Plenty of countries will hand you European residence. Fewer give you a reason to stay and build once you have it. Latvia does both, in that order.
It starts with the residence-by-investment program. Make a qualifying investment, and Latvia grants temporary residence.
What qualifies changed on September 15, when a new Immigration Law took effect. Real estate and bank deposits came off the list that day.
What Options Remain
Two routes survive in the statute. One is equity in a Latvian company, and the other places €150,000 for at least five years with a state-created alternative investment fund manager.
Only the first is usable today. The fund manager that route depends on does not yet exist, and a bill now before parliament proposes removing the route altogether.
So the equity route is the live one. September’s rewrite left its core terms alone and made it cheaper to hold.
The €50,000 Route
The investment is a share capital increase in a Latvian company that already meets the program’s criteria. Put in €50,000 where the business employs up to 50 people with annual turnover or a balance sheet no greater than €10 million, or €100,000 where it runs larger.
A one-off €10,000 payment to the state budget accompanies the first application. Neither the minimum nor the qualifying thresholds moved in the rewrite.
Read the mechanics carefully, because they are easy to misread. The money goes into an existing company that already qualifies, purely to unlock residence. You do not found that company, and you do not run it.
What happens to the capital afterward is the part worth knowing. The structure runs six to eight years, and the investment returns to the investor at the end of that term.
The permit now runs up to two years rather than up to five, with visa-free movement across the Schengen Area capped at 90 days in any 180. Once a complete file reaches the migration authority, it has 30 days to decide, extendable to four months at the outside.
Two Years at a Time
A shorter card sounds like a step backward. It is the opposite, because of what it replaced: An annual renewal cycle, now gone.
Renewals before the five-year mark carry only the migration authority’s processing fees, at €160, €280, or €560 depending on how fast you want the decision. No state budget payment attaches to any of them.
At the renewal that carries an investor past five years of residence on this basis, a one-off €2,000 applies. Under the previous law that payment was €5,000.
Two conditions run through the whole ladder. Each renewal must be filed within 90 days of the previous permit’s expiry, and the investment object has to stay the same.
Miss that window and the file is treated as a first-time application. A €2,000 payment becomes €10,000, on a filing date alone.
Residence First, Business Second
None of this makes anyone a business owner. Residence is residence. The investment buys a permit, and that is all it buys.
What comes next is the point. As a resident, you can set up your own Latvian company, and that is where the real case for the country sits.
Setting Up the Company
The vehicle is a private limited company, the SIA. Standard share capital is €2,800, and you deposit half of it before the company registers. If that is steep for a small venture, a low-capital SIA starts at €1.
Registration runs online, through the Enterprise Register, and takes a few working days. Foreigners can hold all the shares. The one hard requirement is a registered address inside Latvia.
That deposited capital sits in a company account, which becomes your operating account once you register. After that, you are trading inside the EU single market: One company, 27 national markets, a single currency, no customs.
The Tax System That Rewards Reinvestment
Since 2018, Latvia has not taxed retained company profit at all. Reinvest your earnings and the rate is zero. Tax lands only when you pull money out as dividends.
Take profit out and you pay 20%, an effective 25% once the base is grossed up. Leave it in, and you owe nothing.
That single rule reshapes how a founder thinks. Retained profit keeps working at full value, year after year, instead of shrinking under tax the way it would almost anywhere else.
A 2026 rule helps owners who live abroad. If individuals own the whole company, they can switch to an alternative split, 15% corporate tax and 6% personal income tax on what they distribute. The point is recognition: Other countries credit that split more easily than they credit standard Latvian corporate tax.
Hold shares for three years or more, and the gain on their sale is exempt. Value-added tax runs at 21%, ordinary for the region.
The EU Law Firm Advantage
The two stages are separate, and the order does not flip. EU Law Firm takes the residence application first, and turns to the company only once a client is ready to build.
From its Riga office, it files with the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs, holds the renewal calendar so the 90-day window never becomes a €10,000 problem, and incorporates the company when the time comes. It also advises on holding and reinvesting profit, so the tax regime does what it promises rather than what it looks like on paper.
Latvia rewrote these routes in September, and the fund option is still moving. For a founder who wants a European base and the freedom to grow into it, both halves of the work sit with one firm.
If Latvia looks like the place to land first and build second, the sensible next move is a conversation. EU Law Firm’s team can map the residence route, the renewal ladder, and the company that follows against whatever you are trying to make. All you need to do is contact EU Law Firm today via its website.
