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

Moving a business from Greece to Cyprus is not really a tax decision, it is a paperwork decision. Greece will not charge you personally for leaving, but it will refuse to let you leave properly if a file is late, and it will keep taxing a Cyprus company that is still being run from Athens. This guide covers both halves: the Greek exit, and the Cyprus company you land in.

Updated for 2026 Cyprus tax law and regulations.

One partner for the Greek exit file and the Cyprus company

Sumly is the one-stop, fully digitalized way to start a company in Cyprus, move a Greek business onto it, and operate that business from the first day it exists. We form the company, open your books the day you order, prepare every Cyprus return box by box, and handle the Yellow Slip and the tax residency and non-dom registration as fixed-price services. One dashboard, one provider, four published prices — instead of a lawyer for the incorporation, an accountant for the books, and nobody at all for the part where the two tax systems hand over to each other.

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.

Does Greece charge an exit tax when you leave for Cyprus?

Not on you as a person. Nothing in the procedure for transferring your tax residence abroad triggers a charge on unrealised gains, on your shareholding, or on anything else. The whole of that procedure is forms, documents, deadlines and the consequences of getting them wrong.

The reason to state this carefully rather than just asserting it is that Greece does have an exit-taxation provision, and half the material online muddles the two. Greek law contains exactly one: article 66Α of the Income Tax Code, added to transpose article 5 of the EU Anti-Tax-Avoidance Directive. The Ministry of Finance consultation archive records the chapter that introduced it under the heading incorporation into Greek law of articles 5 and 9 of Directive 2016/1164/EU — addition of article 66Α to the Income Tax Code, rules on exit taxation. That is a company-level charge, and three features of ΑΑΔΕ's implementing decision show it: the return is signed by the legal representative, the evidence it asks for is corporate — a valuation report, the company's books, transfer-pricing comparability analysis — and the trigger for a bank guarantee is a corporate solvency ratio.

So the honest formulation is the one a Greek founder can act on: leaving Greece costs you nothing in tax. Moving a Greek company's assets, residence or activity out of Greece can cost the company a great deal. The next section is about the second half of that sentence.

One caveat we will not paper over. The statutory text of article 66Α §1 — the exhaustive list of triggering events, its formal personal scope, and the rate applied — is published on a government e-library that serves HTTP only and refuses secure connections, and the gazette's own download endpoint redirects to a bare IP address we would not follow. Everything we state below about the exit tax therefore comes from ΑΑΔΕ's implementing decision, which we did read in full, and we put no number on the rate.

How does the article 66Α exit tax actually work?

Through a paper return, a three-working-day payment clock, and a five-instalment deferral that only exists because Cyprus is in the EU. This is the section no competing page carries, and it is the one that decides whether moving your intellectual property to a Cyprus entity is clever or expensive.

The decision applies to transfers of assets, of tax residence, or of business activity out of Greece, to another Member State or a third country, carried out from 1 January 2020 onward. A Greek ΙΚΕ that moves its seat, or that transfers software, a brand or a customer book to a Cyprus company, is squarely inside it. The return computes the charge asset by asset: the market value, less the value for tax purposes, multiplied by the rate — so the base is the unrealised gain, valued at market.

Market value is evidenced in one of three ways, and the third is more generous than founders expect. You can file a valuation report, or the company's latest books where the item is carried at fair value, or a transfer-pricing comparability analysis — and ΑΑΔΕ expressly allows the comparability-analysis route even to taxpayers who are not otherwise inside the transfer-pricing rules, and asks only for the comparability analysis rather than the full documentation file. Alongside it go evidence of the asset's tax base under the Greek Accounting Standards, and the latest official financial statements.

The filing mechanics are the part that catches people out in a country that has otherwise digitised well. There is no online submission route: the return goes to the competent tax office on paper, by registered post, by courier, or as a scanned PDF emailed to the address the authority publishes, with identity proved by a solemn declaration issued through gov.gr. In 2026, for the single most technical return in the Greek corporate code.

Two reliefs are worth planning around, and the first is a genuine, checkable advantage of choosing Cyprus rather than a non-EU destination:

• Five annual instalments, EU and EEA only. Payment of the exit tax in five annual instalments is available for transfers to EU Member States, and to EEA states with a recovery-assistance arrangement equivalent to the EU's. For transfers to other countries, the decision states plainly that the instalment option is not given. Cyprus is an EU Member State, so a Greece-to-Cyprus transfer qualifies. A Greek founder moving the same assets to Dubai does not get this.
• The twelve-month return relief. If the assets will come back to Greece within twelve months and you want no exit tax computed, you post a guarantee equal to the full tax that would otherwise be due. The exemption becomes final six working days after the twelve-month mark — but only if you notify the tax office within three working days of that date, with the accounting entries proving the return. Miss the notification, or leave the assets abroad, and the guarantee is forfeited to the Greek State.

The guarantee trigger in the instalment case is arithmetic rather than judgement, which makes it something you can check before you commit: a guarantee is required where the ratio of current assets to total liabilities, taken from the last financial statements, is less than 1. It must cover two instalments and run until three months and two working days after the final instalment falls due; a guarantee that is smaller or shorter makes the whole tax payable in one sum. And the tax office monitors the instalments across the full five-year period.

How does a Greek founder formally end his tax residence?

Under ΠΟΛ.1201/2017, in two stages six months apart, and this is where Greek founders fail far more often than they fail on any point of law. ΑΑΔΕ confirmed in its May 2026 handbook that this decision still governs residency changes, so it is current rather than historical.

