How to Register a SIA in Latvia

The state fee for a standard SIA is EUR 75, the register decides in days, and none of that is the hard part.

The hard parts are three, and they are the same whether you live in Riga or have never been: the whole share capital has to be paid before you file rather than half of it, your legal address has to be somewhere you can prove a right to be, and the bank account is a separate problem that registration does not solve.

One thing is genuinely different from abroad, and it is the opposite of what most guides say. You can register a Latvian company without living here, without a Latvian electronic signature, and without visiting the country.

This states the rules with a link to each. Where a section describes what happens in practice rather than what a statute says, it says so. It is not advice, and it is not a substitute for an adviser who can see your documents.

How Do You Register an SIA in Latvia?

Pay the whole share capital into a payment account in the company's name, prepare the founding documents, secure written consent for the legal address, and file with the Register of Enterprises for a EUR 75 state fee. Holders of a qualified electronic signature file online, and everyone else signs before a notary, which works from abroad.

Can You Register a Latvian Company Without an Electronic Signature?

Yes. The Commercial Law accepts documents filed paper or electronic, and where a signature must be certified, a sworn notary can certify it instead of a secure electronic signature. A non-resident signs before a notary where they live, and a representative files in Riga under a notarially certified power of attorney.

There are two filing routes, and which one you take depends on what you can already sign with rather than on where you live.

If you hold a Latvian eID, eParaksts or a qualified Smart-ID, which is most people resident here, the whole thing is online. Sign the founding documents electronically, file through the register's portal, pay the fee, and wait. No notary, no apostille, no translation, and nothing in this guide's paperwork section applies to you. Read the share capital, address and after-registration sections and skip the rest.

If you do not, which is most people abroad, read on. Almost every guide to this says Latvia's register is paperless and you therefore need a qualified electronic signature. That is wrong, and it is the error most likely to stop a non-resident before they start.

The Commercial Law says documents may be filed paper or electronic, and that where the law requires a signature to be certified by a notary, the requirement is satisfied either by a sworn notary certifying it or, if the document is electronic, by a secure electronic signature. Two routes, not one, and the notarial route has been there all along.

So the actual fork is:

• You already hold an eIDAS-qualified signature. An EU national eID, a qualified Smart-ID, or Latvian eParaksts. Sign and file online, and this is fast. An eID from any member state works; it does not have to be Latvian.
• You do not. Use a notary. A power of attorney letting someone else sign for you must itself be notarially certified, which is exactly how remote incorporations are usually done: you sign in front of a notary where you live, and a representative files in Riga.

The cost of the second route is paperwork, not impossibility. A document issued abroad has to be legalised, with a notarised Latvian translation before the register will take it, so budget time for an apostille and a sworn translation rather than for a flight.

If you plan to run the company yourself afterwards, you will still want a Latvian electronic identity eventually, because filing your own tax returns needs one. Get it after registration, not before, and do not let it block you. Fees and eligibility for a foreigner's eID card are set by the migration authority and change; check them at PMLP rather than trusting any figure in an article, including this one.

What Is the Minimum Share Capital for an SIA in Latvia?

A standard SIA needs share capital of EUR 2,800, and the whole of it must be paid in before the application is filed, not half as older guides say. A reduced-capital SIA can be founded on almost nothing, but only natural persons may hold it, at most five, and it must build a profit reserve.

A standard SIA needs EUR 2,800. An AS needs EUR 25,000 and is not what you want. There is also a reduced-capital SIA that can be founded on almost nothing, and it is marketed far more enthusiastically than it deserves.

Before the comparison, the rule that catches people: you pay in the whole of it before you file the application. Older guides say half, and that was true once. It is not now. If you were planning to register on half the capital and find the rest later, you were planning against a repealed rule.

Two things in that table are commonly misreported. Dividends from a reduced-capital company are not blocked until capital reaches the minimum; they are paid from the profit left after the reserve deduction. And the constraint is that every board member must be a shareholder, not that every shareholder must sit on the board.

The rule that actually decides it is the one about holding shares in only one such company, combined with natural persons only. The moment a fund, a holding company, or a sixth shareholder joins, you have three months to find EUR 2,800. If you expect to raise, start standard. The saving is EUR 75 minus EUR 20 in fees and a deferral of capital that stays yours anyway.

How Many Latvian Companies Register Below the Standard Share Capital?

Of every active SIA in Latvia, 31.1% are registered below the standard minimum and 11.8% at exactly one euro. The median company registers exactly EUR 2,800, the statutory floor to the cent, which is what a minimum looks like when it is treated as a target.

The companies on this map are about half as likely to have taken the cheap route: 16.1% of them sit below the minimum, against 31.1% across the register. Read that as a description of two populations rather than as advice. A one euro shelf company is exactly the kind of entity that would never have been added to a curated list, so the gap is partly what the list is. The share capital report has the distribution and says what else it cannot tell you.

