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

Hungary charges 9% corporate tax, the lowest headline rate in the European Union, and Cyprus charges 15%. So relocating a Hungarian business to Cyprus is never a company-rate decision. It is a decision about what the founder personally keeps — and, before that, about whether a Hungarian citizen can stop being a Hungarian tax resident at all.

Updated for 2026 Cyprus tax law and regulations.

Hungary to Cyprus, handled end to end by one provider

Sumly is the one-stop, fully digitalized way to relocate yourself, start your company and run it from Hungary to Cyprus, working from the day the company exists. We incorporate it, open the books the moment you order, prepare every Cyprus return box by box, and deliver the Yellow Slip, tax residency and non-dom registrations as fixed-price services. One partner, one dashboard, one published price list — instead of an ügyvéd for the incorporation, a könyvelő for the ledgers, and nobody at all for the part in between.

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 Cyprus cheaper than Hungary's 9% corporate tax?

No, and we are going to say that before anything else, because a Hungarian founder spots the evasion in one line. NAV's own corporate tax booklet puts the rate at 9% of the positive tax base, flat. Cyprus, from this year, charges 15% from tax year 2026.

Six points, in Hungary's favour, at the company level. If the only number that matters to you is the one the company pays on its profit, stay where you are. That is not a rhetorical concession before a pivot — it is the correct answer for a meaningful share of the people reading this, and the Hungarian search results are full of pages that cannot bring themselves to write it, because they are still selling against a Cypriot 12.5% that stopped existing on 1 January.

What follows is the honest remainder: the shareholder position, the szocho ceiling and the exemption that travels with you, the IP Box, and the one structural fact about Hungarian residency that decides more of these cases than every rate on this page put together.

Does KIVA already beat anything Cyprus can offer?

For a certain shape of company, yes, and it deserves its own answer rather than a footnote. The kisvállalati adó is a 10% substitute tax replacing corporate income tax and the social contribution tax together, on a base built from approved dividends and the result of capital transactions, increased by personnel-type payments — but at least the personnel-type payments alone.

Read that base carefully, because it is not a profit tax. Profit that stays inside the business, including profit spent on stock and equipment, never enters it. A company whose wage bill dwarfs its distributable profit therefore pays 10% on something close to its payroll, and that 10% has already absorbed the employer's social contribution tax. NAV's own steer on who should consider the regime says exactly this: businesses whose personnel costs typically exceed their profit, and businesses funding significant development out of retained profit or a capital injection.

Entry is tested on the previous year together with related parties: headcount not above 100, revenue not above HUF 6 billion, balance sheet total not above HUF 6 billion, a 31 December year end, no final cancellation of the tax number in the previous two calendar years, and no controlled foreign company. Termination is where the Cyprus plan collides with it.

Can a Hungarian citizen stop being a Hungarian tax resident?

This is the question the whole corridor turns on, and almost nothing published in either language answers it. Under Szja tv. 3. § 2., as NAV sets it out, a person is a belföldi illetőségű magánszemély — a Hungarian tax resident — if they are a Hungarian citizen, except a dual citizen with no registered Hungarian address. Not "if they live here". Not "if they spend 183 days here". Citizenship, on its own, is enough.

NAV then states the consequence without hedging: Hungarian citizens remain Hungarian tax residents under domestic rules even where they live and work in a foreign state for a period of several years. The familiar cascade — állandó lakóhely, then létérdekek központja, then szokásos tartózkodási hely — applies only to people who fall outside the citizenship, free-movement, settled-status and statelessness categories. For a Hungarian founder it never gets a chance to run.

If that pattern sounds American, it is: a jurisdiction taxing its own passport rather than the people who actually live there. But the resemblance stops at exactly the point that matters. The United States wrote a saving clause into its treaties so that the tie-breaker cannot help a citizen. Hungary did not. Domestic law holds you, and the treaty lets you go — which means a Hungarian departure is a real engineering problem with a real solution, rather than a life sentence you can only end at a consulate.

So the mechanism is this. Hungary claims you on citizenship. Cyprus claims you once you meet its own residency test. Two claims engage the treaty tie-breaker, and NAV applies the ordinary order: permanent home, then centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then citizenship. You are not trying to escape Hungarian residence. You are trying to win a tie-breaker — and everything about how you plan the move should be organised around that sentence.

