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

Start with the fact every other page on this subject leaves out. Ireland's 12.5% trading rate is lower than Cyprus's 15%, so a profitable Irish trading company does not save corporation tax by moving. The Irish case for Cyprus is real, but it lives somewhere else entirely: in inheritance tax, in the personal rate on money you take out, and in what Ireland keeps taxing for years after you think you have gone.

Updated for 2026 Cyprus tax law and regulations.

One provider for the Cyprus half of an Irish move, from the first form to the first return

Sumly is the fully digitalized, one-stop route for an Irish founder to set up a company in Cyprus and operate it from day one. We register the company, open the books the day you order, prepare every Cyprus return box by box, and handle the tax residency and non-dom application as one fixed-price service — plus the Yellow Slip, which as an EU citizen you can actually use. One dashboard and one provider for the entire Cyprus side, rather than a solicitor for the incorporation and an accountant who starts six months later.

This is Sumly — and what we actually do for you

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

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

Part 1: What leaving actually costs you

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

Is a Cyprus company actually cheaper than an Irish one?

For a trading company, no. This is the concession that has to come first, because an Irish founder reading a page about Cyprus has already looked at the corporate rate, and a page that opens by advertising 15% as a saving has told them everything they need to know about how carefully it was written.

Revenue publishes the position plainly. Corporation tax is 12.5% for trading income, and 25% for income from an excepted trade and for non-trading income, for example rental and investment income. A Cyprus limited company pays 15% from tax year 2026. On trading profits, Cyprus is two and a half points worse. There is no arrangement of those numbers that produces a different answer.

The 25% row is the doorway. If the entity is genuinely a holding, rental or investment vehicle rather than a trade, the comparison flips and Cyprus is ten points ahead. That is a narrower claim than the relocation industry makes, and it is the one that survives scrutiny.

One more thing to say once and then leave alone. Pillar Two requires large groups to pay a minimum of 15% tax on profits in each jurisdiction it operates, and Revenue's guidance sets the consolidated revenue threshold at €750 million, met in at least four of the preceding seven fiscal years, with the income inclusion rule and domestic top-up tax applying from 1 January 2024 and the UTPR from 1 January 2025. Almost nobody reading this page is inside a group that size. So Pillar Two does not make Ireland's 12.5% illusory for a founder-scale company, and it does not spare Cyprus's 15% either — both countries are EU Member States implementing the same Directive. It changes nothing about your decision, and now you can stop wondering whether it does.

If the head-to-head company comparison is what you actually came for, it lives at Cyprus vs an Irish company. This page is about the departure.

Where does the Irish case for Cyprus actually live?

In four places, none of them the corporate rate.

Capital Acquisitions Tax. Ireland taxes inheritances and gifts at 33% above thresholds that are low by any comparison, and Cyprus has no inheritance tax at all. For a founder whose wealth will pass to children, this is very often the largest single number in the whole exercise — larger than any plausible corporate-rate difference over any realistic horizon.

The personal rate on money you take out. Stack income tax, USC and PRSI and an Irish founder is paying roughly 52% at the margin, with the employer paying more than eleven per cent on top of salary. A Cyprus non-dom taking dividends pays GeSY and nothing else.

Capital gains tax at 33% flat. No taper, no discount, no indexation for modern acquisitions, and an annual exemption of €1,270.

The 25% rate on non-trading income, as above, where the company is not really a trade.

The rest of this page is about what it costs to get from here to there — and the honest answer is that Ireland's exit price is denominated in time rather than money.

What does an Irish founder actually pay on income?

Enough that the arithmetic is worth writing out with the components visible, so you can check it rather than take it on trust.

Income tax first. Revenue's 2026 bands give a standard rate band at 20% of €44,000 for a single person and €53,000 for a married couple or civil partners with one income, with 40% on the balance. A two-income couple can increase the €53,000 by up to €35,000, capped at the lower earner's income and not transferable between them. A single founder is therefore into the 40% rate at €44,000, which is a low entry point by international standards.

Then the Universal Social Charge, which for 2026 runs 0.5% on the first €12,012, 2% on the next €16,688, 3% on the next €41,344 and 8% on the balance.

Then PRSI, which changes partway through the year — a detail that catches out anyone quoting a single annual figure. The Department of Social Protection's own contribution guide puts Class S self-employed contributions at 4.20% until 30 September 2026 and 4.35% from 1 October 2026, with a minimum annual contribution of €650. Employees in Class A pay the same employee percentages on each side of that date, and the employer pays 11.25% until 30 September 2026 and 11.40% from 1 October 2026 on pay above the Class A1 threshold, a figure that includes the 1% National Training Fund Levy.

