The residence constraint in a Luxembourg company attaches to one role, not to the shareholder register: the manager named on the business permit.
Article 4, 2° of the law of 2 September 2011 asks that the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment, and in practice the director has to live within daily commuting distance of the office — there is no distance published in law, and the administration decides it case by case.
Nearly everything else runs electronically on a LuxTrust credential, from wherever you happen to be: register filings, the corporate tax return, the beneficial-ownership declaration.
The permit is the part that cannot travel
Guichet publishes the permit conditions as a closed list: 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 them do the real work for a founder abroad.
Article 5 of the same law says what "establishment in Luxembourg" means: an appropriate physical installation, adapted to the nature and the scale of the activities carried on. Article 4, 3° does the same for "effective and permanent management", and it asks the manager to be owner of the business where the activity is carried on in a personal name, or entered in the Trade and Companies Register as the company's mandataire where it is a company.
Integrity is checked wider than most people expect. Guichet requires it of 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. An owner who never sets foot in the country is still inside the file.
A remote applicant's pack then adds 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.
It also needs criminal-record extracts covering every state of residence over the preceding 10 years. Those extracts are the slow part of a remote application: they arrive on the issuing country's timetable, not yours.
The mechanics around them are quicker. The chancellery duty is €50, the ministry acknowledges receipt within 15 days, and the decision window is 3 months: the absence of a ministerial reply before the end of the 3-month period counts as a tacit authorisation.
One sequencing trap catches remote founders in particular: the articles of association must be registered with the Trade and Companies Register before the permit is definitively granted. The permit guide works through the qualification side of the same file.
What each rule is actually testing
Five authorities ask five different questions, and founders lose time by answering all of them with one sentence about where they live. The permit asks about a person and a place of business. Company law asks where the central administration sits. Tax law asks where the company is resident. The two payroll tests below apply only if you also employ a non-resident, yourself included.
| Test | Who it binds | What it asks | Where it is set |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business permit | the manager named on the permit | the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment | art. 4, 2°, law of 2 September 2011 |
| Establishment | the company | an appropriate physical installation, adapted to the nature and the scale of the activities carried on | art. 5, same law |
| Registered office | the company | an address in Luxembourg, a company's registered office must be capable of being clearly determined | guichet, Domiciliation de sociétés |
| Company domicile | the company | the domicile of a commercial company sits at the seat of its central administration, which is presumed — until proof to the contrary — to coincide with its registered office | art. 100-2, law of 10 August 1915 |
| Corporate tax residence | the company | a company is resident, and so under unlimited tax liability, when it has its registered office or its place of effective management in Luxembourg | guichet, Impôt sur le revenu des collectivités |
| Salary tax | a non-resident employee's pay | 34 days outside Luxembourg for France, 34 for Germany, 34 for Belgium | double-taxation conventions; ACD FAQ |
| Social security | a cross-border employee | telework between 25% and less than 50% of the employee's total professional activity | CCSS framework agreement |
Where the company is tax-resident, and who decides
The test is written down, and it is not about where the founder sleeps. Guichet's page on the impôt sur le revenu des collectivités states that a company is resident, and so under unlimited tax liability, when it has its registered office or its place of effective management in Luxembourg.
Residence is expensive in scope: a resident company is taxable on its worldwide income, although foreign income is exempt in Luxembourg where it is earned through a permanent establishment in a state bound to Luxembourg by a double-taxation treaty.
The company-law side is a presumption, not a fixed rule. Article 100-2 of the law of 10 August 1915 provides that the domicile of a commercial company sits at the seat of its central administration, which is presumed — until proof to the contrary — to coincide with its registered office.
Until proof to the contrary is the operative phrase. The registered office is the starting assumption, and a foreign tax authority arguing that the real central administration sits in Berlin or Barcelona is trying to rebut it. What it gets rebutted with is ordinary evidence: minutes, signing locations, calendars, travel records. Keep them before anyone asks for them.
Guichet sets out a carve-out for board meetings on its page for the administration of a société anonyme: where the articles of association and/or the internal rules so provide, directors and members of the management or supervisory board who take part by telephone or video conference, or by telecommunication means allowing them to be identified, are deemed present for quorum and majority, and a meeting held by such remote means is deemed to take place at the company's registered office.
Read the opening clause first. The carve-out applies only where the articles or the internal rules provide for it. If they are silent, it does not apply, so this belongs in the articles before anyone relies on it.
The address: what a domiciliation can and cannot carry
A Luxembourg company needs its registered office at an address in Luxembourg. Guichet's domiciliation page adds two conditions around that address: a company's registered office must be capable of being clearly determined, and the domicile of any commercial company is at the company's principal establishment.
"Domiciliation" then does considerably less than the word suggests to a founder shopping for an address: a company without its own premises may, under certain conditions, be domiciled with a third party and fix its registered office there — but guichet states this suits only companies whose activity does not require their own premises, and expressly not a commercial company which the law requires to have a physical establishment in Luxembourg; to count as a stable establishment a company must occupy real premises of its own.
It is also a regulated activity. Domiciliation runs under the amended law of 31 May 1999 governing the domiciliation of companies, and the agent role is reserved — it is reserved by law to credit institutions, other financial-sector and insurance-sector professionals, list I lawyers, list IV European lawyers, réviseurs d'entreprises, réviseurs d'entreprises agréés and experts-comptables.
