Create a company in Cyprus — or move your company from Croatia

Croatia charges 10% corporate tax under the EUR 1,000,000 revenue ceiling and 12% on the dividend, which is 20.8% on distributed profit. Cyprus charges 15% and, for a shareholder who has genuinely moved, nothing further on the dividend. For a small Croatian company that gap is narrow enough to argue about — and it widens sharply the moment revenue crosses the ceiling.

Updated for 2026 Cyprus tax law and regulations.

Sumly takes a company from Croatia to Cyprus and then runs it

We are the fully digitalized, one-stop route out: the Cyprus company registered, the books opened the day the order goes in, every Cyprus return prepared box by box, and the tax residency and non-dom file handled as one fixed-price service. One provider, one dashboard, four published prices — instead of a lawyer who disappears after the incorporation, a bookkeeper who starts at the first quarter-end, and nobody at all for the two-country part between them.

This is Sumly — and what we actually do for you

Sumly is the fully digital provider for founders moving a company to Cyprus. You do not need to learn Cypriot company law, find a local auditor, or work out which form goes where. You get in touch, and we do the rest.

And we stay with you on both sides of the move. The Cyprus side we own outright. For the side you are leaving, we put you straight in front of an adviser or lawyer from our network who works on exactly your problem — company law, exit taxation, inheritance, employment — and we hold the thread between them and us. One point of contact for the whole move, however many specialisms your case turns out to touch. If your case is simple, we do all of it for a fixed price.

Part 1: What leaving actually costs you

Your home country does not let go the moment the plane does. What still runs after you have left, and in which order it has to be handled.

Is a Cyprus company cheaper than a Croatian d.o.o. in 2026?

It depends entirely on one number, and that number is your revenue. Croatia runs two corporate rates with no bands between them: 10% where the tax period's revenues are up to EUR 1,000,000 and 18% where they exceed it. Cyprus applies 15% from tax year 2026 to every company, whatever its size.

Then the owner takes the money out. A Croatian resident individual receiving a dividend or a profit share pays 12%, withheld at payment and final, with no tax-free threshold and no social contributions on top. A Cyprus tax resident who is not domiciled in Cyprus pays no Special Defence Contribution on dividends for 17 years, and dividends sit outside Cyprus income tax entirely, leaving the health levy at 2.65% on income up to €180,000 a year.

Read the first row honestly. Twenty-point-eight against roughly seventeen is a difference of under four points, and four points of a small profit will not pay for a relocation. If you are running a EUR 120,000-profit consultancy out of Split with local clients and no ambition to grow past the ceiling, Croatia is a perfectly rational place to stay, and we would rather write that sentence than sell you a move that never earns its own cost back. The second row is where the argument changes: 27.84% against 17% is more than ten points of every distributed euro, permanently.

Why does the EUR 1,000,000 line decide the whole question?

Because it is a revenue test, not a profit test, and that makes it behave very differently from the graduated systems most comparisons assume. The ceiling sits in čl. 28 of the Zakon o porezu na dobit, and it was set at EUR 1,000,000.00 with effect from 1 January 2024, replacing the awkward EUR 995,421.06 that the kuna conversion had produced. The December 2025 amending act reworked fund exemptions and foreign tax credit mechanics without touching čl. 28, so the 10/18 configuration is the position for 2026.

The consequence is a cliff rather than a slope. An agency turning over EUR 1.05m on an 8% margin pays 18% on that whole margin. An agency turning over EUR 900,000 on a 40% margin pays 10% on a profit four times the size. Nothing in the statute smooths the step, and the effective tax on the first euro of profit above the line is the full eight-point jump applied retrospectively to everything below it. Founders in low-margin businesses — reselling, logistics, e-commerce with heavy cost of goods, agencies with contractor pass-through — meet the cliff at a scale where the company is still small in every sense that matters to its owner.

That is why this guide keeps both cases visible instead of quoting a single headline rate. If you are under the ceiling and expect to stay there, the Cyprus case has to be made on something other than the corporate rate. If you are approaching it, or you are already through it, the corporate rate is the case.

What happened to prirez, and why is almost everything you will read about it wrong?

Prirez porezu na dohodak no longer exists. Porezna uprava's own reform page records that it was abolished from 1 January 2024, with income tax and its surtax merged into a single public levy. In its place, each local unit now sets its own income tax rates by decision of its representative body, published in Narodne novine and adopted by the end of November to take effect on 1 January of the following year. Where a unit adopts nothing, the fallback is 20% and 30%.

