also called nominee shareholder
A person who stands in as a company's director or shareholder on paper for privacy or local-requirement reasons.
A nominee director is a person who appears as your company's director or shareholder on paper, standing in for privacy or to satisfy a local requirement. It is not the same as a registered agent, which is just an official address for receiving legal mail; a nominee is a stand-in human on the official records. The problem is it can raise hard questions about who really controls the company, and those questions can unravel a tax plan.
You set up a company in a country that requires a local director, so you pay for a nominee to fill the role on paper. Later a tax authority asks who actually runs the business, and because you make all the decisions from abroad, the nominee arrangement does nothing to give the company the local substance you claimed.
Used to meet local rules or hide ownership, but it can raise substance and legal-control questions that undo tax plans.
The difference is the whole point, so here is each one in a line.
The first split is whether you are an employee, where the company withholds your tax and owes you protections, or an independent contractor, who invoices and handles their own tax; misclassification is treating one as the other, and IR35 and umbrella companies are the UK machinery for policing that line.
The rest are the business you might trade through: a sole proprietorship is just you, a limited liability company walls off your personal assets, a US LLC for non-residents and an offshore company are versions registered where you do not live, and a nominee director or registered agent are the local stand-ins those setups require on paper.
LOOSELY DEFINED. This term is used widely but not consistently, and its precise meaning shifts by country and by who is speaking. Treat it as a lead, not a rule.
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