Start with the law it implements. An individual is a Greek tax resident if he has in Greece his permanent or principal residence, or his habitual abode, or the centre of his vital interests — which the statute itself defines as his personal or economic or social ties. Those limbs are alternatives, not a cumulative test, and the inclusion of social ties is not decoration: a founder who moves his company to Limassol but keeps his family, his friends and his weekends in Athens has an argument he can lose. Separately, physical presence in Greece for more than 183 days in any rolling twelve-month period makes you resident for the tax year in which that period completes.

Then the procedure itself.

Stage one — the application, by 10 March. File with the compliance office of the tax office where you currently file as a Greek resident — not, at this stage, the Tax Office for Residents Abroad. You need form Μ0, with forms Μ1 and Μ7 completed, and a written declaration appointing a tax representative in Greece with the signature certified as genuine. The deadline is the last working day of the first ten days of March of the year following your departure year. The certified signature can be produced electronically through gov.gr with your TAXISnet credentials, at a citizens' service centre if you are still in Greece, or at a Greek consulate if you are abroad.

Stage two — the supporting documents, by 10 September. The deadline is the last working day of the first ten days of September of the same year. You produce a tax residence certificate from the state where you now claim residence — or, because Greece and Cyprus have a double tax treaty, the prescribed bilingual treaty claim form with the residence certificate embedded in it. If the foreign authority does not issue such a document, a copy of your foreign assessment or return there serves instead, and failing both, a certificate from another public authority proving permanent and stable establishment.

Plus the evidence of when you left and that you settled. ΠΟΛ.1201/2017 asks for documents showing you completed at least 183 days in the destination country in the relevant year, and lists what counts: taking up employment; commencing professional activity there and being brought within that country's social security legislation; registration on the municipal roll; a residential lease; enrolment of children at school. Alternatively, tax residence certificates from that country for the two preceding years.

Read that list as an instruction rather than a form. Every item on it is something that has to exist in Cyprus before the Greek September deadline — a Cypriot lease, Cypriot social insurance, a Cypriot company you actually work in. A founder who incorporates in Cyprus in November and applies to leave Greece the following March has none of it, and no 183 Cypriot days either. The Cyprus side is built first; the Greek file simply reports it.

There is one relief here that saves real money and time. Foreign public documents normally have to be legalised by apostille or consular certification — but the bilingual treaty claim forms agreed with the 57 states Greece has treaties with are exempt from that, and Cyprus is one of the 57. Take the treaty-form route and the apostille burden disappears.

The tax office must rule on the completeness and sufficiency of the file within two months of the date the supporting documents went in, and the procedure itself is free of charge on the state's own register of administrative procedures. There is a backstop as well: applications and documents produced up to 31 December of that same year are still accepted normally and without sanctions. Past that date you fall back to the older 2014 procedure, still with the 2017 document list.

Three practical details that founders discover late. The date of change recorded in the registry is the date you wrote on form Μ1, so put thought into it. The decision is served on your tax representative, not on you. And you must keep every document proving foreign tax residence for the future, because ΠΟΛ.1201/2017 makes that an ongoing obligation rather than a one-off submission.

What if one spouse moves to Cyprus and the other stays in Greece?

Then the evidence bar rises, and it rises cumulatively. This is the most common shape of a Greek founder's move — one partner takes the company to Limassol while the other keeps a job, a practice or a parent in Athens — and it is the case ΠΟΛ.1201/2017 singles out for special treatment.

Where one spouse or civil partner applies to move his tax residence while the other remains a Greek tax resident, the decision requires, in addition and cumulatively, evidence of employment abroad showing its permanent or long-term character, evidence of a bank account abroad, evidence of an owned or leased residence abroad together with utility accounts in that name, and evidence of a tax or social security registration number abroad. Not one of them. All of them.

The word to notice is cumulatively. In the ordinary case the evidence list is indicative and alternative — any of the items will do. In the split-household case every item is required, because the file has to overcome the natural inference that a man whose spouse and home remain in Greece has not really left. Plan for it: the Cypriot lease in your own name, the utility accounts in your own name, the Cypriot social insurance number, the Cypriot bank account, all in place before September.

Do Greek CFC rules catch a Cyprus company?

Usually not for a trading company, frequently for a passive holding company, and the arithmetic is checkable in about a minute. Greece's controlled foreign company rules sit in article 66 of the Income Tax Code and bind individuals as well as companies, so "I hold the shares personally" is not a defence here the way it is in some other jurisdictions.

An entity is a controlled foreign company where all three of the following hold at once, and ΑΑΔΕ's circular sets them out in full:

The low-tax test is the one to compute. Half of Greece's corporate rate of 22% on the profits of legal persons and legal entities, regardless of the category of books kept is 11%. A Cyprus company paying corporate tax at 15% from tax year 2026 sits above that threshold, so on headline rates the test fails and the entity is not a controlled foreign company. That single line of arithmetic is what a Greek founder most needs and cannot find anywhere in Greek-language search.

Two honest qualifications, because the test is not on headline rates:

• It measures tax actually paid. Cypriot reliefs that drop the effective rate below 11% of Greek-computed profits put you back in scope. The IP Box is the obvious one: an effective 3% from tax year 2026 on qualifying income is well under 11%, and so are participation exemptions on dividends and share disposals. A profitable Cyprus company running most of its income through the IP Box can meet the low-tax test even though its headline rate does not.
• The passive test is where holding companies fail. The listed categories include interest and other income from financial assets, royalties and other intellectual-property income, dividends and income from the disposal of shares, financial leasing, financial and insurance activities, and invoicing companies that buy from and sell to associated enterprises while adding no or minimal economic value. Income from immovable property is no longer a passive category, and the old carve-out for listed companies is gone. A Cyprus holding company whose income is dividends and share gains fails this test comfortably.

