Independent consulting is a commercial activity in Luxembourg, so it needs a business permit before the first invoice goes out. The chancellery duty is €50, the Ministry of the Economy takes up to 3 months, and the absence of a ministerial reply before the end of the 3-month period counts as a tacit authorisation.
For advice that is not one of the regulated professions there is no diploma to produce: none — no professional qualification is required for commercial activities that are not otherwise regulated. What actually decides your file is which of three access routes your activity falls into.
The permit rules below were verified in August 2026 against guichet.lu and the loi du 2 septembre 2011 in its consolidated version applicable since 1 September 2023.
Three access routes, and consulting uses all of them
There is no single "consultant" category. The activity you describe on the application decides which route applies, and the three are not interchangeable: one is a business permit with no qualification test, one is a business permit with a diploma-and-practice test, and one sits outside the business-permit system altogether. The access conditions page is the authoritative list.
| What you advise on | Access route | Qualification test |
|---|---|---|
| Management, strategy, marketing, IT, HR — not otherwise regulated | Business permit, commercial activities and services | none — no professional qualification is required for commercial activities that are not otherwise regulated |
| Chartered accountant, accountant, engineer, architect, patent attorney | Business permit, liberal profession | a named diploma plus years of practice |
| Auditor, lawyer, financial-sector, medical and health professions | Not a business permit — a separate authorisation | set by the supervising body |
The commercial route is the default, and its label moved. A file built around the phrase conseil économique is applying into a category that has closed: business permits are no longer issued for economic advice and advisory activities; the persons concerned must instead apply for a permit for commercial activities and services. The work is unchanged; the heading on the form is not.
The liberal-profession route is a closed list, not a judgement call. The professions that still take a business permit are architect, interior architect, landscape architect or landscape engineer, construction engineer, independent engineer in a discipline other than construction, surveyor, town and country planner, chartered accountant, accountant and patent attorney.
An accountant needs a technical secondary school graduation diploma (diplôme de fin d'études secondaires techniques ou de technicien) in the administrative and commercial division or equivalent, plus 3 years of practice; a chartered accountant needs a bachelor's degree in economics, finance, management, business law or equivalent, plus 3 years. Calling that work "financial consulting" on the form does not move it out of the list.
The third route leaves the permit system entirely. Not covered by a business permit at all: the profession of auditor, supervised by the CSSF and controlled by the Institut des réviseurs d'entreprises; other financial-sector professions, which require an authorisation or accreditation from either the Minister of Justice or the CSSF; the profession of lawyer, which requires an authorisation from the Ministry of Justice; and medical professions (physician, dentist, veterinary surgeon, pharmacist) and health professions (nurse, midwife, physiotherapist and others), which require a permit from the Ministry of Health and Social Security.
What the permit file actually asks of you
The conditions are knowable in advance and there are five of them: professional integrity, professional qualification in line with the planned activity, establishment in Luxembourg, effective and permanent management of the business by the permit holder, and compliance with tax and business obligations. Two of the five do most of the work in a consulting file.
Establishment is physical. The premises condition asks for an appropriate physical installation, adapted to the nature and the scale of the activities carried on, and the management condition says the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment. An application that describes a mobile number and a client's meeting room has not described an establishment, and that is the condition left unmet.
Integrity is checked on more than one person. The people who must prove it are the manager of the business in whose name the permit will be issued; and, where the business is operated as a company, also the person holding the majority of the shares and anyone who can exert a significant influence on the management or administration of the business.
A person resident in Luxembourg for more than ten years files a declaration of honour on management positions held in the previous 3 years, plus an extract no. 3 from the Luxembourg criminal record.
Everyone else adds criminal-record extracts from every State of residence over the previous 10 years, and a declaration of non-bankruptcy, recent and unlimited in time and space, made before a notary in Luxembourgish, French, German or English — required of non-residents as well as of anyone resident in Luxembourg for less than 10 years; it must state that the applicant has not been involved in the bankruptcy of a business in their own name or in the bankruptcy of a company.
The integrity page carries the full document list.
The sequencing catch is at the end rather than the beginning: the articles of association must be registered with the Trade and Companies Register before the permit is definitively granted. Permit and company are not two queues you can run in either order.
An acknowledgement of receipt is due within 15 days, and the 3-month decision window can be extended by 1 month where a foreign professional qualification has to be recognised. Once granted, either the ministerial permit number or the two-dimensional barcode has to appear on letters, emails, websites, price quotes, invoices and shop fronts of all sales outlets, plus the signs that must be installed at all construction sites.