What does állandó lakóhely mean when you leave Hungary?

It means far more than an address on a card, and this is where half-committed moves die. NAV's definition of állandó lakóhely is a dwelling in which the individual has settled for lasting residence and actually lives there. Then comes the sentence that decides most cases: the permanent home does not change where the individual stays abroad on a temporary basis, even for a longer period.

Turn that around and look at it from the tie-breaker's side. Keeping the Budapest flat "for now" is not a neutral hedge. On NAV's own reading it preserves the Hungarian állandó lakóhely, so the first tie-breaker criterion either resolves in Hungary's favour outright, or — if you also take a Cyprus home — pushes the analysis on to centre of vital interests, where family, social and economic ties are weighed against each other. Every string you leave attached to Budapest is evidence in that weighing.

Can residency change part-way through the year?

Yes, and this is the most generous thing in the Hungarian file. NAV runs a dedicated page on illetőségváltás az adóéven belül confirming that residence can change inside a tax year when circumstances change, and works through the case of someone Hungarian-resident for eight months who relocates on 1 September and establishes foreign residence while winding up their Hungarian ties.

The split is clean. Income earned while you were Hungarian resident stays taxable in Hungary and goes into that year's return. Foreign-source income earned after the change is, in NAV's own words, in no way taxable in Hungary. There is no clawback of the whole calendar year, and no rule pulling the pre-departure months forward into a foreign net.

Set that beside the paragraph above it and you have the shape of a workable Hungarian departure: the citizenship rule means leaving is not automatic, and the split-year rule means that once it is real, it is clean. Both halves are true at once, and the plans that fail are the ones that assumed only the second.

Does moving to Cyprus trigger the tőkekivonási adó?

If you move the company, yes — this is the exit charge, and Hungary put your exact transaction first on the list. Special rules have applied since 2020. NAV's corporate booklet sets out four capital-withdrawal triggers, and number one is the taxpayer moving its place of business management abroad in a way that results in acquiring foreign tax residence.

The other three all concern assets or activities crossing between a Hungarian seat and a foreign permanent establishment, or the reverse, where after the transfer they no longer generate Hungarian corporate tax liability. The common thread is the loss of the Hungarian taxing right, which is what an exit charge is for.

The base is stated plainly, and it is the familiar one: in the year of the withdrawal, the tax base is increased by the market value of the transferred assets or activities at withdrawal, minus their registered book value or equivalent. There is a sensible limiter — the increase applies only to the extent the same circumstance does not already produce an equal or larger base increase under other Tao. tv. rules, so nothing is counted twice.

Then the relief that changes the cash-flow picture. In certain cases the tax attributable to the transferred assets or activities may be paid in five instalments under Tao. tv. 16/A. § (4), elected on the NY-02 sheet of the corporate return at line 55, with a dedicated sheet, 2529-01-07, for computing the tax on the capital withdrawal itself. NAV describes the qualifying cases only as "certain cases", and we are not going to invent the conditions for you — whether the election is confined to EU and EEA destinations, and whether interest or security attaches, is a question for the statute and your Hungarian adviser.

Two things are worth holding on to. First, at 9% this is the mildest exit charge in this whole cluster of guides — Hungary taxes latent gains at the same low rate it taxes everything else. Second, and more practically: incorporating a new Cyprus company alongside a Hungarian one that keeps trading is not a capital withdrawal. The charge attaches to moving management, assets or activities out. A great deal of Hungarian anxiety about "exit tax" is really anxiety about a transaction the founder was never proposing.

Can NAV treat your Cyprus company as Hungarian?

Yes, and it is a larger exposure than CFC because it swallows the whole company rather than a slice of it. NAV's list of Hungarian resident corporate taxpayers includes a foreign person whose place of business management is in Hungary. Not its registered seat. Where it is actually run.

A Cyprus limited whose real decisions are taken over coffee in the seventh district is a Hungarian tax resident on worldwide profits, and its Cypriot registration is decoration. NAV is not treating that as an exotic edge case, either: a foreign person resident by virtue of its place of business management can be a member of a Hungarian corporate tax group, which is about as domestic as a taxpayer gets.