Which brings you to the escape, and to the best piece of news in this whole guide. Article 66 does not apply where the foreign company carries on substantive economic activity supported by staff, equipment, assets and premises, as shown by the relevant facts and circumstances — and that escape is unavailable to companies in third countries outside the EEA. Cyprus is in the EU, so it is available. Better still, ΑΑΔΕ states in terms that the tax authority bears the burden of proving that a controlled foreign company established in an EU or EEA state does not carry on substantive economic activity. For a third-country company the position is reversed, and the rules apply even where real activity exists.

If you are caught, undistributed passive income is added to your Greek taxable base at the rate for business profits, attributed pro rata to your participation rather than to the threshold you crossed, with foreign tax credited but capped at the Greek tax on that income. Losses of the foreign company are not included; they carry forward against its own future profits. And article 66 is a special rule — cases inside its scope are examined under it alone, neither cumulatively nor alternatively with the general anti-abuse rule.

Can Greece treat your Cyprus company as Greek anyway?

Yes, and this is the trap that survives a genuine personal move. It is also the point on which the Greek statute is drafted more aggressively than most people realise.

A legal person is a Greek tax resident if it was established under Greek law, or has its registered seat in Greece, or if the place of exercise of effective management is in Greece — and the statute says at any time during the tax year. Not for the majority of the year. Not at year end. At any point in it. On the face of the text, a single period in which the Cyprus company is really being run from Athens makes it Greek tax resident for that whole year.

Article 4 §4 then lists what is weighed in deciding where the place of exercise of effective management — τόπος άσκησης πραγματικής διοίκησης — sits: the place of day-to-day management; the place where strategic decisions are taken; the place of the annual general meeting; the place where the books and records are kept; the place where the board or other executive body meets; and the residence of the members of that body. The residence of the majority of shareholders or partners may also be taken into account alongside those.

Lay that against a typical founder-owned Cyprus company and count. If you are the sole director and you are in Athens, day-to-day management is in Greece, strategic decisions are taken in Greece, the board meets wherever you are, and the director resides in Greece. Add a Greek accountant keeping the books, and a general meeting held at the family kitchen table, and you have satisfied five of six factors. The company is then a Greek tax resident taxed at 22% on worldwide profit, whatever the Cypriot certificate of incorporation says.

These provisions interlock, and the compounding is the real risk. Article 4 §3(c) makes the Cyprus company Greek if it is run from Greece. Article 4 §§1–2 make you Greek if you keep your home, your habitual abode, your centre of vital interests or 183 days there. Article 66 stands ready for undistributed passive income. Article 66Α charges the Greek company on anything that moves out. A founder who does not genuinely move collects all four: the Cyprus company is taxed in Greece anyway, the dividend is taxed in Greece, and he has paid Cypriot incorporation and administration costs for nothing.

The protection is unglamorous and entirely achievable: decisions genuinely taken in Cyprus and minuted there, a board that really decides, books kept in Cyprus, the general meeting held in Cyprus, and a founder who actually lives on the island. Our guide to nominee directors in Cyprus explains where nominees help with this and where they do not — and the honest answer is that they do not substitute for you being there.

Does the 1968 Greece–Cyprus treaty protect you?

Less than you think for residence, and more than you think for royalties and share sales. The instrument is the convention signed in Athens on 30 March 1968 and ratified by α.ν. 573/1968, and no protocol or amending instrument appears in ΑΑΔΕ's file. It is a nearly sixty-year-old treaty and it does not look like a modern OECD model — which is the most important thing anyone can tell you about it.

On residence, there is no tie-breaker for individuals at all. Instead of a cascade running permanent home, then centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then nationality, the treaty defines each state's residents directly: a resident of Cyprus is any company whose business is managed and controlled in Cyprus, and any other person resident in Cyprus for Cypriot tax purposes and not resident in Greece for Greek tax purposes, with the mirror definition for Greece. Each definition is conditioned on not being a resident of the other state.

Follow that through and the consequence is severe. An individual who is resident of both states under their domestic laws is a treaty resident of neither. There is no rule that assigns him to one of them; he simply falls outside the treaty's residence definitions and cannot invoke it. So a founder whose ΠΟΛ.1201/2017 file was rejected, and who is therefore still Greek tax resident while also being Cypriot tax resident, has no treaty protection whatsoever. The comfortable assumption that the treaty will sort it out is exactly wrong here. For companies the treaty test is "managed and controlled" — the same substance question Greek domestic law asks, pointing the same way.

Where the treaty does deliver:

Two of those rows matter. Royalties are a complete exemption against a 20% domestic rate — the treaty's single most valuable provision for an intellectual-property owner, and its definition is broad, covering patents, trade marks, designs, secret formulae and processes, equipment and know-how. And article 12(3) gives gains on the alienation of any property other than immovable property and permanent-establishment assets exclusively to the state of the alienator's residence. There is no land-rich-company clause: the treaty does not reserve to Greece the right to tax a share sale merely because the company's value derives from Greek real estate. A genuinely Cyprus-resident individual selling shares in a Greek company is, under that provision, taxable only in Cyprus, and a 15% Greek charge disappears.

Both of those depend on being a treaty resident of Cyprus — which, under the residence definition above, means not also being a Greek tax resident, which loops straight back to the September deadline. And Greece's general anti-abuse rule and its domestic sourcing rules are not switched off by a treaty article. Treat article 12(3) as a rule with a condition attached, not as a technique.

The dividend cap deserves a plain word too. At 25% it is far above Greece's domestic 5%, and Cyprus does not withhold on outbound dividends to non-residents, so the treaty confers no dividend benefit a Greek founder actually needs. Anyone selling you the treaty on that basis has not read it. Relief runs both ways by the credit method, and the treaty even carries a 1968-vintage tax-sparing clause under which Cypriot tax spared by incentives is treated as paid.