Here is the part that catches even careful readers. The bands introduced for 2024 were replaced a year later. NN 152/2024 rewrote čl. 19.a into four classes of local unit with tighter ceilings, in force from 1 January 2025, and Porezna uprava publishes the same four-class table today.

The maxima that still circulate everywhere — 23.60% and 35.40% for Zagreb, with a city test keyed to inhabitants — describe the 2024 text and were superseded from 2025. The threshold between the two rates moved as well, and now stands at EUR 60,000 of annual tax base, with the basic personal allowance at EUR 600.00 per month.

Two practical conclusions follow. First, if you find a figure for Croatian personal tax anywhere that is not Narodne novine or Porezna uprava, assume it is stale until you check the year it describes; this area has moved twice in three years. Second, and more useful for a founder: the local element is now inside the rate itself, so moving from Zagreb to a cheaper općina buys at most three percentage points, and it buys nothing at all on dividends. Capital income is a flat 12% across the country, and no municipal decision changes it.

Does Croatia charge an exit tax when the company leaves for Cyprus?

Yes, and getting its address right matters, because three different article numbers circulate for it. Exit taxation — izlazno oporezivanje — is čl. 30.d of the Zakon o porezu na dobit, inserted with effect from 1 January 2020. Čl. 30.a is the interest limitation rule. Čl. 31.b is the parent-subsidiary withholding exemption. Neither is the exit tax, and a plan built on the wrong provision is a plan built on nothing.

What čl. 30.d does is require the taxpayer to bring the difference between market value and tax book value into the tax base on three kinds of asset movement — to its own permanent establishment abroad, out of a Croatian permanent establishment, or by transferring a permanent establishment's business abroad — where Croatia's right to tax those assets ends. Then st. 2 does the thing that matters here: the same treatment applies where the taxpayer transfers its tax residence to another member state or a third country, except for assets that remain connected with a Croatian permanent establishment. That exception is the whole mitigation strategy in one clause. Leave a genuine Croatian establishment holding the assets Croatia would otherwise tax on the way out, and those assets are outside the charge; move everything and the deemed disposal is on the full portfolio.

There are carve-outs in st. 4 for assets due back within twelve months, securities financing, collateral, and transfers made for prudential capital or liquidity purposes. And there is real relief in st. 6, which needs reading slowly, because it is routinely described as an instalment plan and is not one: the taxable amount may be included in the base across five tax periods, it requires adequate security — jamstvo — and interest accrues through the deferral. It is available only for transfers into another EU member state or an EEA state with an equivalent mutual recovery agreement, which is precisely why the Cyprus corridor qualifies and a Dubai one would not.

Do Croatian CFC rules catch a Cyprus company?

While you are still Croatian resident, they can. The controlled-foreign-company regime is čl. 30.b and čl. 30.c, inserted as Chapter VII.a with effect from 1 January 2019: 30.b defines control and inclusion, 30.c computes the foreign company's profit and your share of it. The range "30.b to 30.e" that appears in a great deal of secondary writing is simply wrong — 30.d is the exit tax you just read about, and 30.e onward are the hybrid mismatch rules from the second Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive.

The escape hatch is čl. 30.b st. 3, and it is a substance test rather than a rate test: there is no inclusion where the controlled foreign company carries on substantive economic activity with staff, equipment, assets and premises, confirmed by the relevant facts and circumstances. That sentence describes an ordinary operating company. It does not describe a registered address with a mailbox and a director who signs what is emailed to him.

This is where the Cyprus IP Box quietly helps rather than hurts. Qualifying intellectual property income is taxed at an effective 3% from tax year 2026, and the regime's own nexus arithmetic rewards development actually carried out by the Cyprus company — its own people, its own spending. The substance you have to build to defend an IP Box claim is largely the same substance that takes you outside čl. 30.b st. 3. Founders often assume the two pull in opposite directions, because a low effective rate looks like exactly what a CFC rule is hunting. In this pairing they point the same way: real developers, real premises, real decisions, documented.

Two neighbours in the same chapter are worth knowing about. Čl. 30.a caps deductible exceeding borrowing costs at 30% of EBITDA or EUR 3,000,000, whichever is higher, which matters if the move is being financed with related-party debt. And the hybrid rules at 30.e onward use a 50% association threshold rather than the 25% used for CFC — a detail that trips people who assume one test covers the whole chapter.

When do you actually stop being a Croatian tax resident?