Notice that Hungary uses üzletvezetésének helye at both doors. Bring the management in and the company becomes Hungarian. Take it out and you trip the first trigger of the tőkekivonási adó. One concept, two directions — which is why the substance question is not a compliance chore bolted on after the incorporation. It is the structure.

Practically, that means Cyprus board meetings held in Cyprus, directors who genuinely decide things, contracts signed where the company is, and books kept in a system that shows all of it. That last part is not incidental: a clean, dated, auditable record of where decisions and transactions actually happened is the evidence, and it either exists from day one or it is reconstructed under pressure.

Do Hungarian CFC rules catch a Cyprus company?

Much less than the English-language relocation genre assumes, and the reason is structural rather than technical. Hungary's ellenőrzött külföldi társaság regime sits in Tao. tv. 4. § 11., and its consequences run through the corporate base: undistributed profits of a CFC arising from a non-genuine arrangement or series of arrangements increase the Hungarian taxpayer's pre-tax profit under Tao. tv. 8. § (1) f); a participation in a CFC cannot be a bejelentett részesedés, closing the participation-exemption route on a later sale; and foreign tax paid by the CFC on income taxed in Hungary under that provision is creditable.

Now the direction of travel, which is the genuinely interesting part. A CFC low-tax test is calibrated against the home rate — and Hungary's home rate is the lowest in the European Union. Whatever fraction the statute uses, it is a fraction of 9%. Cyprus at 15% is not a low-taxed jurisdiction relative to Hungary; it is a higher-taxed one. The generic warning that "EU CFC rules may apply to your Cyprus company" is written for founders leaving 25% jurisdictions, and it is close to inverted for a Hungarian.

We are not printing the control and low-tax percentages, because we could not read Tao. tv. 4. § 11. from an official text during this research and a number you cannot cite is a number you should not publish. The argument above does not need them. Three caveats keep it honest:

• The test looks at tax actually paid, not the headline. A Cyprus company paying very little Cypriot tax because of the IP Box, or because most of its income is exempt gains on disposals of securities, can be caught despite a 15% rate card.
• The non-genuine arrangement limb works independently of any rate comparison. It asks where the significant people functions sit. A shell that decides nothing fails it at 15% just as it would at 5%.
• And KIVA status ends outright on having a CFC, whatever the rates say.

So the Hungarian CFC question is not "is Cyprus low-taxed enough to be a problem" — it very likely is not — but "does the Cyprus company genuinely do what it is paid for". Which is the same question the place-of-management rule asks, from a different angle.

What does a Hungarian founder actually pay on a dividend?

Less than the arithmetic most comparisons perform, and this is where Hungarian-language content most often gets it wrong in both directions. The two layers are personal income tax and the social contribution tax.

Szja is flat at 15% on dividends. Szocho is 13% — but with a payment ceiling that most summaries omit entirely.

The adófizetési felső határ, and what sits inside it

Szocho on the named capital incomes — dividends, income withdrawn from a business, securities-lending income, the entrepreneurial dividend base and capital gains — is payable only until the sum of your consolidated-tax-base income and those capital incomes reaches 24 times the minimum wage. For 2026 that is HUF 7,747,200, derived from a minimum wage of HUF 322,800 per month at 1 January. NAV's own worked example: an entrepreneur with HUF 5,200,000 of consolidated-base income and a HUF 3,000,000 dividend base pays szocho on HUF 2,547,200 of it.

Two consequences fall straight out of that table. Above the ceiling, the marginal charge on a further forint of dividend is 15%, not 28% — so every comparison that adds 15 and 13 across an entire large distribution overstates the Hungarian burden. And below it, szocho is real money — so every comparison that ignores szocho understates the burden on a modest one. Both mistakes are common in this genre. Getting it right is the least a page can do before asking you to move country.

One mechanical trap worth knowing: the kifizető keeps withholding until you declare the ceiling has been reached. A forward-looking declaration is allowed, but if the income then falls short, the tax is declared in the annual szja return increased by 6% and paid by the filing deadline.