Is Greek capital gains tax really suspended?

No — and getting this right is one of the reasons this page exists. Competing material states flatly that Greek capital gains tax is suspended. That is a conflation of two different articles of the Income Tax Code, and it points founders at the wrong risk.

The capital gains tax on transfers of securities is live at 15%. It applies to shares, partnership interests, government bonds, treasury bills, corporate bonds and derivatives, and ΑΑΔΕ restates it as a current charge in its 2026 handbook. If you sell shares in your Greek company while still a Greek tax resident, that is the rate.

What is suspended is the immovable property capital gains tax of article 41. Article 90 of ν. 5162/2024 amended the transitional provision to read that the effect of article 41 is suspended up to and including 31 December 2026. That suspension has been rolled forward repeatedly since 2015 and may well be extended again — but it applies to property, not to shares.

One related warning, and it is the sort of thing only a page that actually read the sources can give you. ΑΑΔΕ's English-language guide for Greeks abroad still prints the suspension as running through 31 December 2024. The English material lags the Greek. If you are researching your own position in English, you are reading a version of Greek tax law that is out of date, and that is true well beyond this one line.

What does staying in Greece actually cost a founder?

Less than the rhetoric suggests, and this page is more useful for saying so. The headline is not the problem. The structure is.

Take a euro of company profit through to the shareholder's pocket. The company pays 22%, and the distribution then carries a dividend tax of 5%. Combined, that is 25.9% on distributed profit. By European standards that is not a punitive number, and Greece's 5% dividend rate is genuinely low — lower than most of the countries in this cluster. The total burden gap with Cyprus is real but narrower here than almost anywhere else we write about, and a page that pretended otherwise would be arguing the weakest part of its own case.

What actually pushes Greek founders out sits underneath the headline:

Minimum imputed income for sole traders. This is the strongest push factor in Greek tax law, and it is verified word for word in the gazette. A sole trader's minimum annual business income is deemed to be an amount of up to €50,000, built from the annual gross statutory minimum wage — increased by 10% after the second three-year period of activity, by a further 10% after the third, and again after the fourth — plus up to €15,000 equal to a tenth of the payroll cost of your employees, plus 5% of the amount by which your turnover exceeds the average for your activity code. Read the escalators again: the floor rises the longer you have been in business, whether or not you made any money. You can be taxed on income you did not earn, and the longer you persist, the more of it there is.

Social insurance that is chosen, not earned. A self-employed person picks an ΕΦΚΑ category, and the choice binds for the whole following year. In 2026 the ordinary first category runs to €250.77 a month for main pension and health, and a further €10 a month is collected for the unemployment branch — so roughly €3,129 a year before the supplementary and lump-sum branches, whether you earned €12,000 or €120,000. That is a floor that hurts the small operator and a ceiling that flatters the large one. It is regressive in form, and it is not the binding constraint for a successful founder.

The business levy, now an entity charge. Here Greece deserves credit and a correction: the levy was abolished for individuals from tax year 2024, so the stale claim that Greek freelancers pay an annual €650 penalty is simply wrong. It was retained for legal persons at €800 for entities seated in tourist locations or in places of up to 200,000 inhabitants, €1,000 above that, and €600 per branch, with entities in liquidation, bankruptcy or dormancy exempt, and a real relief for growth: an entity that raises its average full-time headcount by at least three twelfths against the prior year is exempt for that year, provided gross revenue stays under €2 million.

And the compliance surface. Presumptive taxation on objective living costs means declared income is not the end of the matter. A corporate advance payment of next year's tax is assessed with the return. VAT runs at 24% standard, 13% reduced and 6% super-reduced. And the exit itself, as this guide has shown, is a paper-logic process with a six-month document gap and a penalty cliff at the end of it.

One thing that is gone and should not be listed as a grievance: the special solidarity contribution no longer appears anywhere in ΑΑΔΕ's current rate architecture. A founder leaving Greece in 2026 does not face it.

Where has Greece genuinely got better?

In several places, and a page that hid them would deserve to be distrusted. This matters practically as well as editorially — if you are weighing the move, you should weigh the current Greece, not the Greece of 2015.

The personal income tax scale falls from 2026. On the Ministry of National Economy and Finance's own announcement, the €10,000–€20,000 band drops to 20%, €20,000–€30,000 to 26%, €30,000–€40,000 to 34%, and a new 39% band covers €40,000–€60,000 in place of the old jump straight to 44%. Rates go to zero on the first €20,000 for those under 25, and the €10,000–€20,000 band falls to 9% for those aged 26 to 30, with further reductions for taxpayers with children. The bands above €10,000 are what changed; the first €10,000 is unchanged. This is a targeted cut aimed at precisely the young professionals a Cyprus page is talking to, and it is worth saying so plainly.

Digital government works better than its reputation. Tax residence certificates are issued digitally and automatically, in Greek and English, with an e-seal and a QR code. Solemn declarations come from gov.gr. Property, gift and inheritance filings run through myPROPERTY, registry changes through myAADE. And ΑΑΔΕ now files a large share of personal returns for you: for the third consecutive year, 1,357,222 returns covering 1,553,123 taxpayers were pre-filled and pre-cleared, finalising themselves automatically if the taxpayer does nothing, with tax payable in eight monthly instalments and early-payment discounts of 4%, 3% or 2% depending on when the return was filed.

Property taxation was consolidated into a new Property Tax Code, and the 2026 ENFIA assessment is issued under it. On the authority's own figures, individuals received a net discount of €354,005,018 computed on total property value, plus €26.1m of insured-dwelling discounts and €47.5m for main residences in small settlements. The structural point worth knowing before you leave: in 2026 the supplementary ENFIA is a legal-person charge, so a founder holding Greek property personally is not facing a personal supplementary wealth charge, while one holding it through a company is. Greece levies no general net wealth tax at all — the property-tax code enumerates ENFIA, transfer tax and inheritance and gift tax, and nothing resembling one.