Later than the day you board the plane, and the rule is not the one most people quote. Residency for individuals lives in Opći porezni zakon čl. 43, on its own: čl. 44 defines poduzetnik and economic activity, čl. 45 defines permanent establishment, and the frequently cited pairing of "articles 43 to 44" muddles two different jobs.

Čl. 43 st. 1 is the trap. You have a Croatian prebivalište where you own or possess a dwelling continuously for at least 183 days in one or two calendar years — and staying in it is not required. Not visiting it does not help. Leaving it empty does not help. The apartment on the coast that nobody uses is, on the face of the statute, a Croatian domicile. Then st. 3 closes the door: where a taxpayer has a prebivalište both in Croatia and abroad, the Croatian one is treated as the one that counts. Only the treaty tie-breaker can displace that, and the treaty tie-breaker asks you to show a permanent home in Cyprus and, failing that, a Cypriot centre of vital interests.

Uobičajeno boravište — habitual residence — is st. 4, and it turns on a continuous or time-linked stay of at least 183 days across one or two calendar years, with interruptions of up to a year disregarded. Note the construction: "one or two calendar years" means the count can straddle a year-end, so a mid-year departure does not hand you a clean reset.

On procedure, Porezna uprava requires Obrazac TI, the questionnaire for determining a change of status from resident to non-resident, filed with the request to be removed from the taxpayer register and supported by identity documents, evidence of registered residence abroad and a residency certificate from the competent authority of the other state, with certified translations of foreign-language documents. You certify the answers under full material and criminal liability, and the questions cover stays inside and outside Croatia, why you left, and your ties on both sides. Note also what it is not: deregistering your residence with MUP is an administrative act, not a tax act, and it does not by itself end tax residency.

Can Porezna uprava treat your Cyprus company as Croatian?

Yes, on a hook that has nothing to do with CFC. Opći porezni zakon čl. 45 st. 2 t. 1 lists mjesto stvarne uprave — the place of effective management — first among the things that constitute a permanent establishment. A Cyprus company whose real decisions are taken in Croatia therefore gives Croatia a domestic claim independently of čl. 30.b, and it is a claim that survives however carefully the CFC substance file was assembled.

What protects you is unglamorous and entirely practical: a board that actually decides rather than ratifies, meetings held and minuted on the island, banking authority and material spending signed off there, contracts negotiated by people who are physically present, and a paper trail that matches the story if anyone reads it three years later. Our guide to nominee directors in Cyprus is honest about where a nominee is useful and where it changes nothing at all — and running a Cyprus company by email from Zagreb is firmly in the second category.

What does the Croatia–Cyprus treaty actually give a founder?

More than most pages know exists. There is a treaty: the agreement between Croatia and Cyprus on the elimination of double taxation, signed in Luxembourg on 17 October 2023 and ratified in Narodne novine – Međunarodni ugovori 12/2023, with Porezna uprava's own treaty table giving a date of application of 1 January 2024. Content written before 2024 — which is most of what a search returns — either ignores it or asserts there is none.

The domestic figures are the ones restated in čl. 31 with effect from 1 January 2024. Note the dividend line in particular: 10% domestic, 5% by treaty, and the treaty article imposes no minimum holding and no participation threshold, so it is available on a small stake from day one.

There is a third route on dividends. Čl. 31.b gives the EU parent-subsidiary exemption to a qualifying parent that has held its stake for 24 uninterrupted months, and NN 114/2023 added a mechanism for the case everyone actually has — the 24 months are not yet complete — allowing the distribution to be made without withholding where the taxpayer provides adequate security. If you keep the Croatian company as a subsidiary under a new Cyprus holding, this is the provision that governs your first two years, and it is worth reading before the first dividend rather than after it.

Two cautions ride on all of it. The individual tie-breaker in art. 4 §2 is the standard ladder — permanent home, centre of vital interests, habitual abode, nationality, then mutual agreement — and it is the only thing that can override OPZ čl. 43 st. 3's Croatia-wins rule. And art. 28 is a principal purpose test: a benefit is refused where obtaining it was one of the principal purposes of an arrangement. A migration whose only story is the 5% rate is contestable on the treaty's own terms; a migration where the people, the customers and the work move too is not.

What about the profits already sitting in the Croatian company?

They are a timing question, and Croatia hands you one genuine gift on it. The 12% on dividends is final and has no threshold, but distributions out of profits earned up to 29 February 2012 are exempt from personal income tax, with profits of 2001 to 2004 taxed at 12% as the exception to that exception. A company incorporated in the 2000s that has been retaining rather than distributing can therefore have a genuinely tax-free runway sitting in its own reserves — and the sequence in which those reserves are released before, during and after a migration is a conversation to have with a Croatian adviser while there is still time to have it.

