Incorporate a company for an existing website

Hello, let’s say I have a website which have traffic and I want to monetize it.

So I need to incorporate a company.

Can I just transfer the website’s domain name to the company?
or should estimate the value of my website by an expert and make the company buy the asset (=the website)?

I probably overthink this, but since lot of you probably have done this many times. I hope you can share your experience.

Note: I’m am EU citizen and I want to incorporate the company in Estonia.

Thank you

There’s no need to capitalize with just money and then buy the domain - that way you’ll pay income tax on the income from your domain sale. The domain would be part of the initial “capitalization” that you invest in the company in exchange for equity. The other parts would be the money used to pay the registration and bank fees.

I don’t agree that “monitizing a website = incorporating” is a foregone conclusion though, but you haven’t provided enough info to opine more.

Thank you for your reply. Indeed, It’s not require to incorporate a company but I want nonetheless for:

  • easy of the Estonian tax system
  • no income tax when you leave the money in the company
  • liability protection
  • expense deduction
  • can contract or hire people

Those are all legitimate points, except #2 comes with a caveat that many countries have rules that tax controlled foreign corporations as local corporations (so you’ll potentially be filing taxes there anyway), and the definition of what constitutes a CFC varies quite a bit and doesn’t necessarily require the controlling agent to hold any equity. Also, be aware that redomiciliation of Estonian companies is not allowed if the rules ever change unfavorably.
Overall, I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, just wanted to make you aware of these two points. Large jurisdictions hate to have to compete with smaller attractive ones on tax and CSP matters.

Yep you right! It is for this reason I plan to live in Estonia 6 months a year and travel the others 6 months. So I would be tax resident in Estonia.