'Unhappiness with UK tax authorities' a big deciding factor for Ghost's move to S'pore
Photo: blog.ghost.org
SINGAPORE — An online blogging platform, Ghost, will be shutting down its operations in the United Kingdom and incorporating it in Singapore in the next few months.
Mr John O’Nolan, founder of Ghost Foundation that runs the open source publishing platform, made the announcement in a blog post on Monday (Feb 15), saying that the decision is “easily the biggest business change we’ve made to Ghost since it started, and will hopefully give us a much easier time trading internationally!”.
When contacted by TODAY, Mr Nolan, who is currently based in Thailand, cited unhappiness with the UK tax authorities in the UK as a big deciding factor for the move.
In contrast, he found Singapore "a progressive country with a fast-growing startup scene, and is exceptionally in tune with the times”.
Mr O’Nolan revealed that the team had spent the last year looking for a country that met its list of requirements, which included having a “progressive government with sane accounting”.
The fact that Singapore covered all their needs, especially its support for payment processor Stripe.com, was also why it was chosen over other possible destinations. "At this time, there are no viable alternatives outside of Europe and North America which offer Stripe support," he said.
Mr O’Nolan also said they intend to continue operating through a virtual office and will not set up physically here.
In his blog post, he also cited several global rankings that placed Singapore tops for ease of doing business, economic investment potential, best business environment, transparency of government policy making and public trust for politicians. He also noted that the Republic is ranked third in the world for its quality of education and for the least corrupt economy.
Asked if the additional cost incurred from incorporating in Singapore made the decision worthwhile, Mr Nolan said: "The relatively low cost of incorporation in Singapore is entirely worthwhile given its ease of doing international business. What we spent in money, we will make back tenfold in time."