And Greece has not given up competing. It runs three inbound regimes of its own: a high-net-worth regime charging a €100,000 annual lump sum on all foreign income for 15 years against a €500,000 investment, a foreign-pensioner regime at 7% on foreign-source income for 15 years, and a relocating-professional regime exempting 50% of Greek employment and business income for 7 years. That last one is Greece's direct answer to Cyprus for exactly the reader of this page — and it is available to a founder who later comes home.

The fair conclusion is that Greece's headline rates are no longer the outlier they were. What still moves founders is the structure: imputed income that taxes profit you did not make, a flat social insurance floor, an entity levy, and an exit procedure with a penalty cliff. Anyone leading with "22% versus 15%" is arguing the weakest half of the case.

What happens to your ΕΦΚΑ contributions and your Greek pension?

You stop being insured in Greece and start being insured in Cyprus, and the Greek tax administration expects exactly that. ΠΟΛ.1201/2017 treats being brought within the destination country's social security legislation as one of the accepted proofs that you have genuinely established yourself abroad — so the ΕΦΚΑ-to-Cyprus switch is not a side effect of the move, it is part of the evidence for it.

Beyond that, we are going to be careful. Greece and Cyprus are both EU Member States, and social insurance coordination between Member States is EU machinery rather than something either national tax office decides — a person is insured in one state at a time, and periods completed under different systems are taken into account for pension purposes. The detailed mechanics for your own record, including how your Greek contribution history is treated and what happens to a partly completed Greek entitlement, are a question for e-ΕΦΚΑ and a Greek adviser, and we found no official Greek source that sets them out in a form we would publish. Contributions already paid are not refunded on emigration.

What is worth doing before you go: pull your ΕΦΚΑ record, note the categories you have paid in and the years they cover, and get the position in writing while you are still in the country and in the language. It is a straightforward errand in March and an infuriating one in October.

On the salaried side, Greek employment carries a combined employer-and-employee contribution that is materially heavier than the Cypriot equivalent, with contributions computed up to a monthly ceiling on insurable earnings. We are not going to publish the percentage split. The figures that circulate on advisory sites are out of date on the Greek side after successive cuts, and we could not verify either leg against an official source — so we will describe the shape and leave the number to your accountant.

What happens to your existing Greek ΙΚΕ or ΑΕ?

It stays Greek, because the company does not move when the owner does. A company established under Greek law, or with its registered seat in Greece, is a Greek tax resident regardless of where its shareholders live — those two limbs of article 4 §3 are independent of the effective-management limb. A Greek ΙΚΕ whose sole shareholder relocates to Limassol still files form N, still pays 22%, and still pays the entity business levy.

Four routes, and this is a decision rather than a default:

Keep it as an operating subsidiary under a Cyprus holding company. Greek profits stay taxed at 22%, which is fine where there is continuing Greek trade or Greek customers who need a Greek counterparty. On dividends up the chain we will state only what we verified: Greece's domestic dividend withholding rate is 5% and the treaty caps it at 25%. Whether an EU exemption applies to a particular Greece-to-Cyprus distribution is a question for a Greek adviser, and we are not going to assert an outcome we did not confirm.

Wind it up. Clean, and it crystallises the Greek tax position — but it also loses the entity's history, contracts and licences, which for an established business is often the larger cost.

Move assets out. This is where article 66Α is waiting, with its three-working-day payment clock. The consolation is real: because Cyprus is in the EU, the five-instalment deferral is available, which it would not be for a non-EU destination.

Convert it across the border. Greek capital companies can in principle carry out a cross-border conversion into a Cypriot form under the EU cross-border-mobility framework, keeping legal personality and continuity of business rather than liquidating. What we can verify from an official Greek source is narrower than the marketing suggests: the General Secretariat of Commerce confirms that the legality check for cross-border mergers where the absorbing company is Greek is carried out under ν. 3777/2009, and says nothing about outward conversions. The procedure runs through the commercial registry and involves a legality check before the Greek registration can be struck off, and because the operation transfers tax residence out of Greece, article 66Α has to be modelled before anyone commits. We are deliberately not printing article numbers or timelines for the conversion route — get them confirmed by a Greek specialist for your own case.

Two housekeeping items for a retained Greek entity. Changes to the seat, the books, the activities and the facilities are declared through myAADE under registry and contact details. And if you keep Greek property personally, remember that a non-resident selling it must present an ENFIA certificate to the notary — obtainable online, but a hard gate if you have left it until the buyer is waiting.

How long does Greek inheritance and gift tax follow you?

Longer than most departing founders assume, and the reason is nationality rather than residence. This is the sharpest succession point in the corridor and competitors almost never cover it.

Greek inheritance tax applies to any asset located in Greece, whoever owns it — and also to movable assets located abroad owned by a Greek national, or by a foreign national who had his residence in Greece. So leaving Greece does not, by itself, take a Greek national's worldwide movable estate out of the Greek net. Your Cyprus company shares are movable property abroad.

The scales are set by relationship. For Category A — spouse, civil partner, children and parents — the first €150,000 per heir is untaxed on an inheritance, then 1% on the next €150,000, 5% on the next €300,000, and 10% above €600,000. Category B runs to 20% above its bands and Category C to 40%. Gifts and parental provisions are different, and much more generous: a tax-free amount of €800,000 applies to parental provisions and gifts to Category A beneficiaries made on or after 1 October 2021, covering real property, shares and corporate interests, and cash moved through a financial institution, with a flat 10% above it. Note two things: the €800,000 is a single lifetime allowance aggregated across all such transfers, not a per-transfer figure, and the pre-2021 allowance was €150,000 — which is why older Greek advice contradicts current practice.

