Some client assignments I've worked on

Client: Self employed consultants (multiple clients)
Industry: Management consultancy and finance
Tax residency: UK

Whether through a company or self employment structure, consultants earning in excess of low six figures trigger effective UK tax rates exceeding 40%.

UK tax residents who own entities in traditional low tax jurisdictions like the UAE and Carribeans are viewed by HMRC with suspicion and face more stringent CFC rules. Flag Ventures proposed Romanian and Bulgarian company structures, as low tax jurisdictions within the EU.

Romanian companies were taxed at 1% on revenue at the time and Bulgarian company at 10% on profits. Leveraging favorable double tax treaties between Romania and Bulgaria with countries such as the UAE; the UK Consultants also had the option to obtain UAE tax residency in the future and withdraw profits from their Romanian and Bulgarian entities at a dividend rate of 3-5%.

Client: Founder / owner
Industry: SaaS company
Tax residency: UAE

In light of the UAE’s new 9% corporate tax, the Client considered setting up a ‘0% US LLC structure’. This pass through entity has been hyped up on X, YouTube amongst other channels. The Client was keen to keep his tax affairs in a legally compliant way and engaged Flag Ventures to audit the risks.

Flag Ventures advised against this structure. Even though the UAE nominally does not have CFC rules, the FTA has permanent establishment rules guided by substance over form principle. In short, if a UAE tax resident operates a US LLC from the UAE with no genuine substance on the US side, they will highly unlikely pass an audit by tax authorities. Their US LLC may be subjected to UAE corporate taxes with penalties on top.

The Client was presented with an alternative option in another country which has a double tax treaty with the UAE (unlike the US, which does not). This option involved the Client restructuring part of his SaaS business to establish genuine business substance on the ground, i.e. through hiring local employees and having a local office. This country enabled the client to hire English speaking employees at a more cost effective rate than the UAE too. There, the Client could lower his corporate tax to 3% and withdraw dividends at 0% tax back to the UAE.

Client: Self employed consultant
Industry: SaaS sales
Tax residency: Canada

The Client was early on in his career earning low 6 digits and paying taxes in excess of 30% in Canada. The Client was made aware of exit tax implications in Canada and that it was highly optimal for him to exit Canadian tax residency now - given he has minimal assets which would be subject to exit tax and no dependents nor primary residence, making it easy to structure a clean departure.

Flag Ventures presented the Client with several options that suited his lifestyle preferences, travel proximity requirements and relocation budget. Top of the list was the UAE and Georgia - where he qualified for 1% tax on individual entrepreneurs and the blended structure set up, maintenance and tax rate would have been even lower than the UAE at his income level.

Client: Owner
Industry: E-commerce
Tax residency: Sweden

Combining corporate tax with personal income tax, the Client was effectively paying a blended tax rate in excess of 40%. Flag Ventures prepared a two step plan. Step one would allow the Client to legally exit Swedish tax residency and re-establish a new personal tax residency in Poland. Step two would allow the Client to re-structure the corporate entity from Swedish to Polish tax residency.

Under step one, the Client could withdraw income from the Swedish entity in the form of dividends (19% in Poland vs up to 30% in Sweden) or as a self employed person (with personal income tax as low as 8.5% on revenue).

Under step two, the e-commerce entity in Poland could select from three corporate tax options relevant for their case: 3% revenue based tax (applicable for certain e-commerce businesses), 0% ‘Estonian tax’ option (profits are not taxed whilst re-invested and subject to a 20% dividend tax on withdraw) or 9% corporate tax on profits.

All in, this enabled the Client to lower their tax from 40%> to around 20%, whilst relocating to a EU member state with fewer social problems than Sweden and still being able to return home to visit friends and family in a 1.5 hour flight.

We have helped multiple clients purchase real estate for rental investment purposes both in Warsaw, Poland and Bucharest, Romania - including clients who did so fully remotely.

Our comprehensive real estate purchase service covers everything from A-Z: from identifying the right market for the client, sourcing deals in that market, managing the deal closing process including legal and technical due diligence to post purchase support (renovation, home staging and photoshoot, property management, annual tax declaration, managing home insurance policies, annual property valuation update, property re-sale).

In cases where the client purchased the property remotely, we also assisted with arranging power of attorneys, notarization and aposillation. As well as dealing with local authorities remotely, such as tax registrations.

We have helped investors remotely open brokerage accounts in countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Romania and Hungary.

Currently, there are very few service providers that can assist with remotely opening up accounts with local brokers and banks in more exotic CEE & CIS frontier and emerging markets. The very few providers that do offer this service typically take months - whereas we take weeks.

We work with leading local brokerage firms and banks which can support both non-resident individual and corporate accounts. In the case of individual account opening, we are able to open accounts without requiring notarization, apostillation and translation of documents in most cases - which saves our clients a significant amount of time and money.

Upon opening, our clients can access local government and corporate bonds where yields are up to 30%, access local stocks and IPOs, as well as convert their ADR and GDR into local shares to de-risk (e.g. for Halyk Bank and Kaspi in the case of Kazakhstan).

Client: Location independent expats (typically in consulting, SaaS and e-commerce)
Tax residency: territorial tax residency with US LLC

Whilst FinTech options such as Wise and Revolut may suffice for expats who net lower than $100K per year; these options are sub-optimal for higher earners who do not want to put their funds or larger transfers at risk and would like a more personalized banking experience.

At the same time, individuals with tax residencies in less prestigious jurisdictions (e.g. Paraguay, Panama or Georgia) often struggle to access Tier A banking options, even when they are ready to commit to a 6 figure deposit and relationship balance with the bank.

We are pleased to have helped expats in these situations build customized solutions to their banking needs, including accessing both premium and private banking options as well as crypto friendly banks in desirable banking jurisdictions across Europe, Asia and LatAm. We have successfully assisted with remote account openings across all three continents and across both NBFIs, retail banks and private banks.

Whilst some other offshore consultants advise illegal shortcuts such as declaring a false tax residency for the ease of accessing banking options - we strictly advise against this and achieve results whilst sticking with fully legal methods.

Client: HNWI with a family office in Hong Kong

As of 2025, banks in Hong Kong remain extremely cautious of crypto transactions due to strict regulations. Yet, the most popular crypto exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken remain unlicensed in Hong Kong - and fiat transactions with such exchanges often puts your HK bank account at risk of being frozen or closed.

We assisted a HNWI individual purchasing crypto for the first time with structuring a regulatory complaint way to buy and sell crypto. This involved setting up an account with a licensed crypto exchange (which has very limited trading pairs but works well for fiat on and off ramp) and supplementing that with DeFi (to compensate for missing trading pairs and staking).

We also advised on OpSec aspects, both on chain and off chain. This included how to interact safely with DeFi protocols and private key storage options, taking into account exotic risks.