The significant features of a Cyprus company:
- A minimum of one Shareholder is required. Nominee Shareholders are allowed and widely used. A foreign corporate or individual Shareholder is permitted
- A minimum of one Director and one Secretary is required. A corporate entity, foreign or domestic, may act as a Director. Director’s information is available in the public record
- There is no minimum share capital. It is customary to have an authorised share capital of €5,000 and an issued share capital of €1,000
- Different classes of shares with different rights, such as profit sharing, redeemable preference shares and voting rights may be issued
- Shares are issued in registered form only
- The company must have a Registered Office address in Cyprus
- Meetings of Shareholders may be held abroad. Written unanimous consent resolutions may be used
- Audited annual financial statements and annual return must be submitted to the Registrar of Companies in both English and Greek
- Although Shareholder information is part of the public record, beneficial ownership information is not disclosed to any regulatory authority
Taxation:
- differentiation between 'tax residents' and 'non tax residents'
- corporate tax is only 12,5 %, very low tonnage tax for ship-owning and shipping companies, 2,5 % on income from Intellectual Property
- no corporate tax for 'non tax resident' companies
- no Cyprus tax on disposal or trading of securities
- no Cyprus tax on income from dividends on company level (for a period of four years)
- no Cyprus withholding tax on dividends paid to shareholders outside of Cyprus
- no Cyprus tax on dividend income for non-domiciled but tax-resident individuals
- no Cyprus tax on interest income on account of non-residents with banks in Cyprus
- no Cyprus tax for International Trusts
- full adoption of the EU-Parent-Subsidiary-Directive (dividend payments of the subsidiary to its parent are tax-exempted)
- full tax group relief (profits of one group company are offset against losses of another group company)
- offshore entities from other countries are allowed as shareholders
- rigid appliance of all relevant EU directives