Add the three top components together — 40% income tax, 8% USC, 4.20% or 4.35% PRSI — and a self-employed Irish founder faces an effective top marginal rate of about 52.2% before 1 October 2026 and about 52.35% after it. That total is arithmetic on published components, not a rate Revenue publishes as such, which is exactly why we have shown you the three pieces.

How heavy is Irish inheritance tax, really?

Heavy enough that it is the strongest honest argument on this page — and the one that most needs a caveat attached to it.

Revenue sets the rate: the current rate of CAT is 33%, applying to gifts and inheritances taken on or after 6 December 2012. The thresholds, for gifts and inheritances taken on or after 2 October 2024, are:

Work an example on those inputs. A business worth €3 million passing to one child: the Group A threshold shelters €400,000, and the remaining €2.6 million is charged at 33%, which is roughly €858,000 — payable by the child, out of an asset they may not be able to sell. Cyprus, by contrast, levies no inheritance tax and no annual wealth tax at all.

While we are on capital taxes: Revenue puts CGT at 33% for most gains, against a personal exemption of €1,270 a year that cannot be carried forward. Flat, with nothing to soften it.

Does Ireland charge an exit tax when you leave?

Not on individuals, and this is a genuine advantage that deserves saying clearly. There is no general deemed disposal on ceasing Irish residence — no equivalent of the Canadian deemed disposition or the Australian CGT event on departure. On the mechanics of leaving, Ireland is the easier country to exit than either.

On companies, there is a charge, and it is well designed. Section 627 TCA 1997 implements Article 5 of the EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive and applies where a company transfers assets or a business out of an Irish permanent establishment, or where an Irish-resident company transfers its residence to another country. A disposal and reacquisition of the relevant assets at market value is deemed to have occurred, immediately before residence ceases. The rate is 12.5%, for events on or after 10 October 2018.

There is an anti-avoidance rate on top. Revenue's manual records that section 628A applies a rate of 33% rather than 12.5% if the exit forms part of a transaction to actually dispose of the asset and the purpose of the exit is to ensure that the gain is charged at the lower rate. Migrating a company on the way to selling it is not a plan; it is the fact pattern the section was written for.

And here is the precise, checkable point no competitor page carries. Section 629 lets a taxpayer defer the payment of exit tax by paying it in instalments over 5 years, the first on the specified date and the rest on each anniversary. The deferral is not available where assets go to a third country unless that country is a party to the EEA Agreement with equivalent mutual assistance arrangements. Cyprus is an EU Member State, so the five-year instalment option is available on a migration from Ireland to Cyprus. A single 12.5% charge becomes five annual payments. Section 627(3) also excludes assets over which Ireland retains taxing rights — land, minerals and unquoted shares deriving their value from them — so those never enter the computation at all.

The election is made in the company's return and carries annual reporting obligations afterwards. The triggers for immediate payment, and the treatment of interest on deferred instalments, sit deeper in Revenue's manual than we went, so ask your Irish adviser rather than assuming five clean instalments and nothing else.

What is section 29A, and will it catch a share sale from Cyprus?

It is Ireland's substitute for an individual exit tax: narrow, targeted and easy to walk into.

Revenue's manual describes section 29A as countering the avoidance by an individual of Capital Gains Tax by means of going offshore temporarily, or by becoming dual resident, imposing a charge on an Irish-domiciled individual who disposes of certain assets while outside the CGT charge. Assets disposed of in a year of non-residence are deemed disposed of and reacquired at market value on the last day of the last year of residence.

Three conditions have to hold together. The individual must be not taxable in the State for a period of no more than 5 years of assessment before again becoming so taxable; they must dispose of the assets during that period; and they must have been domiciled in Ireland prior to departure. The assets caught are a holding of the issued share capital in any company, wherever located, worth 5% or more of that company's issued share capital or exceeding €500,000. Finance Act 2014 refined which market value applies where the value moves between departure and disposal, for disposals on or after 23 December 2014.

Read as a rule for a founder: if you are Irish-domiciled, hold five per cent or more of a company or shares worth over half a million, leave Ireland, sell while abroad, and return to Irish taxability inside five years, Ireland taxes that gain at 33% as though you had never left. Five full years of genuine non-residence, or a real change of domicile, is what defeats it. Someone planning a two-year Mediterranean interlude around a share sale is exactly who the section was drafted for.

