Move Your Business to Cyprus: Founder's Guide (2026)

Moving a business to Cyprus almost always means registering a new Cyprus limited company and running the business through it from a date you choose. The other route is redomiciliation, which moves your existing company's registration to Cyprus. It works in a narrow set of cases, and Sumly doesn't offer it. We form new Cyprus companies and keep their books. This guide walks the route most founders take and says exactly where the other one fits.

What does moving a business to Cyprus actually mean?

One of two things. You start a new Cyprus company and move the work into it, or you transfer the existing company's registration to Cyprus and keep the same legal entity.

Nearly everyone who says they're moving their business to Cyprus means the first. The customers, contracts and work move across, and the old company stops taking new business on a date you pick. You can start this route this week and finish it without ever being in Cyprus. It's also the route Sumly is part of.

When is redomiciliation worth it?

Only when the company's value is tied to the entity itself. Redomiciliation changes the country of registration but keeps the same legal person. Think of licences or permits granted to that specific company, registered intellectual property, a lending or credit history, or long contracts that would be painful to renegotiate. In those cases continuity justifies the legal work. The country you're leaving must allow an outward transfer, both registries need filings, and lawyers on both sides will bill for it.

A consultancy, an agency or a software business keeps its value in people, clients and code. None of that cares which registry holds the company, which is why almost every founder we work with forms fresh.

If your case really does need the entity moved, take it to a Cyprus law firm together with advisers in the country where the company is registered today. The first thing to find out is whether that country allows an outward transfer.

How do you register the new Cyprus company?

Remotely, from start to finish. You get the name approved, the incorporation documents go to the Registrar of Companies, and you end up with a live company and a registration number. Name approval costs €10 per proposed name, or €30 with the accelerated procedure. The incorporation itself costs €165 in Registrar fees, plus an optional €100 to accelerate. The Registrar sells acceleration without promising a timetable, so plan on a few weeks end to end, and be wary of anyone who promises an exact date. Every company also needs a registered office address in Cyprus and a company secretary from day one. If you have no address here yet, we arrange the registered office as an add-on.

We register the company for you at a fixed price and show its registration status live in your dashboard. Your bookkeeping starts the day you order, not the day the certificate arrives. If the Registrar doesn't approve the company, you get your money back. The details are on company formation.

Keep receipts for anything you buy before the company exists. Formation costs are capital in nature, so you can't deduct them against income tax. You can recover the VAT on purchases made before registration, though, on the company's first VAT return. It reaches back six months for services and three years for goods.

Where does the new company pay tax?

In Cyprus, by default. From tax year 2026, a company incorporated in Cyprus is Cyprus tax resident automatically, unless a double tax treaty assigns residency to another country. A company redomiciled into Cyprus counts as incorporated here for the same test. Before 2026, residency turned only on where management and control sat. That's why older articles said the registration certificate decided nothing.

The management and control test still matters in one direction. If you keep running the company from another country, that country may claim it as resident too, and the treaty between the two decides. If you move to Cyprus and manage the company from here, the question answers itself. Profits are taxed at the corporate rate of 15% from tax year 2026.

If you plan to stay abroad, read running a Cyprus company while living abroad. It separates the company's residence, your own residence and where the business actually operates.

What do you need in order to live in Cyprus?

A residence application, which has nothing to do with the company registry. The right one depends on your passport.

EU citizens register their residence with the Registration Certificate, known as the Yellow Slip. You apply in person on form MEU1, with a €20 fee and a decision within one month for a complete application. We offer Yellow Slip assistance to EU citizens starting a business in Cyprus. Applications for family members and private relocations fall outside that service. See Yellow Slip assistance for what's covered.

Non-EU founders have their own immigration routes. If you'll work in your own Cyprus company, the usual fit is an employment permit through a company of foreign interests. The company must join the foreign-interest register and pay you a gross salary of at least €2,500 a month. The Digital Nomad Visa comes up often but doesn't fit this plan. It needs income of at least €3,500 net a month from employers or clients registered abroad, and it forbids working for Cyprus companies, your own included. Immigration files have personal edge cases. We plan the residence route with you and bring in a lawyer for complex cases.

What changes for your personal tax?

Nothing, on the day the company is registered. Your personal tax follows where you're tax resident, and that moves on its own timetable, set by your days and circumstances.

Cyprus gives you two ways in. Spend more than 183 days here in the calendar year and you're resident, with no other conditions. Or use the 60-day rule, which from 2026 has four conditions to meet in the same year: at least 60 days in Cyprus, no more than 183 days in any other single state, a business, employment or office in a Cyprus-resident person, and a permanent home in Cyprus that you own or rent. The old fifth condition, that you mustn't be tax resident anywhere else, was dropped from 2026. A competing claim from another country no longer disqualifies you. The treaty settles it instead. Our 60-day tax residency guide works through each condition.

Once resident, most founders who relocate claim non-dom status, which means you're tax resident in Cyprus but not domiciled here. It keeps your dividends and interest outside the Special Defence Contribution, or SDC, a separate Cyprus tax on that income, for up to 17 years. The non-dom guide covers how you claim it and what it does and doesn't exempt.

The year you move is the year to pay for advice. Two countries can each tax part of it, and exit rules in the country you're leaving can catch you or the old company. That depends on your personal facts, which is exactly the kind of question a website shouldn't answer for you.

What about a business bank account?

You open it after incorporation, and the bank runs its own checks on the company, its owners and the business before it says yes. A clear, specific description of what the company does speeds that up more than any stack of prepared documents. The Cyprus market consolidated in 2025. Hellenic Bank merged into Eurobank and AstroBank's operations moved into Alpha Bank Cyprus. That leaves Bank of Cyprus, Eurobank, Alpha Bank Cyprus and Ancoria Bank as the main full-service choices for companies.

You're also free to bank elsewhere. No provision of the Companies Law requires a company to hold an account with a Cyprus bank, so a Cyprus company can run on any EU bank or licensed e-money institution. Our guide to opening a business bank account in Cyprus walks through the application.

How do you run the books from day one?

From wherever you are. Drop invoices, receipts and bills into Sumly, or forward them to your company's private Sumly inbox address. The AI reads each document and books the double entry, and every entry stays linked to its document. Bank feeds come in read-only through open banking, so Sumly sees your transactions but can never move money. Bank of Cyprus, Eurobank, Alpha Bank, Revolut Business and Wise are ready to connect, and Eurobank covers former Hellenic Bank accounts. Over a hundred more banks can be added on request. Transactions match your invoices and recorded purchases automatically, so reconciliation takes care of itself.

Sumly prepares your VAT returns, VIES statements and tax return work from those live books, and a person always files them. VIES is the EU listing of your sales to VAT-registered businesses in other member states. On Base, that person is you. You review what Sumly prepared and submit it. On Plus, Sumly files every return except the year-end accounts. On Premium, your Sumly certified bookkeeper reviews the books and submits the filings for you. The annual accounts still go to an independent licensed auditor, and you can order the audit from a partner auditor in the dashboard. Plans start at €39 a month, and the software starts with a 30-day free trial.

What happens to your old company?

The law of the country where it's registered decides. It's also the part of a move founders most often leave until it gets expensive. You can keep it dormant, wind it up or let it keep trading. All three are real options, with different costs and different tax consequences there.

Put these questions to your advisers in that country: the final returns and any exit or deregistration charges, how assets you transfer out are treated, employees and their contracts, and the exact date new business stops flowing through the old entity. Sumly takes care of the Cyprus side of the move. The departure side belongs to people qualified in that country.

Questions people ask