Can You Convert a Reduced-Capital SIA Into a Standard One Later?

Yes, and it is cheaper than most people expect. A capital increase is a change to the articles: the shareholders resolve it, the money goes in, and you file the amendment for a EUR 20 state fee, which is less than the difference between the two registration fees you were choosing between at the start.

So the decision is not permanent and should not be agonised over. What makes it expensive is not the fee but the timing. If you are converting because a fund or a company is joining the shareholder register, you are doing it under the three months clock rather than at your own pace, alongside everything else a funding round demands. Starting standard buys you the absence of that.

One thing a capital increase does not do is get the money back out. Share capital paid in is the company's, not yours, and taking it out again is a capital reduction with a creditor notice period attached. It can be spent on the business freely. It cannot be quietly returned. The cap table guide covers capital increases for a funding round, share classes, and share transfers.

What Documents Do You Need to Register an SIA in Latvia?

You need the founding agreement or decision, the articles of association, written consent from each board member, the first section of the shareholder register, and the board's statement about the legal address. For cash capital up to EUR 50,000, the founders certify in the application that it has been paid into a payment account.

Pick a name and check it. It must be distinguishable from what is already registered and carry the form, so "SIA". What Latvian companies call themselves counts the language of every name since 1991, including the year English overtook Latvian.

Prepare the documents. The founding agreement or decision, the articles of association, written consent from each board member, the shareholder register's first section, and the board's statement about the legal address.

Open a payment account and pay the capital in. Where capital is paid in cash and does not exceed EUR 50,000, the founders certify in the application that an account has been opened in the name of the company being founded and the capital paid into it. Read that carefully: for an ordinary SIA the law asks for your certification, not a bank's confirmation letter. It also says a payment account, not a Latvian credit institution.

File and pay the fee. EUR 75 for a standard SIA, EUR 20 for a reduced-capital one, EUR 85 for an AS, EUR 30 for an individual merchant.

One useful detail buried in the fee schedule: the fee is tripled if you want the application examined within one working day, except for an individual merchant or a single-founder capital company, where the stated fee already buys one-working-day examination. A solo founder gets the fast lane at the ordinary price, which nobody mentions.

What Are the Legal Address Requirements for a Latvian Company?

Every Latvian company needs a legal address, and the board must state it including the cadastral designation, and proof of a lawful basis to be there. That means a specific building, flat, or set of premises identified in the cadastre, and consent from whoever controls it, which is a requirement with teeth that a virtual address may not satisfy.

An address service that gives you a street and a mailbox but cannot point at a cadastre object, or will not put its name to your right to be there, is not selling you what the register asks for. The coworking and office guide compares what Riga's coworking spaces charge for an address.

Whose Consent Do You Need to Register a Company at an Address?

The owner's, in writing. A tenant needs the owner's consent rather than the letting agent's, an address service must name the building and put its consent in writing, and if you own the premises you consent to yourself. Consent can be withdrawn, and a company left without a valid legal address is on a path to liquidation.

Who has to agree depends on the building.

• Renting a flat or an office. The owner's written consent, not the letting agent's. A tenancy agreement that says nothing about registering a company at the address is not consent to do it, and landlords frequently refuse once they understand that the address becomes public and that state correspondence, including anything from a bailiff, will arrive there.
• A flat in an apartment building. Consent from the owner of that flat. Where common parts are involved the building's manager may also have a say, which is worth asking about before you file rather than after.
• An address service. Read what they are actually selling. The register wants a cadastre object and a lawful basis, so a provider who will name the building and put their consent in writing is selling the thing; one selling a mailbox and a forwarding arrangement is not.

Consent can be withdrawn. If it is, the register can strike the address, and a company without a valid legal address is on a path that ends in liquidation. This is the quiet reason to prefer an address you control or pay a provider for over a favour from a friend.

Is a Latvian Company's Legal Address Public?

Yes, permanently. The address goes into the commercial register, is republished by every data service that mirrors the register, and appears on this site's map. If it is your home, changing it later does not undo that: the old address stays in the register's history and in every copy anyone has already taken.

Can a Foreign-Owned Latvian Company Open a Bank Account?

Often not easily, and this is observation rather than statute. The law needs only a payment account in the company's name, but Latvian banks frequently decline companies with no Latvian residents, customers, or operations, usually after weeks. The usual fallback is an electronic money institution, so start the account alongside registration, not after it.

This is where non-resident incorporations actually stall, and everyone who sells incorporation services is soft about it.

What the law requires is above: a payment account in the company's name, with the capital in it, certified by you. What happens in practice is a separate matter, and this is observation rather than statute.