There is a real planning route for the long-departed. An exemption applies to a gift of movable property by a Greek national who has lived abroad for at least ten consecutive years, provided that if he has moved back to Greece no more than five years have passed and the transferred property was not acquired in Greece in the last twelve years, with permanent establishment abroad for the ten-year period to be proved. Civil servants, military personnel and employees of Greece-based enterprises posted abroad are excluded. That is ten years of genuine Cyprus residence before the door opens — worth knowing at the start of the move rather than the end.

Nothing of the kind exists on the other side: Cyprus imposes neither an inheritance tax nor a recurring tax on net wealth.

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 Greek founder?

Flatter, and considerably simpler to run. A Cyprus limited company pays 15% on taxable profit from tax year 2026 — one rate, no bands, no municipal surcharge, the same on €40,000 of profit as on €4 million. Qualifying intellectual property can bring the effective rate on that income down to 3% under the IP Box.

Then the money comes out, and this is where the gap opens rather than at the corporate line. Register as non-domiciled — which almost every arriving Greek founder qualifies to do — and dividends carry no Special Defence Contribution for 17 years of Cyprus residence, while sitting outside personal income tax entirely. What remains is the health contribution at 2.65% on income up to €180,000 a year — a maximum of €4,770, whatever you distribute. Compare that with Greece's 5% on the whole distribution and no cap. A domiciled shareholder would pay 5% on dividends from 2026 profits, which is why the non-dom registration is not optional paperwork.

Salary, if you take one, runs on a personal scale of 0% to €22,000 rising to 35% above €72,000. VAT registration starts at €15,600 of taxable turnover, at a standard rate of 19% — five points below the Greek standard rate, which matters if you sell to Cypriot consumers. There is no wealth tax, no inheritance tax, and no equivalent of imputed minimum income.

If you want the two company types set against each other line by line rather than the departure process, that is a different page and we keep it separate: Cyprus versus a Greek company. The broader picture lives in Cyprus tax benefits for foreigners and Cyprus non-dom status.

How does a Greek founder become Cyprus tax resident, and does the Yellow Slip apply?

Through the 60-day rule in most cases — and yes, the Yellow Slip is open to you, because a Greek citizen is an EU citizen.

The familiar route to Cyprus tax residence is more than 183 days a year on the island. The alternative asks for far fewer days and more commitment on the ground, and it got easier in 2026: the old fifth condition was removed from the 60-day rule, leaving four. 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, held through the year. And a permanent home in Cyprus that you own or rent.

Dropping the fifth condition matters because it was the impossible one for mobile founders: you no longer have to prove the absence of a tax residence somewhere else. For a Greek founder that change is double-edged and worth understanding: it helps you acquire Cypriot residence, but as this guide has shown, the 1968 treaty has no individual tie-breaker to resolve a competing Greek claim afterwards. Acquiring Cyprus residence is necessary; clearing ΠΟΛ.1201/2017 is what actually ends the Greek one.

Two things fit together neatly here. A directorship of your own Cyprus company can be the office the third condition asks for, so forming the company and establishing residence are usually one project rather than two — and that same real directorship is what answers the effective-management question above. And the fourth condition, a home you own or rent, is the same Cypriot lease that ΠΟΛ.1201/2017 wants to see in your Greek file.

Then the Yellow Slip: the certificate that puts your residence in Cyprus on the record under EU free movement, which you are entitled to as a Greek passport holder. It registers where you live, not how you are taxed, and the two get confused constantly — our guide explains the difference, and Sumly handles the application. Tax residency and non-dom are the separate step, at €750 per person, and the 60-day rule guide covers the day counting.

Why do people choose Cyprus over other tax havens?

Because it is somewhere people actually want to live, and most of the alternatives are not. The tax is what makes a founder look; it is rarely what makes him stay.

Few countries in the European Union record less violent crime than Cyprus does. It is an English-speaking country in practice — business, banking, professional services and most official dealings run in English — which for a Greek founder means the working language changes while the cultural distance barely does. People from every corner of the world are already here, so nobody is the only foreigner in the room. Business and property are booming, and the state stays friendly and open towards people who want to trade rather than wrapping the whole thing in regulation. Groceries are affordable — meat, fruit, vegetables. Then the beaches: a Cyprus winter still leaves you able to go to the beach, and the summer is the one people fly across the world for.

For a Greek in particular there is a factor no spreadsheet captures. The language, the food, the church calendar, the way an evening is organised — none of it has to be relearned. This is the shortest cultural move available to a Greek founder anywhere in the European Union, which is exactly why so many have already made it and why nobody arriving is a curiosity.

The push list, honestly stated, is not the 25.9%. It is being taxed on a minimum income you did not earn, and watching that floor escalate every three years. It is a social insurance category you choose rather than one that follows your profit. It is a €800 or €1,000 annual levy on the entity for existing. It is an exit procedure that runs on two deadlines six months apart and ends in a penalty if the second one slips. And it is the accumulated surface of all of it — the presumptive taxation, the tax representative you must appoint to leave, the fifty-seven treaties each with its own claim form.

Can a Greek e-commerce brand run through Cyprus?

Yes, and the honest framing is operational rather than about market access — Greece and Cyprus are both inside the single market, so you are not gaining entry to anything. What changes is the rate, the compliance load, and how much of the work is done for you.

A Cyprus company holds an EU VAT number your customers can check in VIES, zero-rates intra-EU business sales on the usual conditions, and uses the one-stop shop for consumer sales across the bloc — the same architecture a Greek ΙΚΕ uses, at a lower corporate rate and without an entity levy or imputed-income floor stacked on top. Your Greek customers notice nothing.