Two neighbouring rates complete the picture for a founder's personal balance sheet. Interest and gains on the disposal of financial assets are both taxed at 12% and final. And one more piece of dating: the 12% on dividends is itself a 2024 artefact — the rate was 10% plus prirez until the end of 2023 — so any page still describing "10% plus surtax" is describing a system that no longer exists.

Does Croatia tax wealth or inheritance, and does leaving change it?

Not much, and less than the countries this corridor is usually compared with. Croatia operates no net wealth tax and no general assets tax anywhere in its published enumeration of the tax system. Cyprus levies no net wealth tax and no inheritance tax either, so on this axis the two countries are close to level and nobody is escaping anything.

What Croatia does levy is a 4% inheritance and gift tax, with full exemption for a spouse, descendants and ascendants in the direct line, and adoptees and adopters. It reaches cash, claims, securities and movables where the individual market value exceeds EUR 6,700, and it does not reach real estate, which falls instead under the 3% real-estate transfer tax. Emigrating does not take a Croatian gift out of scope by itself: the tax follows the residence of the heir or donee, and where they have no Croatian residence it follows the residence of the deceased or donor.

On a personal exit charge we are going to be careful with our wording, because the honest answer is a shape rather than a citation. Čl. 30.d is a corporate-tax provision and does not reach individuals, and we found nothing in the Opći porezni zakon imposing a deemed disposal on an emigrating natural person. But no Croatian page states that there is no personal exit tax — this is an argument from absence, and it is not the same thing as a cited negative. Treat it as a reasonable working assumption to confirm with a Croatian adviser against your own asset mix, particularly if you hold a large unrealised position in shares.

What happens to your Croatian contributions and your pension?

Contributions stop when the insurance stops, and the wedge you leave behind is not small. Croatia charges pension contributions of 20% — or 15% where the insured person is also in the second pillar, plus 5% to that pillar — and health insurance at 16.5% on top of the base. Paying yourself a salary out of a Croatian company is therefore materially more expensive than paying yourself a dividend, which is one reason so much Croatian owner-manager planning revolves around distributions and the long tail of capped tax-free payments.

What you have already built is not lost. Croatia is inside the EU social security coordination regulation, and HZMO's own position is explicit: a claim lodged in one member state counts as lodged in every state where you hold insurance periods; where Croatian periods alone do not meet the qualifying conditions foreign periods count towards eligibility, with the Croatian benefit then computed on Croatian periods as a pro-rata pension; and the old-age pension is paid regardless of which contracting state you live in. Your first-pillar record is preserved and exportable to Cyprus; it simply stops growing.

On the second pillar we will not guess. The individual capitalised account continues to exist and converts into a pension at retirement through a chosen provider, but whether a permanent emigrant can transfer or draw that balance before retirement age is not addressed on any official page we could reach, and it is exactly the sort of question where a confident wrong answer costs somebody real money. Ask REGOS or your fund directly. Once you are working in Cyprus, the default is that you insure where you work, and Cyprus social insurance and GeSY apply to a director drawing a salary from the Cyprus company.

Part 2: What Cyprus gives you

This is the straightforward half, and the half we build end to end. What you actually get on the other side.

What does the Cyprus side look like for a Croatian founder?

Flatter, and administratively much quieter. One corporate rate applies to taxable profit with no bands, no revenue cliff and no rate that changes because you had a good year. Qualifying intellectual property income comes down to an effective 3% under the IP Box. Personal income tax runs from 0% to €22,000 rising to 35% above €72,000, and a shareholder who is domiciled in Cyprus — which an arriving Croatian founder is not — would pay 5% on dividends from 2026 profits. VAT registration becomes compulsory above a turnover of €15,600, and the standard rate is 19%.

One thing a Croatian founder does not have to worry about, and it is worth naming because half this corridor's competitors sell it: currency. Croatia adopted the euro on 1 January 2023 at a fixed conversion rate of 7.53450 kuna to the euro. You are already in the euro area, already in the single market, already inside EU VAT. Nobody is selling you access you do not have. That narrows the Cyprus case to what it really is — the rate, the shareholder position, the IP Box and the administrative load — and a narrower honest case is easier to check than a broad one.

The mechanics are set out in Cyprus non-dom status and Cyprus tax benefits for foreigners, and the arithmetic against your own figures is in the calculator at the top of this page.

