Creating a company, at least in the UK is extremely simple. The one stop VAT rules CM30 mentioned have been onerous enough to stop smaller ecommerce places goi

Creating a company, at least in the UK is extremely simple. The one stop VAT rules CM30 mentioned have been onerous enough to stop smaller ecommerce places going EU wide. There were a lot of blog posts about it not being worth the hassle around the time of it's introduction. But it's not just the bureaucracy, at least in the UK. It's the perception and treatment after a failure. It almost damns you for life. The banks won't want to lend, VCs here seem to want more of a sure thing. There seems to be little of the US attitude of "OK you failed, what you going to try next?". OK that was a lot of sweeping generalisations, and there are exceptions to the rule, but you get the idea.