Foreign dividends while you are still Hungarian resident

Relevant to anyone who incorporates in Cyprus before the residency question is settled. NAV's booklet 04 is explicit: the individual has a liability in both states, the source state may tax under the treaty, and Hungarian tax is reduced by 90% of the tax paid abroad, capped at the tax computed at the Hungarian rate on that income. Where the foreign tax is refundable to you, no credit is available at all. A Cyprus dividend paid to a still-Hungarian founder is therefore a Hungarian tax event with a partial credit, not a tax-free receipt.

Does the szocho follow you to Cyprus?

No — and this is the one saving in the entire departure file that is mechanical rather than argumentative. NAV's szocho booklet provides that no szocho is payable on the income of a person insured in another EU member state under the social security coordination regulations, proven by a certificate from the competent foreign authority.

Insured in Cyprus, certificate obtained, the 13% layer comes off. There is nothing to argue about and nothing to weigh — it is a document you either hold or do not. Note the shape of it, though: the exemption rewards actually moving your social insurance, not merely opening a company. It is, in miniature, the same lesson as the residency rule.

On the Cyprus side, health contributions are 2.65% on income up to €180,000 a year under the GeSY system, which is a hard ceiling rather than an uncapped percentage. For a founder distributing serious money, that ceiling is one of the quieter reasons the Cyprus arithmetic works.

Does Hungary tax wealth or inheritance when you go?

Not in the way founders fear, and this is a push factor we are going to decline to invent. There is no recurring net wealth tax in Hungary. Hungary taxes the acquisition of property through duties and levies local property taxes, but nothing in NAV's booklet catalogue describes an annual charge on net worth. Cyprus levies no net wealth tax either, so on this axis the move is neutral.

Inheritance duty is real but narrow. The general rate of öröklési illeték is 18% of the net value of each heir's share, and 9% for residential property and the rights attaching to it. But the exemptions cover the ordinary family case completely: the share acquired by the deceased's direct-line relative including adoptive relationships, by the spouse, by the registered partner, and by the deceased's siblings — full, half and adoptive alike — is exempt, with no ceiling. Step and foster children and parents get HUF 20 million of the net value exempt.

Cyprus, for its part, levies no inheritance tax at all. So a Hungarian founder gains something here, but not much, because the Hungarian family line already passes free of duty. If a page tells you Hungarian succession tax is a reason to emigrate, it has not read booklet 20.

What is the helyi iparűzési adó doing to your comparison?

Something that a 9%-versus-15% headline hides completely, and it is the most underreported item in Hungarian relocation content. The helyi iparűzési adó is levied by the municipality under local decree, and — the part that matters — it is charged on a turnover-derived base, not on profit. NAV's own HIPA return guide does not state a rate at all; it takes the rate from the municipal decree and pre-loads it into the return from the municipal authority's data supply.

We are deliberately not printing a percentage. The statutory ceiling on the municipal rate is a figure in general circulation that we could not verify against an official text during this research, and a tax number you cannot cite has no business on a page people plan a move from. What we can state is the structure, which is what actually changes the comparison.

The base is net sales revenue reduced by the cost of goods sold and the value of mediated services, and that deduction is progressively restricted as revenue rises: unrestricted for a business with net revenue up to HUF 500 million, then capped at 85% in the HUF 500 million to 20 billion band, 75% from 20 to 80 billion, and 70% above that. Small businesses may instead elect a simplified flat base under Htv. 39/A. § where revenue does not exceed HUF 25 million, or HUF 120 million for a flat-rate taxpayer carrying on retail activity only — at the cost of losing HIPA reliefs, reductions and exemptions.

The consequence is easy to state and hard to argue with: because the charge runs off revenue rather than profit, a thin-margin Hungarian business pays HIPA in years when it pays almost no corporate tax, and a loss-making one pays it too. Note also that KIVA replaces corporate tax and szocho only — HIPA is not on that list, so it continues underneath. Anyone who files a HIPA return every year already knows this, which is why a comparison that stops at 9% reads as a sales pitch rather than an analysis.

Does the 1981 Hungary–Cyprus treaty still do the work?