Latvian banks apply anti-money-laundering rules that make a company with no Latvian residents, no local customers and no local operations an expensive customer to onboard. A founder with no connection to Latvia beyond a registered address is frequently declined, and the decline usually arrives after weeks. This is not a rule anyone will show you, and it is not something an incorporation agent can promise around.

What people do instead is use an electronic money institution. The law's wording is "payment account", and an EMI account is a payment account. What an EMI generally will not give you is everything a bank does: some payment types, some counterparties, and some tenders will want an account at a credit institution. Licensing one yourself is a different question with a capital requirement attached.

Plan for it in this order. Treat the account as its own project, started early and in parallel with registration rather than after it. Have a second option before you need it. And if your business genuinely has nothing to do with Latvia, expect that to be the sticking point, because from the bank's side that is precisely the risk being priced.

The business bank account guide covers what the banks ask for.

What Do You Need to Do After Registering a Company in Latvia?

Activate the company's official electronic address on day one, appoint a bookkeeper, and finish the bank or EMI account. Settle the VAT question before the first invoice, since cross-border supplies trigger registration far below the EUR 50,000 domestic threshold, and budget for a board member's social contributions once turnover starts.

Registration gets you a number and a company. It does not switch anything on. In rough order of how quickly it hurts if you skip it:

The detail on each follows, and the compliance calendar sets out every recurring filing after that.

• The official electronic address. Activate it. State correspondence goes there.
• VAT. You are not registered by default. You may stay unregistered while domestic turnover stays under EUR 50,000 in a calendar year. Cross-border supplies have their own separate triggers, and lower ones, so a company selling services into other member states usually needs to register well before that figure. The VAT guide has the thresholds, the grace band above the first one, and both deadlines.
• Bookkeeping. Monthly and annual obligations start immediately. Prices are negotiated and we are not going to invent a range.
• Data protection. You become a controller the moment you hold anyone's personal data, which is usually the first employee or the first customer. There is no size threshold. The data protection guide covers what applies from day one and what Latvia adds to it.
• Intellectual property. The company owns the economic rights in code its employees write, and rather little else by default. The intellectual property guide has the clause that closes the gap, and it costs nothing at hiring time.

And the one that surprises solo founders. If in a month your company's turnover exceeds five minimum monthly wages and there is no employee paid at least the minimum wage, a board member is treated as an employee, with a contribution base of the minimum monthly wage. The minimum wage is EUR 780.

Five times that is a turnover of EUR 3,900 in a month, which is not a lot.

A one-person company that starts earning and pays its director nothing still generates social contributions on that base. Budget for it from your first real invoice. It is also why paying yourself nothing is rarely the cheapest way to pay yourself, which the founder pay guide works through.

What Is a Board Member Personally Liable For in Latvia?

A board member must act as a diligent and careful manager, and is jointly liable with the other board members for losses caused to the company. The burden runs the wrong way round: liability is assumed once a loss is shown, and the board member has to prove the care. Claims lapse 5 years after the loss.

Limited liability limits the shareholder, not the director, and these are usually the same person in a new SIA. Signing the registration form makes you both. Nothing below is common, and none of it reaches a company that pays what it owes and files what it must, but the founder signing up as sole board member should know the shape of it.

• The standard of care, and who has to prove it. Article 169 of the Commercial Law requires a board member to act as a diligent and careful manager, and makes board members jointly and severally liable for losses caused to the company. The third part is the sharp one: the board member escapes by proving they met that standard, rather than the company proving they did not. Acting in good faith inside a lawful shareholders' resolution is a defence; council approval of the board's conduct is not.
• Five years, from the loss and not from discovery. Claims against a board member lapse 5 years after the day the loss was caused. A board member who resigns does not start a new clock.
• Unpaid tax can become yours. Article 60 of the Law on Taxes and Duties lets the Revenue Service pursue a board member personally for the company's overdue tax, but only when five things are all true: the debt exceeds 50 minimum monthly wages, currently EUR 39,000; the recovery decision was served on the company; the company disposed of assets after an audit or control began and the debt went unpaid through the board member's act or omission; recovery from the company was formally recorded as impossible; and the company did not file for insolvency when it had to. Several board members are liable together. Under article 61 the Service must warn the company and the board member in writing within 3 months of that record.
• The insolvency filing duty is the criterion you control. The last of those five is the one a board member decides. Under article 60 of the Insolvency Law a debtor must file without delay once a statutory sign of insolvency exists, and article 57 makes one of those signs debts overdue for more than 2 months. A separate sign lets a creditor of an SIA warn of an application once it is owed more than EUR 4,268 and three weeks have passed. Trading on while that duty is live is what converts a company's problem into the board's.
• The register is a duty too. Article 169.1 makes a board member liable to shareholders and to buyers and sellers of shares for losses from failing to keep the shareholder register properly or to file it, with administrative liability on top.

