How to start a business in Denmark in 2026

Registering an ApS can take hours; opening a bank account as a non-resident can take months - and that is where most plans break.

The short version: what Denmark gives you and what it does not

Denmark is one of the easiest places in Europe to administer a company. You register a limited company online, often the same day. The register is public, officials answer email, and paperwork is close to nonexistent. Corporate tax is a flat 22% with no municipal or regional surcharges.

Now the uncomfortable part. Easy registration is not the same as an easy launch. A Danish bank will most likely turn you down if you have no CPR number, no Danish address and no visible link to the local market. Salary levels are such that your first hire costs more than a small team in Eastern Europe. And the entrepreneur residence permit runs on a quota of 75 people per year for the whole country.

Denmark works well in two scenarios: you already run a business that is entering the Nordic market, or you are building a technology startup with a real product. If your goal is simply a cheaper European company for invoicing, Denmark is the wrong answer and there are simpler jurisdictions.

Available business forms

ApS - the default choice

Anpartsselskab (ApS) is the Danish private limited company and the form most small and mid-sized businesses use. Since 27 February 2025 the minimum share capital has been halved to about $3,100. That money is not a government fee: it stays inside the company and can be spent on operations once the company exists.

One founder, one director, the same person in both roles - all acceptable. An ApS does not need a supervisory board, a managing director (direktion) is enough.

A/S - for investors and larger structures

Aktieselskab (A/S) is the public limited company. Minimum share capital is about $60,300, of which at least 25%, about $15,100, must be paid up at registration. A board of directors is mandatory. An A/S makes sense if you plan institutional funding rounds, multiple share classes or a listing. Otherwise it is overhead.

Branch of a foreign company

A filial is not a separate legal entity but an extension of your existing company. No share capital is required, but the parent company carries full liability for the branch. You need a branch manager and a document package from the home jurisdiction: articles, register extract, details of directors and beneficial owners, usually translated and legalised. The branch is entered in the CVR register and receives its own number.

Sole trader, and the form that no longer exists

A sole proprietorship (enkeltmandsvirksomhed) is free to register and needs no capital, but liability is personal and unlimited and profits are taxed on the progressive personal scale. For a non-resident this is almost always a dead end.

The IVS (iværksætterselskab), the DKK 1 entrepreneur company, was abolished on 15 April 2019 after widespread abuse. Existing IVS entities had until 15 October 2021 to top up capital and convert into an ApS or be dissolved. If somebody offers to register an IVS for you today, they have not read the law since 2019.

Registration through Erhvervsstyrelsen

The registrar is Erhvervsstyrelsen, the Danish Business Authority. Everything runs through the virk.dk portal and the output is an eight-digit CVR number that serves as both company and tax identifier. The online registration fee for a company is about $110.

The sequence looks like this:

• Prepare the incorporation deed (stiftelsesdokument) and articles of association (vedtægter). The articles set out the capital, the financial year, the management structure and, where applicable, the decision to opt out of the statutory audit.
• Pay in the capital. There are three routes: a Danish lawyer's client account, a bank of your choice, or an auditor. For non-residents the lawyer route is the usual answer, because a bank will not open an account at this stage anyway.
• Register the beneficial owners (reelle ejere). This is filed together with the incorporation - no CVR number is issued without it.
• Submit on virk.dk and pay the fee. A complete digital filing is often processed within hours; anything routed to manual review takes around two weeks.
• Register separately for VAT and as an employer where relevant.

The practical catch: signing and filing run through MitID, the Danish digital ID. Getting MitID without a CPR number is effectively impossible, so non-residents almost always act through a representative under power of attorney: Murblz specialists handle this together with a Danish partner. That is standard practice, not a workaround.

Director and registered address

Danish company law does not require the director of an ApS to be a Danish citizen or resident: anyone, from anywhere, can manage the company. The address is a different matter. It must be a real Danish address where the company receives correspondence and can be served with legal documents. A mailbox will pass registration and then create friction with the bank and the tax authority once they start testing economic substance.

Keep in mind separately that managing the company from abroad can create tax residence somewhere else. If the director lives in Spain and all decisions are made there, the Danish and Spanish authorities will argue about the place of effective management and you will pay for the outcome. We unpack that logic in our overview of taxes in Denmark.

The bank account: the real bottleneck

This is where most plans collapse. Danish banks apply strict KYC and anti-money-laundering procedures and are under no obligation to serve a non-resident. In practice a bank wants to see a CPR number and Danish address for at least one of the managers, a business model that plausibly touches Denmark or the Nordics, and a documented source of funds.

What to expect:

• Compliance review of a non-resident corporate client takes weeks, not days, and frequently ends in a refusal with no stated reason.
• Banks charge to open a corporate account for international structures - the figure starts at several hundred dollars, not a token amount.
• You can pay in the share capital without a bank account, through a lawyer's client account. So you can complete the incorporation and still have no operating account.
• Electronic money institutions with Danish or European IBANs are faster and easier to open. They cover basic payments but do not provide credit lines or local card acquiring, and some Danish counterparties and public bodies will not accept them for every purpose.

The honest conclusion: if nobody on your team lives in Denmark with a CPR number, plan for either relocation, an EMI setup, or a local director. We map these forks in our company registration service.

Taxes

Danish tax is simple on rates and strict on administration. Corporate income tax is a flat 22%, with no progression and no small-business regime. VAT (moms) is 25% with no reduced rates at all - not on food, not on books, not on children's goods.