Address-only setups rarely fail at incorporation. They fail later, and predictably. A bank review, a permit renewal, a foreign tax audit or funding due diligence eventually asks who actually occupies the premises, and the answer has to be a person rather than a contract.
What you can genuinely run from a kitchen table abroad
Almost the whole compliance calendar. The MyGuichet business eSpace is open to legal persons, the self-employed and associations, and you get in with a private or professional LuxTrust product, a Luxembourg electronic identity card, or an eIDAS device from another European country, plus the company's 13-digit national matricule.
The eSpace is collaborative — the administrator can invite other people to join the eSpace and handle procedures inside it, which is how a bookkeeper in one country and a manager in Luxembourg work the same file. One limit to know before you plan around it: some sector services, such as food safety and social elections, are reachable only through a certified business eSpace.
The credential is the gate, and usually the step that has to happen first. The LuxTrust App starts at €50 for 3 years and is badged as active within 48 hours. The professional Scan device starts at €130 and the SmartCard at €160, and both are physical devices, not downloads.
Every one of them requires a compulsory legal identity check before the digital identity is issued, done either in person at LuxTrust, at a partner or at a notary, or online by video. The video option is what makes a genuinely remote start possible.
With a credential in hand, filings are made electronically at the Trade and Companies Register. The beneficial-ownership declaration takes a LuxTrust product, a Luxembourg eID card, or an eIDAS electronic certificate offering at least a substantial level of security.
E-filing of the corporate return is mandatory via MyGuichet.lu since tax year 2017 for resident capital companies, including the s.à r.l. and the s.à r.l.-S, and a LuxTrust product (private or pro) is required both to use MyGuichet and to sign the return.
If you put yourself on a Luxembourg payroll from abroad
Two rulebooks get confused with each other here, and their numbers are not interchangeable. One decides who taxes your salary. The other decides which country's social security you are in.
Tax. For a non-resident employee, days worked outside Luxembourg are rationed by the double-taxation convention with the country of residence. The ACD's FAQ for non-residents, last updated 31 July 2026, sets the allowance at 34 days for France, 34 for Germany and 34 for Belgium.
Check the scope before you budget days against it: the threshold does not cover telework alone — any other professional stay outside Luxembourg, such as a business trip or a training course, counts against the same allowance.
The counting is just as broad: every working day counts towards the threshold, including part-time days and days with shortened hours. The effect of going over is stated plainly: once the threshold is passed, Luxembourg loses the right to tax the salary earned for the work carried out outside its territory.
Social security. Different test, different numbers, decided separately. Under the CCSS framework agreement in effect since 1 July 2023, telework between 25% and less than 50% of the employee's total professional activity can remain covered in Luxembourg, with an A1 issued for up to 3 years. Germany, Belgium and France have all signed it.
Not everyone qualifies: an employee who does not meet the framework agreement's conditions falls back on the ordinary EU coordination rules of Regulation (EC) No 883/2004. Under those rules, activity reaching 25% in the state of residence counts as substantial and activity under 5% counts as marginal.
The employer or its agent must file the request, using either an electronic declaration via SECUline (procedure DEMDET, available whatever the telework percentage), or the paper 'Exercice d'activites dans deux ou plusieurs Etats membres (pluriactivite)' form where telework is not 100% of working time, or the paper 'Demande de detachement dans un Etat membre (art. 12 du reglement n°883/2004)' form where telework is 100% of working time. The declaration can be backdated by at most 3 months, so an arrangement noticed late in the year cannot be fully tidied up on paper afterwards.
Patterns that hold up, and patterns that do not
The anchored founder. You live within reach of the office, travel freely, and the company's decision-making demonstrably happens in Luxembourg: documented board minutes, real use of the premises, signing done here. Travel does not break this pattern.
The local dirigeant. You live abroad and a genuinely empowered manager runs the Luxembourg operation, with real authority, real presence and real pay. It works when it is true. It fails when the "manager" is a signature service, and examiners are professionally good at telling the two apart.
The split with substance. Staff sit abroad under proper local employment while management and core functions stay in Luxembourg. Large groups do this constantly, and a small company can do it in miniature, provided each leg is actually set up in its own country.
What does not hold is the mirror image of all three: an address with no occupant, a founder on another continent, decisions visibly taken somewhere else. Sometimes the honest answer is that the company belongs where you live, and Luxembourg comes later, once the substance can follow it.
Common questions
Do I need to live in Luxembourg to open a company here?
The permit conditions are 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, and none of them names where the shareholders live.
The condition that binds a specific person is effective and permanent management, and in practice the director has to live within daily commuting distance of the office — there is no distance published in law, and the administration decides it case by case.
How many days a year do I have to be in Luxembourg?
No official Luxembourg source publishes a day count, or a distance, for a director or permit holder. What is published is the standard itself: the manager must ensure day-to-day management of the business effectively and permanently, through a physical presence at the establishment. The day counts that do exist answer a different question, the taxation of a non-resident employee's salary, which allows 34 days outside Luxembourg for France, 34 for Germany and 34 for Belgium.
Can a domiciliation address serve as my registered office?
Sometimes, and less often than founders assume: a company without its own premises may, under certain conditions, be domiciled with a third party and fix its registered office there — but guichet states this suits only companies whose activity does not require their own premises, and expressly not a commercial company which the law requires to have a physical establishment in Luxembourg; to count as a stable establishment a company must occupy real premises of its own.
It is governed by the amended law of 31 May 1999 governing the domiciliation of companies, so the provider has to be a licensed professional, not a mailbox.