How does a Croatian founder become Cyprus tax resident?

Through the 183-day count or the 60-day rule, and the second one became easier in 2026. Four conditions now stand, after the old fifth was removed from the 60-day rule: at least 60 days in Cyprus, no more than 183 days in any other single state, a business, employment or office in a Cyprus tax-resident person maintained through the year, and a permanent home in Cyprus that you own or rent. The condition that disappeared was "not tax resident anywhere else" — and its removal is unusually valuable in this corridor, because OPZ čl. 43 st. 1 can keep you Croatian resident on a dwelling for a period while Cyprus residence is being established. Overlapping claims now go to the treaty tie-breaker instead of disqualifying you outright.

The office in the third condition can be the directorship of the company you have just formed, so the incorporation and the residency file move together rather than in sequence. On immigration, Croatia is an EU member state, so the Yellow Slip route applies to you as an EU citizen exercising free movement — see the Yellow Slip explained and the Yellow Slip service. How the days are counted, and the certificate that proves the outcome, are set out in the Cyprus 60-day rule.

Why do people choose Cyprus over other tax havens?

Because it is a place people actually want to live in, which is not true of most of the alternatives — and because for a Croatian founder, who already has the euro and the single market, the non-tax reasons have to carry more weight than usual.

Violent crime here is among the lowest in the European Union. The island runs in English in practice — contracts, banking, professional services, schools — which for a Croatian founder is a smaller adjustment than moving to a country that works entirely in its own language and a much smaller one than it sounds. People from all over the world are already here, so nobody is the novelty in the room. Business and real estate are booming. Officialdom is friendly and open to people who want to trade, without wrapping every transaction in a licence. Groceries — meat, fruit, vegetables — are affordable. And the coast: in a Cyprus winter you can still spend an afternoon on the beach, and the summers are the ones people fly across the world to book.

Now the Croatian push list, kept specific and kept honest:

1. The revenue cliff. Eight points of corporate tax turning on turnover rather than profit is the single most distorting feature of the Croatian system for a growing services company, and it arrives at exactly the scale where founders start asking this question.
2. Legislative churn. The corporate tax act has been amended in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2025; the personal income tax rulebook has been amended repeatedly since 2017, with the December 2025 revision alone rewriting JOPPD annexes and shifting code ranges from 1 January 2026. Founders can plan around a high rate. Planning around a system that is re-legislated annually is what actually pushes people out.
3. The contribution wedge. Twenty percent out of the base and 16.5% health on top of it makes employing yourself expensive, and the compensating tail of capped tax-free payments — work-results awards, jubilee awards, newborn support — is a compliance surface rather than a benefit. An owner-manager optimising through them is doing bookkeeping, not business.
4. JOPPD. Monthly reporting on essentially every payment to an individual is a recurring cost, not a setup cost, and it is the part of the Croatian year that nobody misses after they leave.
5. Parafiscal charges. Chamber membership, tourist-board levy, monument rent, forest contribution, water charges — a real and much-criticised part of the Croatian cost base. We are not printing amounts, because the current rates sit outside the sources we cite from, but you already know whether they land on your business.

And what Croatia does better, said plainly: for a genuinely small company that intends to stay small, 10% plus 12% is a good deal, close-family estate planning costs nothing, and an older company may have pre-2012 reserves it can distribute tax-free. If that is your position, the honest recommendation is to stay and reread this page in the year you approach the ceiling.

Can a Croatian online store run through a Cyprus company?

Yes — but the argument is different from the one this cluster usually makes, and a Croatian reader deserves the difference. A Croatian store is already inside the EU VAT system, already in the single market, already able to use the one-stop shop for consumer sales across the bloc. A Cyprus company does not "put your store back inside the single market", because your store never left it. Anybody who tells you otherwise has copied a page written for a non-EU seller.

What actually changes is the arithmetic and the workload. E-commerce is the classic low-margin profile that meets the EUR 1,000,000 revenue cliff early, so a store crossing it pays 18% on a thin margin where a Cyprus company would pay 15% on the same margin and nothing further to a non-dom shareholder. And the bookkeeping is where stores of every nationality come unstuck: thousands of small transactions, several currencies, payment-processor fees and refunds, and a VAT treatment that changes by customer type and country. Sumly's Shopify and WooCommerce plugins pull orders, refunds, fees and payouts straight into the ledger with the right codes, so the return is assembled from the sales as they happen instead of being rebuilt from an export the week it is due.