The bookkeeping is where a store actually goes wrong, because it generates thousands of small transactions in several currencies with 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 books with the right VAT codes, so the return is built out of the sales rather than reconstructed from a CSV export the week it is due.

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 the move look like, month by month?

Timelines depend on your own circumstances and on how much of the Cypriot evidence you can create quickly, so treat this as shape rather than schedule. The one fixed structure is the Greek calendar: the March application and the September documents both fall in the year after you leave.

• Before you go — and this is where we start. We put a Greek adviser from our network on your departure date and on what happens to the existing company. If assets are moving they model article 66Α first — including whether your current-assets-to-liabilities ratio is under 1, because that decides the guarantee — and they pull your ΕΦΚΑ record.
• Month 1. We form the Cyprus company, with books open the day you order, and start the Yellow Slip. You sign a Cypriot lease in your own name — it is condition four of the 60-day rule and evidence in the Greek file at the same time, and we tell you what will satisfy both.
• Months 1–3. We register for Cyprus VAT and, where relevant, social insurance, employees and UBO, and get banking and EU payments moving. You take up the directorship and hold the decisions in Cyprus; we minute them.
• Months 3–9. You live there. We accumulate the evidence with you: the Cypriot days, the utility accounts, the social insurance registration, the school enrolments if there are children. If your spouse is staying in Greece, we build the cumulative evidence list deliberately rather than hoping.
• After 31 December of the departure year. We apply for the Cyprus tax residency certificate and register your non-dom status. Your Greek adviser files form Μ0 with Μ1 and Μ7 and the tax-representative declaration by 10 March, and produces the documents by 10 September, using the bilingual treaty claim form to skip the apostille. It is lodged on time even if something is missing — we track both dates with them.
• The following two months. The Greek tax office must rule on completeness. We keep every document; that obligation does not expire.

What mistakes do Greek founders actually make?

The expensive ones are almost never legal. They are procedural, and they are the same handful every time.

Incorporating in Cyprus in the autumn and applying to leave Greece the following March, with no Cypriot lease, no Cypriot social insurance and nowhere near 183 Cypriot days. Waiting for a perfect file instead of lodging an imperfect one by 10 September, and converting a penalty-free rejection into a penalised one. Assuming the treaty will resolve dual residence, when for individuals it does exactly the opposite. Reading the position in English and relying on ΑΑΔΕ's English guide, which still shows the property CGT suspension expiring in 2024. Believing that Greek capital gains tax is switched off, when only the property article is. Moving intellectual property into the Cyprus company without pricing article 66Α, and discovering the three-working-day payment clock afterwards. Running the Cyprus company from Athens and satisfying five of the six effective-management factors without noticing. And the split-household case: one spouse in Limassol, one in Athens, and a file assembled as though the ordinary alternative evidence list applied.

Every one of those is avoidable with a calendar and a checklist. None of them is avoidable after the fact.

Two worked examples

A consultancy at €150,000 of profit. Staying in Greece, the company pays 22% — €33,000 — and the €117,000 distributed carries 5%, another €5,850. The founder keeps €111,150, and that is before the entity levy and his own ΕΦΚΑ category. Through Cyprus the company pays 15%, or €22,500, and a non-dom founder distributing the remaining €127,500 pays only the health contribution at 2.65%, about €3,379. He keeps roughly €124,121. The annual gap is close to €13,000, which is not life-changing on its own — the calculator at the top of this page compounds it, because Cyprus does not tax the return on what you kept.

A software company at €400,000 of profit with qualifying IP. In Greece, 22% takes €88,000 and the 5% dividend tax another €15,600, leaving €296,400. In Cyprus, income qualifying under the IP Box is taxed at an effective 3% — €12,000 — and the health contribution is capped at €4,770 however much is distributed, leaving about €383,230. That is a difference of roughly €87,000 in one year, and it is the profile where the decision becomes structural rather than incremental. It is also the profile where you must not move the intellectual property carelessly: transferring it out of an existing Greek entity is exactly what article 66Α is written for, and the IP Box effective rate is below the 11% CFC threshold, so the substance in Cyprus has to be genuine.

Both examples assume full distribution and headline rates. Your own reliefs, timing, and the state of your Greek exit file change the answer, which is what a meeting is for.

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

Either route works, and plenty of founders take the first. Doing it yourself means the Registrar's forms and fees, a registered office you arrange, VAT and VIES registration, provisional tax twice a year, annual statements and books that will stand up to your auditor — on top of a two-country move and a Greek file with two deadlines in it. The Sumly route reduces that to three prices: formation from €950 one-time, the bookkeeping software from €39 a month, and a Sumly certified bookkeeper of your own at €390 a month, with the books open from day zero and every return prepared box by box.

The software alone runs the whole company from Cyprus or from Greece: invoicing, AI double-entry bookkeeping that books documents itself, 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.

And Sumly offers all of it to everyone: a virtual address with PO box, with digital mail scanning delivered to your dashboard wherever you are; nominee director and secretary where a structure genuinely needs them; the Yellow Slip, which as an EU citizen you can use; tax residency and non-dom at €750 per person; and every registration handled — VAT, social insurance, employees and UBO — filed right the first time.

Each of those is an extra, scoped to your case. 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 fits, since that is complex expert work and exactly the kind of thing that should be examined with you before anyone quotes it. No hourly billing, no surprises.

Sumly, a law firm, and a traditional bookkeeping firm

Law firm vs Sumly — and what happens when it 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.