It exists, it applies, and it is old. NAV's own list of Hungary's applicable double tax treaties gives Cyprus as 82/1982. (XII. 29.) MT rendelet, signed on 30 November 1981 and applicable from 1 January 1983. For scale, Hungary's treaties with Czechia and Slovakia are 1990s instruments; the Cyprus one was concluded by the Hungarian People's Republic and never replaced.

That matters in a specific way rather than a vague one. This is the instrument whose tie-breaker you are relying on to end Hungarian residence, and it predates essentially all modern treaty anti-abuse architecture. We are not going to publish article-level dividend, interest or royalty rates from it, or a paraphrase of its Article 4 wording, because the consolidated text was not reachable from an official source during this research and NAV's general statement about what treaties "typically" allow is a statement about treaties in general, not about this one. Anyone quoting you a Hungary–Cyprus article rate off a template should be asked which text they read.

What does not depend on the treaty at all: Hungary and Cyprus are both EU member states, so the Parent-Subsidiary and Interest and Royalties Directives govern flows between them regardless of what a 1981 document says. For most founders, that is the more relevant instrument anyway.

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 actually look like?

Simpler than the Hungarian side, which is most of the appeal. Corporate tax is 15% from tax year 2026. Personal income tax runs 0% to €22,000 rising to 35% above €72,000. VAT registration starts at €15,600 of taxable turnover, and the standard rate is 19%.

The shareholder layer is where the case is actually made. Under the non-dom regime a qualifying individual is outside the special defence contribution on dividends for 17 years, while a domiciled shareholder pays 5% on dividends from 2026 profits. So the founder's own distribution meets GeSY at 2.65% up to the €180,000 ceiling and very little else. Compare that with 15% szja plus a capped 13% szocho and you can see where the difference lives — not in the company, in the person.

And for product companies there is the one route by which a Cyprus effective rate goes below Hungary's 9%: the IP Box, at 3% from tax year 2026 on qualifying income. That is the profile where the move stops being incremental. It is also the profile that has to be genuinely relocated, because an effective 3% is exactly the kind of tax-actually-paid figure a CFC analysis notices. The details are in claiming the Cyprus IP Box and on the IP Box service page; the wider picture is in Cyprus tax benefits for foreigners and what changed in the 2026 reform.

Two worked examples, and one that says stay

A €140,000-profit consultancy, one founder, everything distributed. In Hungary the company pays 9%, €12,600, and distributes €127,400; szja at 15% takes €19,110, leaving about €108,290 before the szocho layer, which is charged at 13% only until aggregate income reaches HUF 7,747,200 and then stops. All-in, roughly 22.65% plus a fixed szocho amount. Through Cyprus the company pays 15%, €21,000, distributes €119,000, and a non-dom founder meets only GeSY at 2.65%, €3,153, keeping about €115,847 — an all-in near 17.25%. The gap is around €7,500 a year. Real, but not by itself a reason to move two countries.

A €500,000 SaaS company with qualifying IP. Hungary: 9% is €45,000, the €455,000 distribution costs €68,250 in szja, and roughly €386,750 survives — the same 22.65% shape at a bigger number, again before szocho. Cyprus without the IP Box: €75,000 of corporate tax, €425,000 distributed, GeSY capped at €4,770, about €420,230 kept. Cyprus with the IP Box at an effective 3%: €15,000 of corporate tax, €485,000 distributed, the same €4,770 GeSY ceiling, and about €480,230 kept. That is a six-figure annual difference, and it is the only configuration in this guide where Cyprus goes under Hungary's headline rate.

And the one where you should stay. A twelve-person agency on KIVA, whose personnel costs run well ahead of its distributable profit, pays 10% on a base that is essentially its payroll — with the employer's social contribution tax already inside that 10%. Move it to Cyprus and you swap a single 10% charge for 15% corporate tax plus Cyprus employer contributions on the same wage bill, and you lose KIVA the moment a controlled foreign company appears. We are not going to pretend that arithmetic favours us. If that is your company, the honest advice is to price the KIVA position properly first and only then ask what Cyprus adds.

All three assume full distribution, headline rates, and that you have genuinely become Cyprus tax resident. Your own szocho position, your HIPA base, your KIVA status and your exit-tax exposure all move the answer — which is exactly what a meeting is for.

Why do people choose Cyprus over other tax havens?