VAT registration is required once turnover passes DKK 50,000 over twelve months, and the application must be filed no later than eight days before taxable activity begins. Filing frequency follows turnover: below DKK 5 million semi-annually, DKK 5-50 million quarterly, above DKK 50 million monthly. New businesses normally start on quarterly filing.

Dividends. For an individual, share income is taxed at 27% on the first DKK 79,400 in 2026 and 42% above that; for married couples the threshold doubles to DKK 158,800. Payments to non-residents carry a 22% withholding rate, reducible under tax treaties and EU directives, though the mechanism often means withholding first and reclaiming later, and Danish refunds are not fast.

A genuine advantage for holding structures: dividends a Danish company receives on subsidiary shares of 10% or more are tax exempt. From 1 January 2025 the tax on dividends from unlisted portfolio shares below 10% was also abolished under the Danish entrepreneur package.

If Denmark looks expensive, compare the neighbours: company profit is taxed at 22% in Norway (taxes in Norway) and at 20% in Iceland (taxes in Iceland).

Reporting and audit

The annual report (årsrapport) is filed with Erhvervsstyrelsen within five months of the financial year end, so 31 May for a calendar year. It is public - anyone can read it in the register. The corporate tax return is due within six months, that is 30 June. Advance corporate tax instalments fall on 20 March and 20 November.

Audit is not mandatory for small companies. The exemption applies if the company stays below two of three thresholds for two consecutive years: DKK 8 million turnover, DKK 4 million balance sheet total, and an average of 12 employees. The opt-out is a shareholder decision, usually built into the articles at incorporation.

One newer burden is the requirement to keep records in a certified digital bookkeeping system. It applies to businesses with turnover above DKK 300,000, and the system must be able to send and receive electronic invoices and export data for tax audits. The practical meaning is straightforward: spreadsheets are no longer compliant and you need a subscription to Danish or certified European software.

Entrepreneur residence: Start-up Denmark

Registering a company does not give you the right to live in Denmark. EU, EEA and Swiss citizens need no permit and rely on free movement. Everyone else who wants to run their own business in Denmark needs a residence permit, and the main channel is the Start-up Denmark scheme.

How it works: an expert panel appointed by the Danish Business Authority assesses the business plan first. Judges score four criteria from 1 to 5 and an average of at least 3.5 is required for approval. Only after the plan is approved can you apply to SIRI for a residence and work permit.

Key 2026 parameters:

• Quota: a maximum of 75 permits per calendar year across the whole scheme.
• SIRI application fee: about $460.
• Proof of funds for the first year: about $23,100 for a single applicant, $46,200 with a spouse, $53,800 with a spouse and children, $30,700 with children but no spouse.
• Processing time: around two months, up to four if additional documents are requested.
• Permit validity: up to two years, extendable for up to three years at a time.
• Teams: up to three people can apply on one project.

What the panel will not approve: restaurants, consultancies, retail shops and import-export businesses. Such applications are usually filtered out by the secretariat before they reach the experts. The scheme is designed for innovative and scalable ventures, not for relocating a conventional business. The broader choice between business immigration and other routes is covered in our residence permits section.

What living and hiring actually cost

Denmark is expensive. There is no statutory minimum wage - pay is set by collective agreements - and the resulting level is high: a mid-level hire in 2026 typically costs an employer around DKK 30,000-70,000 per month. On top come mandatory and sector contributions: ATP pension (roughly DKK 3,400 a year in total, about two thirds paid by the employer), holiday pay at 12.5% of earnings, and industry pension and insurance schemes. Together these add roughly 10% to 25% on top of gross salary depending on sector and collective agreement.

For the founder personally: a one-bedroom flat in Copenhagen realistically runs $1,900-2,600 per month, and a single person's total monthly cost including rent lands around $2,300-3,400. That is why the proof-of-funds requirement of about $23,100 is not a formality but close to a bare minimum.

There is an offset. Recruited high earners can use the special expatriate regime at 32.84% including the labour market contribution, for up to 84 months, provided average salary is at least DKK 65,400 per month in 2026. A founder cannot always use it - the regime restricts prior ties to Denmark and control over the employing company, so it has to be modelled case by case.

Who Denmark does not suit, and what goes wrong

It does not suit you if you want a cheap European company for invoicing. Capital, address, accounting and certified software make the first year far more expensive than the state fee, and the tax burden offers no edge over the neighbours.

It does not suit you if transparency is a problem. Annual accounts are public, beneficial owners are registered, the register is open. Nominee structures do not work here.

It does not suit you if your business is consulting, hospitality or trading and you are counting on Start-up Denmark for residence. Those sectors are screened out by the scheme's own rules.

Common failure modes:

• The company is registered but no bank will take it. Setup money is spent, the capital sits on a lawyer's client account, and operations never start. This is the most frequent outcome.
• The eight-day VAT registration deadline is missed and the first sales are invoiced without proper VAT treatment, followed by back payment and penalties.
• The annual report is filed late. The Danish Business Authority is not patient: fines land on management personally, and prolonged non-filing leads to compulsory dissolution through the court.
• Effective management sits abroad and a tax authority challenges the place of management. The result is double taxation and a long dispute.
• A loan from the company to its owner. Danish law generally prohibits shareholder loans and taxes them as income while the repayment obligation remains. A routine move elsewhere becomes an expensive mistake here.
• Assuming the company itself grants a right to stay in the country. It grants nothing beyond a CVR number.

For a non-resident the sensible order is the reverse of the intuitive one: settle your legal status and banking first, then incorporate. Without status, the company becomes an annual compliance bill with no revenue attached.

FAQ