Why is ordinary residence the real trap?

Because it is a second status with its own clock, and almost nobody knows they are carrying it.

Start with plain residence. Revenue's tests are mechanical: you are resident if you spend 183 days or more in a tax year in the State, or 280 days or more in total, taking the current tax year plus the preceding tax year together; and you are not resident in Ireland if you are here for 30 days or less in a tax year. Two things get misread there. The 280-day test combines two years, so a founder who leaves mid-year after a full year of residence can be pulled back into residence by the combined count — the year of departure needs planning, not just the years after it. And the 30-day rule is a floor that disapplies the two-year test, not a general safe harbour that overrides the 183-day test.

Now the second status. Revenue's own words: if you have been tax resident in Ireland for three consecutive tax years, you become ordinarily resident from the beginning of the fourth tax year — and, crucially, if you leave Ireland after this time, you continue to be ordinarily resident for three consecutive tax years.

While you are ordinarily resident but not resident, Ireland taxes your worldwide income with only three carve-outs: income from a trade or profession no part of which is performed in Ireland; income from an office or employment where all the duties are performed outside Ireland; and other foreign income, for example investment income, if it is €3,810 or less.

Put the two clocks side by side and the real shape of an Irish exit appears.

A clean exit from Ireland takes five years, not one. That is the most useful sentence on this page, and a half-hearted departure is worse than no departure at all, because ordinary residence and section 29A will both find it.

What is the domicile levy, and does it apply to you?

Almost certainly not, and we would rather say so than use it as a scare figure.

Revenue describes domicile as a concept of general law meaning, broadly, living in a country with the intention of living there permanently. The levy is €200,000 per year, and it applies to an Irish-domiciled individual only where all three of these are true: worldwide income exceeds €1m; Irish property is greater in value than €5m; and Irish Income Tax in a year was less than €200,000. Before 2012 it also caught Irish citizens; the citizenship limb was removed.

The €5 million of Irish-situated property is what makes it irrelevant to essentially everyone who is genuinely relocating and selling up. Its significance is conceptual rather than financial: it shows that Ireland is willing to assert a fiscal claim on domicile alone, independent of residence — the same principle that drives section 29A. Ireland has no annual net wealth tax, but "no wealth-type charge at all" would be inaccurate, and this is why.

Do Irish CFC rules catch a Cyprus company?

Only if a company owns it. This is a real structural difference from the other big departure jurisdictions, and it is worth stating precisely and then stopping.

Part 35B TCA 1997 implements Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive. Revenue's manual defines the key term: a controlling company is a company resident in the State which controls a CFC, with control resting broadly on direct or indirect ownership of or entitlement to more than 50% of the CFC's issued share capital, voting power or distribution amount. And the limitation that matters: the CFC charge can only arise to companies known as chargeable companies, limited by reference to the chargeable company's proportionate shareholding.

So an Irish-resident individual holding a Cyprus company directly is not within the Part 35B charge. That is genuinely narrower than the Canadian and Australian regimes, and it is a real point in Ireland's favour when comparing departure jurisdictions.

Now the limit of that claim, because overstating it would be worse than not making it. It does not mean an Irish resident can hold a Cyprus company tax-free while living in Dublin. Other provisions remain in play — transfer of assets abroad rules, close company surcharges where an Irish company is interposed, general anti-avoidance, and the residence and ordinary residence rules above — and we did not research any of them for this page. The publishable point is narrow and specific: Part 35B's charge attaches to companies, not to individuals. Nothing more should be read into it than that.

Where an Irish company does hold a Cyprus subsidiary, the exemptions matter. The low accounting profit exemption in section 835V excludes a CFC with accounting profits under €750,000 where any non-trading income stream is under €75,000, or accounting profits under €75,000 outright, which covers a great many small structures on its own. The low profit margin exemption in section 835U excludes a CFC whose accounting profits are less than 10% of its relevant operating costs. And the effective tax rate exemption in section 835T is unusually plausible here, because a Cyprus company paying 15% is paying more than the Irish trading rate — the same fact that undermines the corporate-rate argument works in your favour on this one. Section 835W adds a twelve-month exempt period for newly acquired CFCs.

Does the 1968 Ireland–Cyprus treaty help you?

Less than you would assume, and its gaps are more interesting than its rates.

