# Notes about creating a company to Leandro ## Question I'm writing with an annoying question (sorry!): I've been given the chance of working as a consultant for a Danish company (on the side of my current work, I've checked the "outside activities" guidelines and I should be able to do it). I've never done something like this and was wondering if you had some experience? My main concerns are about **how to interact with the company** (I know some people sets up companies where they are their only asset... Not sure why, probably to have a layer of protection in case things go wring?), and **if I should get the money here or maybe make an account in Denmark or somewhere else in Europe** (and how to report to Skatteverket, although I think I can just ask them). Sorry to bother, but if you have any insight or know someone I could ask about this, that would be awesome! ## My response - Schedule yourself to get free professional counselling! Using skatteverket to figure things out can probably be done, but it is hard as their text will be quite formal and technical. I suggest trying to get more direct advice from someone with experience and have time to understand your needs. What advice can you get? I've taken free counselling and I recommend you to do the same, it helped me along the way when I was in your shoes with a lot of questions: See https://www.nyforetagarcentrum.se/uppsala/boka-radgivning/ for doing that. - After counselling, make a decision on company form. I suggest you raise the question during counselling of starting a company as a Aktiebolag (AB) or as an "enskild firma" associated with you as a person. There are differences in accounting and more, and some points of interest I recall are: a) that you can protect yourself from liability if you get sued, which may be more relevant if you work against USA based customers. b) that you can, if you earn more than ~45k SEK a month in total, use an accounting trick available to AB's that instead of paying salary grants you dividends on the profit the company made, which in turn reduces taxes a bit but not drastically. c) AB may have slightly more hurdles with regards to accounting, but I've heard it isn't that much more troublesome. I own and run Sundell Open Source Consulting AB, and have never used the other kind of company form "enskild firma". - My input on the choice of AB vs enskild firma. I really don't know, I can't compare because I only know one way. I think a key difference between our situations is that you don't plan to get your entire salary from the company you start while I did. That could make it more reasonable for you to have a "enskild firma". This is what my brother has as an employee of a university but also as a person that gets extra incomin from writing articles to newspapers etc. - Should you have a bank account here or somewhere else etc? I think you should have a bank account for your company finances, and I think it should be in Sweden if you registered a company in Sweden. It may depend, but I'm quite confident that will be the recommendation. I suggest you mention that during the counselling after having locked in what company form to go for. - General advice? - I think https://verksamt.se is a good resource in general about starting a company, and I'd use that as a foundation for learning more.