What this adds up to in practice is narrow. Pay the tax, file the returns, keep the shareholder register current, and act on overdue debts rather than around them. The compliance calendar lists what falls due and when, and the liquidation guide covers closing a company properly, which is the cheapest exit from all of the above.

How Much Does It Cost to Register a Company in Latvia?

The state fee is EUR 75 for a standard SIA or EUR 20 for a reduced-capital one, plus share capital of EUR 2,800 for the standard form, which stays the company's money. A registered address, bookkeeping, notarial certification, translation, and formation help are market prices that vary by provider, so get three quotes.

The statutory part is small and exact:

The share capital is the big number and it is not a fee. It stays the company's money and can be spent on the business. What genuinely leaves is the state fee.

Everything else is a market price, not a statutory one: a registered address, a bookkeeper, notarial certification and translation if you take the notary route, and formation help if you want it. Those are quoted, negotiated, and vary by provider and by how complicated your shareholding is. We are not publishing a range for them, because a range we cannot source is a number we would be making up, and this site's whole claim is that it does not do that. Get three quotes.

Do budget separately for the director's social contributions once turnover starts, because that is the recurring cost most first-year plans miss.

How Many Companies in Latvia Have Foreign Owners?

97 of the 553 companies on this map with an owner on record have a non-Latvian one, which is 17.5%, or roughly one in six. Across the whole register the largest foreign origins are Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Estonia, followed by Germany and India.

It is a well-worn path rather than an unusual one, and the foreign ownership report has the detail.

You can also look at the companies themselves and see the addresses, which is a more honest preview of what registering here publishes about you than any privacy policy.

When Is Latvia the Wrong Place to Register a Company?

When you are raising from US venture investors, who usually need a Delaware C-corp; when your business has no connection to Latvia, because the bank problem recurs at every review; and when you want e-Residency-style remote administration, which is Estonia's offering. Latvia suits a company that will make money and keep it here.

Worth saying plainly, because the people who write these guides are usually selling incorporations.

• If you are raising from US venture investors, you probably need a Delaware C-corp. US funds are structured to invest in one, and asking them to take a stake in a Latvian SIA imports legal work and tax questions that will cost you more than the incorporation ever saved. Some founders incorporate here and flip later; that flip is expensive and is worth pricing before you start rather than after.
• If your business has no connection to Latvia at all, the bank problem above is not a hurdle you clear once. It recurs at every review.
• If you want e-residency and remote administration as a product, that is Estonia's offering rather than Latvia's, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

What Latvia is genuinely good at is a company that will make money and keep it here: corporate income tax falls due on distribution rather than on profit, which is worth more than any incorporation saving, and the payroll arithmetic is predictable and cheap to model.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Does It Take to Register a Company in Latvia?

The Register of Enterprises decides in days. A single-founder capital company or an individual merchant gets examination within one working day at the ordinary fee, while other companies pay triple for that speed. The slow parts are usually the bank account and, on the notarial route, the apostille and sworn translation.

Do You Need to Live in Latvia to Register a Company?

No. You can register a Latvian company without living in Latvia, without a Latvian electronic signature, and without visiting, by signing before a notary where you live and having a representative file in Riga under a notarially certified power of attorney.

Do You Need a Bank Letter to Register an SIA?

No. Where capital is paid in cash and does not exceed EUR 50,000, the founders certify in the application that a payment account has been opened in the company's name and the capital paid in. The law asks for a payment account, not a Latvian credit institution.

What Do Foreign Documents Need for the Latvian Register?

A document issued abroad has to be legalised, with a notarised Latvian translation before the register will take it. Budget time for an apostille and a sworn translation if you take the notarial route rather than signing electronically.

Does an Unpaid Director Owe Social Contributions in Latvia?

Possibly. If a company's turnover exceeds five minimum monthly wages in a month and no employee is paid at least the minimum wage, a board member is treated as an employee, with a contribution base of the minimum monthly wage.

What Is the Difference Between an SIA and an AS in Latvia?

An SIA is a private limited company needing share capital of EUR 2,800 and a EUR 75 registration fee. An AS needs EUR 25,000 and a EUR 85 fee, and is not what most startups want.

Sources

• Komerclikums. Article 8 has the filing routes and the notarial requirement. Article 146 has the capital paid before filing. Article 148 has the application, the founders' certification and the address declaration. Article 185 has the minimum capital and 185.1 the reduced-capital regime.
• The state fee regulation, for every registration fee and the one-working-day rules.
• Pievienotās vērtības nodokļa likums, article 59, for the VAT registration threshold.
• Par valsts sociālo apdrošināšanu, for the director treated as an employee, and the minimum wage regulation for the figure it is built from.
• The Register of Enterprises for filing, and PMLP for identity documents.
• Our own dataset and the foreign ownership report, for who else has done this.