Because most of the alternatives ask you to live somewhere you would not otherwise live. Cyprus is a normal European country that happens to have an attractive tax position, and for a Hungarian family the everyday arguments carry as much weight as the fiscal ones.

• Among the lowest violent crime rates in the EU. Children walk places. It changes what an ordinary week feels like.
• English is spoken everywhere — in the banks, the schools, the Registrar's office and the doctor's surgery. For a Hungarian founder that is a meaningful reduction in friction, because Hungarian opens very few doors abroad and English opens most of them here.
• People from everywhere are already here. You are not the first foreign founder in the room, and there is a settled Hungarian-speaking community rather than an experiment.
• Business and real estate are both busy, and the regulatory posture is open rather than defensive — light-touch by the standards of a founder used to Hungarian filing calendars.
• The beaches. In a Cyprus winter you can still go to the sea, and the summers are what people fly across a continent for. From Budapest that is not a lifestyle upgrade so much as a different climate entirely.
• Groceries are affordable — meat, fruit and vegetables in particular, which is the part of a household budget a family notices monthly.

The Hungarian-specific pushes are worth naming honestly, because they are structural rather than emotional: a residency rule that follows your passport rather than your life; a local business tax that runs off turnover and therefore lands in bad years; a small-business regime that can end because of a decision you took in another country; and a treaty relationship with Cyprus resting on a document from 1981.

How does a Hungarian founder become Cyprus tax resident?

Through one of two routes, and from 2026 the shorter one got easier. The 183-day rule is the ordinary one. The 60-day rule now has four conditions, after the old fifth — not being tax resident anywhere else — 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 held through the year; and a permanent home in Cyprus that you own or rent.

For a Hungarian that removal is more than a technicality. Because Szja tv. 3. § 2. keeps claiming you on citizenship, the old fifth condition invited precisely the argument a Hungarian founder could not win. With it gone, you can satisfy the Cyprus test on its own terms and let the treaty tie-breaker do its work — which is the correct sequence, and the reverse of how most people attempt it.

Note the third condition especially: it wants a Cyprus business, employment or office held throughout the year. A company incorporated in October does not retro-fit a January-to-December condition, which is why timing an incorporation and timing a departure are the same conversation. The mechanics are set out in the Cyprus 60-day rule and Cyprus non-dom status.

As an EU citizen you qualify for the Yellow Slip, the registration certificate for EU nationals exercising free movement — the explainer covers it and we handle it as a service. The tax residency and non-dom registration is a separate matter, and we sell it as a fixed-price tax residency service at €750 per person. If you don't qualify, we tell you before you pay.

Can a Hungarian webshop run through Cyprus?

Yes, and the bookkeeping is the part that decides whether it is pleasant. A Hungarian seller shipping across the EU is already living inside OSS returns, marketplace reporting and platform payouts that arrive net of fees in three currencies. Moving the selling entity to Cyprus does not remove any of that; it changes which authority receives it and puts the whole store inside a single EU VAT position that is filed from one place.

The Sumly plugins connect the store directly, so orders, refunds, fees and payouts land in the books as they happen instead of being reconstructed from CSV exports at quarter end. See Shopify bookkeeping and WooCommerce bookkeeping for what each one reads and posts. The practical effect for a founder who has been doing it by hand is that VAT and OSS stop being a monthly reconstruction project and become a report you look at.

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?

Qualitatively, because the real timeline depends on your own KIVA position, your HIPA year and how quickly the Hungarian ties come apart.

• Month zero. We establish two facts with you before anything else: whether you are on KIVA, and whether a Cyprus entity would be a controlled foreign company for that purpose. We put a Hungarian adviser from our network on pricing the tőkekivonási adó exposure if the plan involves moving management rather than incorporating alongside.
• Month one. We incorporate in Cyprus. Books open the day you order, and we file the registrations bundle — VAT, social insurance, employees, UBO — as the company comes into existence.
• Months one to three. We handle the Yellow Slip, the banking and the EU payments; you take a Cyprus home you own or rent. We start the Cyprus social insurance so the Regulation 883/2004 certificate exists rather than being promised.
• Months three to six. You move the substance the place-of-management rule cares about — where the board meets, who decides, where contracts are signed — and we minute it. Your Hungarian adviser dismantles the állandó lakóhely properly, with dates and documents.
• Around the change of residence. NAV accepts a mid-year illetőségváltás. Income up to that date is Hungarian; after it, foreign-source income is outside Hungarian tax altogether. We make sure the date is a real one the paperwork supports, rather than one chosen after the fact.
• The following spring. Your Hungarian adviser files the return for the split year. We run the Cyprus provisional tax cycle and prepare the first full Cyprus corporate return box by box.

