Legal setup

Choosing a legal structure mixes taxes, social protection, liability, costs and future fundraising, and the rules change regularly. This skill compares the options for the founder's situation from official sources, lists the steps in order, and says clearly when a professional is needed.

No threshold, rate or fee comes from memory: the agent takes them from official pages during the conversation, with the link and the date. This is not legal advice; the final choice deserves a check with an accountant (expert-comptable in France, gestor or asesor in Spain) or a lawyer.

When to use

• Before the first invoice, or when a side project starts to earn money.
• Before bringing in a partner or an investor.
• Not for writing articles of association or a shareholder agreement: that is a lawyer's job.

Inputs

1. Country, and the activity (services, trade, crafts, regulated profession).
2. Alone or with partners; rough revenue and costs for the first year.
3. The founder's situation: student, employee, job seeker, retired.
4. Plans to raise money.

Method

1. Clarify what matters to the founder: simplicity and low cost, protection of personal assets, social protection, taxes, credibility with clients, ease of bringing in partners or investors.
2. List the main options for the country, then confirm every point on the official pages:
   • France: micro-entreprise (simplified regime for individuals, with revenue ceilings), entreprise individuelle, EURL or SASU (companies with one partner), SARL or SAS (several partners; the SAS is the usual choice for projects that plan to raise money). Official sources: entreprendre.service-public.fr, URSSAF (urssaf.fr and autoentrepreneur.urssaf.fr), the one-stop shop for formalities (formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr), the Bpifrance Création guides.
   • Spain: trabajador autónomo (self-employed, registered with the tax agency and Social Security), sociedad limitada (SL), and the startup status created by the Ley 28/2022. Official sources: Seguridad Social (seg-social.es), CIRCE and the Puntos de Atención al Emprendedor (paeelectronico.es), Plataforma PYME (ipyme.org), the BOE for the laws.
   • Elsewhere: the government's business portal, the company registry and the tax authority. Contributions for more countries are welcome.
3. Build a comparison table for this founder: liability, cost and time to set up, social security regime, taxation of profits, accounting duties, VAT, ease of adding partners or investors, ease of closing. Each cell shows its source.
4. Translate the consequences into the founder's numbers with the official simulators when they exist (for example, the URSSAF simulators in France). Never compute taxes or contributions from remembered rates.
5. List the first steps in order: registration, bank account, insurance, invoicing rules, VAT, bookkeeping, trademark filing (INPI in France, OEPM in Spain, EUIPO for the European Union), data protection basics (CNIL in France, AEPD in Spain).
6. Say when a professional is needed: partners with unequal contributions, regulated activities, intellectual property brought by a founder, fundraising, activity in several countries.

Output

### What matters to you
…

### Options compared (checked on <date>)
| | Option A | Option B | Option C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liability | | | |
| Cost and time to set up | | | |
| Social security | | | |
| Taxes | | | |
| Partners and investors | | | |
| Sources | | | |

### Recommendation (to confirm with a professional)
…

### First steps, in order
1. …

Quality bar

• Every rule, ceiling, rate and fee comes from an official page, with the link and the date; without web access, the table lists what to check instead of figures.
• The comparison fits the founder's situation and goals.
• The steps are in order and complete up to the first invoice.
• The answer says it is not legal advice and names the cases where a professional is needed.
• Written in the user's language, with the terms below.

Terminology

Sources

• Entreprendre.Service-Public.fr (official portal for businesses in France): https://entreprendre.service-public.fr
• Guichet unique des formalités d'entreprises (France): https://formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr
• URSSAF: https://www.urssaf.fr
• Seguridad Social (Spain): https://www.seg-social.es
• CIRCE and Puntos de Atención al Emprendedor (Spain): https://paeelectronico.es
• Ley 28/2022, de 21 de diciembre, de fomento del ecosistema de las empresas emergentes. Boletín Oficial del Estado. https://www.boe.es/eli/es/l/2022/12/21/28