For a Greek founder that division of labour is the whole point. The Greek side of this move — the exit file, the existing entity, the article 66Α modelling — needs a Greek adviser, and we will say so every time. Everything on the Cyprus side comes from a single provider, in a single dashboard, at four prices we publish. That is what makes Sumly the best choice for Greek founders creating a company in Cyprus and relocating their business to it.

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 sentence we are happy to defend anywhere, and here is what sits behind it.

The two Cyprus-built alternatives a Greek founder will be shown are Cybooks and Balabook. We meet their former customers every week — 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.

Put plainly, and in that order: the best support, the best bookkeeping software, the best AI for bookkeeping, the best bookkeeper, the best prices — and everything done easily. We publish the detail rather than asserting it: Sumly vs Cybooks, Sumly vs Balabook, and for the international tools you may already use, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.

On the IP Box one line is worth repeating, and for a Greek founder it carries an extra edge because the effective rate sits below the CFC threshold: 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 starts as a conversation — one more reason the meeting is the first thing in the sequence, not the last.

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 Greek founders actually ask

Frequently asked

Does Greece charge an exit tax when I move to Cyprus?

Not on you personally. The procedure an individual follows to move his tax residence abroad — ΠΟΛ.1201/2017 — contains no charge of any kind: it is forms, documents and deadlines. Greece's only exit-taxation provision, article 66Α of the Income Tax Code, transposes the EU Anti-Tax-Avoidance Directive and operates at company level; its return is signed by the legal representative and its supporting documents are company books, valuations and financial statements. So the charge to plan around is the one that bites when a Greek company moves assets, residence or activity out — not the one that bites when you board the plane.

What are the deadlines for transferring my tax residence out of Greece?

Two of them, six months apart, both in the year after you leave. The application — form Μ0 with Μ1 and Μ7 and a declaration appointing a Greek tax representative — is due by the last working day of the first ten days of March. The supporting documents, including your Cypriot tax residence certificate, are due by the last working day of the first ten days of September. Files completed up to 31 December of that same year are still accepted without sanctions. After that you fall back to the older procedure.

What happens if my Cypriot residence certificate arrives after the September deadline?

Lodge what you have anyway. ΠΟΛ.1201/2017 draws a sharp line between a file that was submitted on time but judged incomplete and a file that was never submitted or came late. Both end in rejection, but the first leaves you filing a Greek worldwide-income return without a late-filing penalty, and the second attracts one. Submitting something imperfect by the deadline is materially better than submitting something perfect after it.

Do Greek CFC rules catch a Cyprus company?

Only if all three statutory tests are met at once, and the low-tax test is the one that usually fails. That test compares the tax actually paid abroad with half of what Greece would have charged — half of 22% is 11%, and Cyprus's corporate rate from 2026 sits above that. Two caveats matter: the test looks at tax actually paid, so IP Box or participation reliefs can push the effective rate under 11%; and because Cyprus is in the EU, the genuine-establishment escape applies and the Greek tax authority — not you — carries the burden of proving the company lacks staff, equipment, assets and premises.

Can Greece tax my Cyprus company as if it were Greek?

Yes, if it is really run from Greece. Article 4 §3(c) of the Income Tax Code makes a company Greek tax resident where the place of exercise of effective management is in Greece at any time during the tax year — not for most of the year, at any time in it. Article 4 §4 lists what is weighed: day-to-day management, where strategic decisions are taken, where the general meeting is held, where the books are kept, where the board meets, and where the board members live. A sole director sitting in Athens satisfies most of that list by himself.

Does the Greece–Cyprus double tax treaty sort out dual residence?

For individuals it does not, and this surprises people. The 1968 convention has no permanent-home-then-centre-of-vital-interests cascade. It defines a resident of each state as someone resident there and not resident in the other, so a person who is resident of both under domestic law is a treaty resident of neither and cannot invoke the treaty at all. For companies the test is where the business is managed and controlled — the same substance question Greek domestic law asks.

Is Greek capital gains tax on shares suspended?

No, and this is the single most common error in the competing material. What is suspended is the immovable-property capital gains tax of article 41, now to 31 December 2026 by article 90 of ν. 5162/2024. The capital gains tax on transfers of securities under article 42 is live at 15% and ΑΑΔΕ restates it as such in its 2026 handbook. Anyone telling you Greek CGT is switched off is conflating two different articles.

What happens to my Greek ΙΚΕ when I move to Cyprus?

It stays Greek. A company founded under Greek law or with its registered seat in Greece is a Greek tax resident regardless of where its shareholders live, so it keeps filing form N, keeps paying 22%, and keeps paying the entity business levy. Your realistic options are to keep it as an operating subsidiary, wind it up, move assets out and price the article 66Α exit tax first, or attempt a cross-border conversion — which is specialist work and needs confirming case by case.

Does Sumly advise on Greek tax?

No. Sumly builds and runs the Cyprus side — formation, books from day zero, Cyprus VAT, VIES and corporate returns, the Yellow Slip, and the tax residency and non-dom application. This guide sets out Greece's own published rules so you can see the shape of the decision, but how they apply to your facts is a question for a Greek-qualified adviser, and the exit-tax and cross-border-conversion questions in particular need one. Where a case needs specialist help we connect you with expert lawyers from our network — and the first step either way is a meeting.

Keep reading

• Every country's route to Cyprus — the departure guide for wherever you are now
• Cyprus versus a Greek company — the two company types side by side
• 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 registration certificate, step by step
• What changed in the 2026 Cyprus tax reform
• How to register a company in Cyprus and what it costs

The calculator on this page uses headline rates, an assumed 10% annual return and full distribution of profit, so it shows the shape of the difference rather than your own result. Greek figures are stated for 2026 except where a source carries its own date, and the combined 25.9% on distributed profit is derived arithmetic from the 22% corporate rate and the 5% dividend rate rather than a published figure. 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.