Two worked examples

A consultancy under the ceiling: EUR 150,000 of profit on EUR 600,000 of revenue. In Croatia the company pays 10%, or EUR 15,000, and the owner then pays 12% on the EUR 135,000 distributed, or EUR 16,200 — EUR 31,200 in total, 20.8% of the pre-tax profit. Through a Cyprus company owned by a founder who has genuinely become Cyprus tax resident and non-domiciled, the company pays 15%, or EUR 22,500, and the shareholder meets only the health levy at 2.65% on the EUR 127,500 distributed, about EUR 3,379 — roughly EUR 25,900 in total. The gap is around EUR 5,300 a year. That is real money, and it is also not enough on its own to justify moving a life. This is the profile where the decision should turn on where you want to live and how you want to work.

A software business over the ceiling: EUR 300,000 of profit on EUR 1.3m of revenue. Croatia now charges 18%, or EUR 54,000, and 12% on the EUR 246,000 distributed, or EUR 29,520 — EUR 83,520, which is 27.84% of the profit. Cyprus charges 15%, or EUR 45,000, and the health levy is capped by the €180,000 income ceiling at EUR 4,770 — about EUR 49,770 in total. The gap is roughly EUR 33,750 every year, before the IP Box is considered at all. If a meaningful share of that profit is qualifying IP income taxed at an effective 3%, the difference stops being an optimisation and becomes the largest line in the plan.

Both examples assume full distribution, headline rates and a shareholder who has actually moved. The calculator at the top of this page models Croatia's standard 18% and the 12% dividend, so it shows the second case; if you are under the čl. 28 ceiling, use the first one and bring your own numbers to a meeting.

Part 3: How the move runs

From the decision to the first invoice out of the Cyprus company: the order, the mistakes people make before you, and two calculations worked through in full.

What does a Croatia to Cyprus move look like, month by month?

Every case differs, so read this as shape rather than schedule.

• Before anything moves — and this is where we start. We settle with you whether the Croatian d.o.o. is retained as a subsidiary or migrated, and we put a Croatian adviser from our network on the čl. 30.d exposure against your actual balance sheet. They deal with the apartment and map the pre-2012 reserves if the company is old enough to have them.
• Month 1. We register the Cyprus company; the books open the day the order goes in. We start the residence file and the Yellow Slip. If residence is being transferred, we diarise the 8-day notification and the 30-day pre-notification where formal procedures are involved, so neither is missed.
• Months 1 to 3. We handle the Cyprus VAT and VIES registration, the social insurance and employee registrations and the UBO filing, and we get banking and EU payments moving. You take up the directorship that anchors the 60-day rule.
• Months 3 to 6. You rent or buy the permanent home the 60-day rule requires, and we tell you what qualifies. You move real decision-making to Cyprus and we minute it there. We put the čl. 30.b substance in place before it is needed rather than after it is challenged.
• Months 6 to 12. Your Croatian adviser files Obrazac TI with the Croatian residency certificate we obtain from Cyprus attached. They settle the čl. 30.d position and elect the five-period spread with security if it applies. We bring the first dividend under the treaty or čl. 31.b rather than at the domestic rate.
• Year 2 onward. We keep the day counts, the board records and the substance file current. They are cheap to maintain and expensive to reconstruct.

What mistakes do Croatian founders actually make?

The expensive ones are rarely exotic.

Quoting the 10% rate while turning over EUR 1.2m, and discovering the cliff at the annual return rather than in the plan. Reading a 2023 article and budgeting for prirez that no longer exists, or a 2024 article and budgeting Zagreb bands that were re-cut for 2025. Building an exit plan around čl. 30.a or čl. 31.b because a secondary source pointed there instead of čl. 30.d. Missing the 8-day notification because a residence transfer felt like a private decision rather than a reportable event. Keeping the coastal apartment and assuming an empty flat is a neutral asset, when čl. 43 st. 1 says occupancy is not required. Deregistering with MUP and treating that as the end of tax residency. Assuming the treaty does not exist, and paying 10% domestic withholding on a dividend the treaty caps at 5%. Distributing pre-2012 reserves in the wrong order and paying 12% on money that could have come out exempt. And running a Cyprus company from a laptop in Croatia while a Cypriot director signs what is sent to him, which is the fact pattern both čl. 30.b and OPZ čl. 45 were drafted to catch.

Part 4: Who does the work

You can do all of this yourself. Below is what that costs in time and in money, against what it costs to let us do it.