What mistakes do Hungarian founders make?

Assuming the company rate is the argument, in either direction — believing a page that claims Cyprus charges 12.5%, or dismissing Cyprus entirely because 9% is lower without ever looking at the shareholder layer. Reading "no exit tax" somewhere and applying it to a company migration that is squarely inside Tao. tv. 16/A. §. Setting up in Cyprus while still on KIVA and discovering the termination rule afterwards. Running the Cyprus company from Budapest and treating üzletvezetésének helye as paperwork. Adding 15% and 13% across a whole distribution and concluding Hungary is punitive, or forgetting szocho entirely and concluding it is cheap. Keeping the flat "just in case" and calling the move permanent. Never obtaining the Regulation 883/2004 certificate and paying szocho that was not due. And quoting a Hungary–Cyprus treaty rate from a template that has clearly never opened an MT rendelet from 1982.

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 genuinely work, and the question is only how much unfamiliar administration you want to carry while you are also managing a Hungarian departure. Doing it alone means the Registrar's forms and fees, a registered office you source, VAT and VIES registration, provisional tax twice a year, annual statements and books your auditor will accept — on top of the illetőség question and whatever the tőkekivonási adó turns out to cost. The Sumly route publishes three prices and does not invent a fourth: formation from €950 one-time, the software from €39 a month, and your own Sumly certified bookkeeper at €390 a month, with books open from day zero.

The €950 covers the name check, all registration paperwork prepared and submitted, the company registered with the Cyprus Registrar of Companies, and your Sumly books opened the day you order. Government expenses are invoiced separately once the application is approved.

The software alone runs the whole company, whether you are sitting in Limassol or still in Budapest: 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 else in the catalogue is offered to every client and scoped in the meeting: the virtual address with PO box, including digital scanning of your post into the dashboard wherever you are; nominee director and secretary where a structure genuinely calls for them; the Yellow Slip, which as an EU citizen you qualify for; tax residency and non-dom at €750 per person; the registrations bundle — VAT, social insurance, employees and UBO; audit through Partner Auditors; banking and EU payments; and the expert-lawyer network for complicated relocations.

Tell us what you need and it comes back as one clear package-deal offer covering all of it — the IP Box application included where it fits, since it is complex expert work that should be looked at with you before anyone quotes a number. No hourly billing and no surprise invoices.

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 Hungarian founder that division is the entire point. The Szja tv. 3. § 2. analysis, the tőkekivonási adó valuation and the KIVA decision belong to a Hungarian adviser, and we will tell you so every time you ask. The Cyprus half — the company, the books, the filings, the Yellow Slip and the residency — arrives from one provider, in one dashboard, on four published prices. That is what makes Sumly the best choice for Hungarian founders creating a company in Cyprus and relocating their business here.

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 are happy to defend, and the evidence follows.

Once you arrive, two locally built alternatives will be recommended to you: 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.

Plainly stated: the best support, the best bookkeeping software, the best AI for bookkeeping, the best bookkeeper and the best prices — with everything done easily. The detail is published: Sumly vs Cybooks and Sumly vs Balabook, and for the international tools a Hungarian founder may already run, 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. For a Hungarian founder it is doubly true, because the effective 3% is also the figure a CFC analysis would look at, so the tracking and the substance record have to be built together from the first month. The application starts as a conversation.

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 Hungarian founders actually ask

Frequently asked

Is Cyprus really more expensive than Hungary on corporate tax?

Yes, at the company level, and any page that tells you otherwise is selling you a rate that no longer exists. Hungary charges 9% of the positive tax base, the lowest headline corporate rate in the European Union. Cyprus charges 15% from tax year 2026, up from the 12.5% that most Hungarian-language articles are still quoting. A founder optimising purely for what the company pays should stay in Hungary, and we would rather say that on the first screen than bury it.

