered UK address for correspondence. Services are easy to find if you don’t have office space. At least one director and one shareholder are required; the same person can fill both roles, and neither needs to be British.

Banking is usually the first real headache. Traditional high-street banks want in-person verification and a UK credit history. Most new foreign arrivals have neither. Challenger banks have filled part of this gap, but expect the account-opening process to take longer than the incorporation itself.

Two tax registrations follow: Corporation Tax must be registered within three months of starting to trade. VAT registration kicks in once taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling twelve-month period.

Buying a Business

Most small and medium-sized transactions in the UK come down to a choice between two deal structures:

Which structure suits you depends on what the business carries on its books. Your solicitor should work through this with you before negotiations go anywhere near heads of terms.

Due diligence is where foreign buyers most often underestimate what’s involved. In UK transactions, document exchange happens through a virtual data room — a secure platform that controls access and tracks who has seen what. If you haven’t used one before, you can learn more about how the process works in practice here. Sellers who send documents by email instead are a yellow flag for any professional adviser.

A serious seller has everything ready before talks begin: audited accounts, tax filings, employee contracts, leases, IP registrations, and details of any outstanding claims. In a well-run process, all of this sits in the online data room from day one, organized by category and accessible only to approved parties. Work through each document carefully, as legal fees on a mid-market deal often reach five figures and should be factored into your budget from the outset. 

Visas

Owning a UK company requires no visa. But running it from inside the UK is a different matter;  you need the right leave to remain.

The Innovator Founder visa is the main route for new business founders. An approved endorsing body must first assess your idea against three criteria: is it genuinely new, is it viable, and can it scale? You cannot use this route to buy into a business that already trades. The assessment is rigorous, meaning that vague or derivative proposals are often rejected.

The Skilled Worker visa works better for those buying an existing company and stepping into a role that meets the salary and skills thresholds. The Global Talent visa is open to people with a recognised track record in fields like digital technology or research.

Get immigration advice before you commit to anything on the business side. The two timelines need to work together.

Tax

Owning a UK company does not make you a UK tax resident. But HMRC looks beyond ownership specifically at where the company’s central management and control actually sits. If strategic decisions are made from the UK, HMRC may treat the company as UK-resident regardless of where it was incorporated or where you live. This catches people out more than almost any other issue.

Corporation Tax rates for 2025/26: 19% on profits below £50,000, 25% above £250,000, with marginal relief between the two. Both rates are confirmed unchanged through 2026/27.

Whether dividends paid to a non-resident owner are subject to UK withholding tax depends on the terms of any double taxation treaty between the UK and the owner’s country of residence. Relief is available under many treaties, but it must be claimed, it doesn’t apply automatically.

If property is part of the deal, non-resident buyers pay a 2% Stamp Duty Land Tax surcharge on top of standard rates. The final SDLT bill regularly surprises people who haven’t factored it in.

Advisors

You need a UK solicitor with corporate transaction experience, an accountant familiar with both UK tax and your home jurisdiction’s rules, and a broker or corporate finance adviser with cross-border deal experience if you are pursuing an acquisition. 

Ask directly whether they’ve worked with foreign buyers. The cross-border element creates complications that not every generalist spots. Experience with VDR due diligence is worth checking too; it’s the standard in any serious UK transaction. References from other non-resident clients are a reasonable thing to ask for.

The UK is open to foreign-owned businesses, and the rules are clear enough that preparation actually pays off. That includes the practical side, including an understanding of how secure document sharing works in UK transactions before you are sitting across the table from a seller. The people who run into problems are usually the ones who treated the legal and tax side as something to sort out later.