Do it yourself — or have Sumly do it

Both routes are legitimate, and we would rather set them out than imply there is only one. Doing it yourself means the Registrar's forms and fees, a registered office you source, VAT and VIES registration, provisional tax twice a year, annual statements and a ledger that survives an audit — stacked on top of a two-country move you are already managing. The Sumly route is three published prices: formation from €950 one-time, the software from €39 a month, and your own Sumly certified bookkeeper at €390 a month, with the books open from day zero and every return prepared box by box.

The software on its own is enough to run the company, whether you are sitting in Cyprus or still in Croatia: invoicing, AI double-entry bookkeeping, live open-banking feeds, every VAT, VIES, provisional and corporate return prepared box by box, live reports, a document inbox with its own email address, mobile receipt capture that books itself, multi-currency invoicing, team roles and the AI assistant — plus payroll at €15 per employee per month, IP Box tracking at €50 a month, Projects at €10 a month, and the e-commerce plugins.

Everything in the catalogue is available to every client: a virtual address with a PO box, including digital scanning of your post into the dashboard wherever you happen to be; nominee director and secretary where a structure genuinely calls for them; the Yellow Slip, which as an EU citizen is open to you; tax residency and non-dom at €750 per person; the registrations bundle covering VAT, social insurance, employees and UBO; audit through Partner Auditors; the store plugins; banking and EU payments; and the expert-lawyer network for complicated relocations.

Each of those is an extra. Tell us what you need in the meeting and you get one clear package-deal offer covering all of it — the IP Box application included where it belongs, because it is complex expert work and precisely the sort of thing that should be looked at with you before anyone quotes a number.

Sumly, a law firm, and a traditional bookkeeping firm

Law firm vs Sumly — and what happens when a case gets complicated

Sumly is cheaper and faster, and we work WITH lawyers, not against them. When a case gets too complicated for what Sumly handles directly, we simply connect you with the right expert in exactly the legal field you need help in, and everything gets done according to best practice, always. Either way, it starts the same place: contact us.

The Croatian half of this move belongs to a Croatian adviser, and we will keep saying so. The Cyprus half is one provider and one dashboard — the company, the ledger, the filings and the residency — on four published prices. That is what makes Sumly the best choice for Croatian founders creating a company and relocating to Cyprus.

Why is Sumly the best bookkeeping system for a Cyprus company?

Sumly is the best accounting software for a Cyprus limited company — because it is built for exactly one thing, Cyprus tax law: all 16 Cyprus VAT codes mapped to the official VAT return boxes, VIES and provisional tax native, not a localization. That is a claim we will defend anywhere, and the evidence is in the table below.

Two Cyprus-built products will come up in any comparison a Croatian founder runs: Cybooks and Balabook. We meet their former customers every week, and what they tell us, again and again: workflows that made simple bookkeeping overly complicated, rough edges and glitches, support that left them waiting — a messy experience they were relieved to leave behind.

On every one of these checkable dimensions, Sumly leads. That is a factual comparison — not a matter of taste.

Said without hedging: the best support, the best bookkeeping software, the best AI for bookkeeping, the best bookkeeper and the best prices, with the whole thing made easy to actually do. The detail is published in Sumly vs Cybooks and Sumly vs Balabook, and for the international tools you may already be running, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.

On the IP Box, one line bears repeating: the IP Box is the largest single line in a Cyprus product company's tax position — and the easiest one to forfeit through bookkeeping that was never set up for it. The application begins as a conversation rather than as a form, which is one more reason the meeting comes first.

What happens when you get in touch

You do not need to have decided anything before you speak to us, and you do not need your paperwork in order.

1. The meeting. Fifteen minutes. You tell us what you own and when you want to move. We tell you which rules at home catch you, and what the Cyprus side costs.
2. We tell you what kind of case you have. If it is simple, we do all of it — company, books, residency, non-dom — at a fixed price. If it is not, we say so immediately and bring in the specialist it needs.
3. We start. The company is registered, your books open the same day, and you have one point of contact for the whole thing.

Questions Croatian founders actually ask

Frequently asked

Is Cyprus cheaper than a Croatian d.o.o. if my revenue is under EUR 1,000,000?

Barely, and you should know that before anyone sells you a move. Under the čl. 28 ceiling Croatia charges 10% corporate tax and 12% on the dividend, which is 20.8% of pre-tax profit. Cyprus charges 15% and, for a shareholder who genuinely becomes Cyprus tax resident and non-domiciled, nothing on the dividend beyond the health levy — roughly 17%. On EUR 150,000 of profit that is a few thousand euro a year, not a transformation. Above the ceiling, at 18% and 27.84% all in, the gap becomes serious.