Can a Hungarian citizen stop being a Hungarian tax resident by moving to Cyprus?

Not under domestic law alone. Szja tv. 3. § 2. makes Hungarian citizenship on its own sufficient for residence, with one carve-out for dual citizens who hold no registered Hungarian address, and NAV states in terms that citizens stay resident even after years of living and working abroad. What actually shifts residence is the tie-breaker in the double tax treaty, which only engages once Cyprus claims you as well. That is the whole engineering problem of a Hungarian move, and it is solvable.

Does keeping the Budapest flat matter?

Enormously, because of how NAV defines állandó lakóhely: a dwelling where you have settled for lasting residence and actually live, which does not change merely because you stay abroad temporarily, even for an extended period. Hold on to the flat as a home you keep returning to and the first tie-breaker criterion has an easy answer in Hungary's favour. Let it go, or genuinely relocate the centre of vital interests, and the analysis changes shape.

What is the tőkekivonási adó and will my move trigger it?

It is the corporate capital-withdrawal charge in Tao. tv. 16/A. §, in force since 2020. The very first trigger NAV lists is moving the place of business management abroad so as to acquire foreign tax residence — which is exactly what redomiciling a Hungarian company to Cyprus is. The base is the market value of what leaves minus its book value, and the tax may be paid in five instalments under Tao. tv. 16/A. § (4). Forming a new Cyprus company alongside an existing Hungarian one is a different transaction with a different answer.

Do Hungarian CFC rules stop a Cyprus company working?

Far less than the English-language genre assumes, and for a structural reason: a low-tax test is calibrated against the home rate, and Hungary's home rate is the lowest in the EU. Cyprus at 15% sits above Hungary's own 9%. What still bites is the non-genuine arrangement limb of Tao. tv. 8. § (1) f), which asks where the significant functions actually sit, and reliefs such as the IP Box that pull the tax actually paid a long way below the headline. Substance, not the rate card, is what decides it.

How much szocho do I really pay on a dividend?

Less than a naive 15% plus 13% suggests. Szocho at 13% reaches dividends, but only until your consolidated-tax-base income plus the named capital incomes reaches 24 times the minimum wage, which is HUF 7,747,200 for 2026. Above that line the marginal charge on a further forint of dividend is 15%, not 28%. Interest income and long-term investment account income sit outside the ceiling entirely, so the whole amount is a szocho base there.

Does the szocho stop if I actually move?

Yes, and this is one of the few mechanical, checkable savings in the whole file. NAV's own szocho booklet provides that no szocho is payable on the income of a person insured in another EU member state under the social security coordination regulations, proven by a certificate from the competent foreign authority. Insured in Cyprus, certificate in hand, the 13% layer comes off. It is a documentary matter, not an argument.

What happens to my KIVA if I set up in Cyprus?

You need to check it before you sign anything. KIVA terminates by operation of law above 200 staff or HUF 12 billion of revenue — and also on the taxpayer coming to have a controlled foreign company, with effect from the day before the first day of the tax year in which the foreign entity qualifies. For a company paying 10% on a base that already swallows szocho, losing the regime is a bigger event than anything on the Cyprus side of the ledger.

Does Sumly advise on Hungarian tax?

No. We build and run the Cyprus side: the company, the books from day zero, Cyprus VAT, VIES, provisional and corporate returns, the Yellow Slip, and the tax residency and non-dom registration. This guide quotes NAV's own published booklets and links to them so you can see the shape of the decision, but how Tao. tv. 16/A. § values your assets, and whether your treaty position holds, belongs to a Hungarian adószakértő. 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
• 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
• Nominee director in Cyprus — when a structure genuinely needs one
• Cyprus tax benefits for foreigners — the whole picture in one place

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 runs Hungary at the 9% corporate rate and 15% on dividends, and it does not model KIVA, HIPA or the szocho ceiling, all of which are handled in prose above because none of them can be assumed for an individual company. Hungarian figures are stated for 2026 except where a source carries its own date, and HUF amounts are NAV's own published figures; 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.