Structure: which company form the work sits in
Consulting adds one weight to the structure question: advice can cause expensive damage, and claims arrive years after the engagement, so indemnity cover and the choice of form get decided together. Whether to incorporate at all is the subject of our freelance-versus-company comparison; the numbers separating the corporate forms are these.
| Form | Share capital | The constraint that decides it |
|---|---|---|
| Sàrl-S | €1 to €12,000 | only natural persons — a company can never be a shareholder |
| Sàrl | €12,000 minimum | a notarial deed — the company must be formed in the presence of a notary |
| SA | €30,000 minimum | capital fully subscribed and at least one quarter paid up at incorporation |
The Sàrl-S is formed on a private deed — a notarised document is not required, which is what makes it the cheap entry point. It carries conditions a growing consultancy meets quickly: a natural person may not be a shareholder in more than one SARL-S at the same time, and the company must change its legal form if the share capital exceeds EUR 12,000.
Its activity scope is limited too — craftsmen, traders, manufacturers and certain liberal professions, activities covered by a business permit — so a profession that takes the third access route above falls outside this form entirely.
The dependency trap
The pattern that draws scrutiny is the exclusive one: a "consultant" serving a single client, full time, on that client's premises, under that client's direction. That is employment wearing an invoice — a risk created by the shape of the engagement, not by consulting itself. The arithmetic behind the label is what makes it expensive, and the CCSS publishes both sides of it:
| Status | Contribution rate | Carried by |
|---|---|---|
| Self-employed | ≈25.15 (health 6.10 + pension 17.00 + dependency 1.40 + accident 0.65 at standard factor) — 2026 rates | the consultant |
| Employee share | 12.95 (health 3.05 + pension 8.50 + dependency 1.40) — 2026 rates | withheld from pay |
| Employer share | ≈12.6–15.2 (health 3.05 + pension 8.50 + accident 0.65 × bonus-malus + occupational health 0.14 + employers' mutual class 0.23–2.66) — 2026 rates | the employer |
Rights come with the reclassification too, and they attach to a relationship nobody documented as employment: an oral employment contract is necessarily concluded for an indefinite period, and the employer's notice for under five years' service runs to 2 months.
Protect the arrangement structurally: several clients over time, your own tools and place of work, genuine autonomy over how the work is done, and engagement letters that reflect all three. If the honest answer is one client forever, the employment comparison deserves running properly — the contribution table above is only one line of it.
Invoices and VAT from the first engagement
A taxable person who is not exempt from registration has 15 days from starting activity to register. Below €50,000 of annual turnover the small-business franchise regime is available, with a tolerance to €55,000; above it, the standard rate is 17%.
Franchise invoices carry the mention TVA non applicable – Article 57bis de la loi modifiée du 12 février 1979, and since 1 January 2025 a taxable person under the franchise regime may issue simplified invoices and may not show VAT on them. A business in the franchise regime still reports before 1 March each year, declaring the turnover achieved in the previous calendar year.
Filing frequency then follows turnover: below €112,000 of annual VAT-exclusive turnover annual filing can suffice, and above €620,000 filing is monthly. Business-to-business invoices are due no later than the 15th day of the month following the month in which the goods were delivered or the service performed.
Where a supply is reverse-charged to the customer, the wording the AED prescribes is the French Autoliquidation, not its English translation — which is why it belongs in the invoice template from the first engagement rather than in a note to self.
The first-year sequence
The order matters more than the speed of any single step, because step two gates step one: the permit is not definitively granted until the articles are on the register. The deadlines after that are short and they run from the day activity starts, not from the day a file was submitted.
- Fix the activity description, then apply for the business permit: €50, acknowledgement within 15 days, decision within 3 months.
- Incorporate, remembering that the articles of association must be registered with the Trade and Companies Register before the permit is definitively granted.
- Register for VAT within 15 days of starting activity.
- Affiliate with the CCSS within 8 days as a self-employed manager.
- Put the permit identifier on your documents before the first invoice leaves.
Once trading, SME Packages co-funds a consultancy's own tooling and processes at up to 70% of eligible costs.
Common questions
Three questions follow directly from the rules above.
Does a consultant in Luxembourg need a business permit?
Yes, where the advice is a commercial activity, which covers most general consulting. Some advisory professions take a different authorisation instead of a business permit; the three access routes above set out which, and where each one is granted.
Do I need a diploma to work as a consultant?
Not for unregulated advice: none — no professional qualification is required for commercial activities that are not otherwise regulated. The liberal professions on the permit list are the exception — an accountant, for example, needs 3 years of practice on top of the diploma.
Do I have to charge VAT on my first invoice?
Not necessarily. The franchise regime runs up to €50,000 of annual turnover with a tolerance to €55,000, and those invoices carry TVA non applicable – Article 57bis de la loi modifiée du 12 février 1979 instead of a VAT amount. Charging no VAT is a separate question from registering: where registration is required, the clock is 15 days.
What to get right first
The activity description is the load-bearing choice: it determines the access route, the qualification test, the form you can use, and whether the permit you receive actually covers what you sell. Everything else in this article is a deadline that follows from it.