What exactly triggers the 18% rate in Croatia?

Revenue, not profit. Čl. 28 of the Zakon o porezu na dobit sets 10% where the tax period's revenues are up to EUR 1,000,000 and 18% where they are above it, and the higher rate then applies to the whole profit rather than to a slice of it. A low-margin business at EUR 1.1m of turnover pays 18% on a thin profit; a high-margin one at EUR 900k pays 10% on a fat one. That cliff lands exactly where founders start thinking about relocating.

Is prirez still charged in Croatia?

No. Prirez porezu na dohodak was abolished on 1 January 2024 and folded into a single levy, with each local unit setting its own income tax rates inside statutory bands. Almost everything written about Croatian personal tax before 2024 is stale on this point — and so is much of what was written during 2024, because NN 152/2024 re-cut the bands again from 1 January 2025. Dividends were never affected either way: capital income is a flat 12% nationwide.

Does Croatia have an exit tax on a company that moves to Cyprus?

Yes, and it is čl. 30.d of the Zakon o porezu na dobit — not čl. 30.a, which is the interest limitation rule, and not čl. 31.b, which is the parent-subsidiary withholding exemption. Transferring tax residence abroad is treated as a disposal at market value, except for assets that stay attached to a Croatian permanent establishment. Because Cyprus is an EU member state the taxable amount can be spread over five tax periods against security, with interest running.

Do Croatian CFC rules reach my Cyprus company?

They can, while you are still a Croatian resident. The rules are čl. 30.b and čl. 30.c — the range 30.b to 30.e that circulates online is wrong, because 30.d is exit taxation and 30.e onward are the hybrid mismatch rules. The escape is in čl. 30.b st. 3: no inclusion where the foreign company carries on substantive economic activity with staff, equipment, assets and premises. A Cyprus company with real people and a real office is outside the rule. A nameplate is not.

How do I actually stop being a Croatian tax resident?

Under Opći porezni zakon čl. 43, and only čl. 43 — čl. 44 is about entrepreneurs and čl. 45 about permanent establishments. The catch is st. 1: a dwelling you own or possess for at least 183 days across one or two calendar years gives you a Croatian prebivalište whether or not you ever sleep in it. St. 3 then resolves a dual domicile in Croatia's favour, leaving only the treaty tie-breaker. Porezna uprava decides the change on Obrazac TI.

Is there a treaty between Croatia and Cyprus?

Yes, and it is recent enough that a lot of published content still says otherwise. The treaty was signed in Luxembourg on 17 October 2023, ratified in Narodne novine – Međunarodni ugovori 12/2023, and Porezna uprava's own table gives it a date of application of 1 January 2024. Dividends, interest and royalties are all capped at 5% of gross, with no holding period or participation threshold on the dividend article.

What about the profits already sitting in my Croatian company?

They carry a 12% final withholding when distributed, with one genuinely useful exception: distributions out of profits earned up to 29 February 2012 are exempt from personal income tax, and profits of 2001 to 2004 are the exception to that exception at 12%. An older company can therefore have a tax-free distribution runway on its own balance sheet, and the order in which reserves are released is worth deciding with a Croatian adviser before anything moves.

Does Sumly advise on Croatian tax?

No. Sumly builds and runs the Cyprus side — the company, the books from day zero, Cyprus VAT, VIES, provisional and corporate returns, and the tax residency and non-dom file. This page sets out Croatia's published rules so the shape of the decision is visible, but how čl. 30.d or OPZ čl. 43 lands on your facts is work for a Croatian adviser, and where a case needs one we connect you with expert lawyers from our network.

Keep reading

• Every country's route to Cyprus — the departure guide for wherever you are now
• How to register a company in Cyprus and what it costs
• Cyprus non-dom status — the 17-year exemption in detail
• The Cyprus 60-day rule — day counting and the residency certificate
• The Yellow Slip explained — the EU-citizen registration route
• What changed in the 2026 Cyprus tax reform

The calculator on this page uses headline rates, an assumed annual return and full distribution of profit, so it shows the shape of the difference rather than your own result; it models Croatia's standard 18% corporate rate, not the 10% small-taxpayer rate. Croatian figures are stated for 2026, and Cyprus figures apply from tax year 2026. All Sumly prices exclude VAT, and government expenses on a formation are invoiced separately once your application is approved.