The Convention was signed at London on 24 September 1968 and is modified by the multilateral BEPS instrument, for which Revenue publishes a synthesised text. Its operative articles are generous where they apply: interest arising in one state and paid to a resident of the other is taxable only in that other State, and royalties are treated the same way, so there is no source taxation of either. On gains, Article 12(3) provides that gains from the alienation of property other than immovable property and permanent establishment assets are taxable only in the Contracting State of which the alienator is a resident.

Two features are genuinely unusual and both cut against the reader.

There is no modern residence tie-breaker. This treaty has no Article 4 of the current OECD type. Instead Article 3 defines the terms so as to exclude dual residence by construction: a resident of Ireland means, among other things, a person resident in Ireland for Irish tax purposes and not resident in Cyprus for Cyprus tax purposes, with the mirror definition for Cyprus. Read that carefully. A person resident in both states under domestic law is a treaty resident of neither — and there is no permanent home, centre of vital interests, habitual abode or nationality cascade to break the tie. For companies, both limbs turn on where the business is managed and controlled, so a company managed in both places has the identical problem.

The practical consequence is the same one that runs through this whole page: your protection is actually ceasing to be Irish resident on the domestic day counts, not treaty argument. The 183-day and 280-day tests and the ordinary residence tail are doing all the work.

The remittance limitation in Article 3(2). Where an article gives exclusive taxing rights or a reduced rate to the residence state, and that state taxes the income by reference to the amount remitted or received rather than the full amount, the relief in the other state applies only to so much as is remitted to or received in the first state. That is worth checking against the actual treatment of your income before relying on treaty relief.

One question we are deliberately leaving open. Irish resident companies must withhold Dividend Withholding Tax at 25% on distributions, subject to exceptions. Whether a particular non-resident shareholder qualifies for an exemption, and how the treaty's older-style dividend article interacts with it, is precisely the question a relocating shareholder asks — and we did not verify the exemption rules, so we are not going to summarise them here. If you plan to keep drawing dividends from an Irish company after moving, that is a specific question for an Irish adviser before you move, not after.

What happens to your PRSI record and your pension?

Your Irish contributions stay on your record. When Irish employment or self-employment ends, liability to Irish PRSI ends with it, and the contributions already made do not disappear.

Beyond that we are going to be deliberately unhelpful, because the alternative is guessing. The State Pension (Contributory) is a contribution-based entitlement rather than a means-tested or residence-tested one, which makes it structurally different from residence-conditioned pensions in some other countries — but the Department of Social Protection's service pages setting out the contribution conditions, the payability of the pension abroad and the voluntary contribution rules were not reachable while this guide was written. We publish no figure and no firm statement on any of them.

What is safe to say: Ireland and Cyprus are both EU Member States, so EU social security coordination applies in principle to periods of insurance in each. Ask the Department for a copy of your contribution record before you leave, and take advice on whether anything is worth doing about it. That is a genuinely useful ten-minute job that becomes a genuinely irritating one from abroad.

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 give an Irish founder?

A flatter shape, and one big absence.

The Cyprus company pays 15% from tax year 2026 on profit — one rate, with no separate treatment for excepted trades and no 25% band waiting for non-trading income. Qualifying intellectual property income falls to an effective 3% from tax year 2026 under the IP Box; we make no comparison against Ireland's own IP regime here, because we did not research it.

Then the shareholder. A Cyprus tax resident who is not Cyprus-domiciled pays no Special Defence Contribution on dividends for 17 years, and dividends are outside Cyprus personal income tax entirely — so against roughly 52% at the Irish margin, what remains is GeSY at 2.65% on income up to €180,000 a year, a maximum of €4,770. A Cyprus-domiciled shareholder pays 5% on dividends from 2026 profits instead. Salary meets bands of 0% to €22,000 rising to 35% above €72,000.

The absence is the point: Cyprus has no inheritance tax and no annual wealth tax. Set that against 33% over €400,000 and, for the right balance sheet, it dwarfs everything else on this page.

Operationally, both countries are inside the EU VAT system, so nothing about your European trading changes structurally — VAT registration in Cyprus starts at €15,600 of taxable turnover, at a standard rate of 19%. The detail is in Cyprus non-dom status and what changed in 2026.

How does an Irish founder become Cyprus tax resident?

Through the 60-day rule usually, and the paperwork is easier for you than for most readers of these guides, because you are an EU citizen.

The plain route is spending more than 183 days a year in Cyprus. The alternative has four conditions from tax year 2026, after the old fifth was removed from the 60-day rule: at least 60 days in Cyprus; no more than 183 days in any single other 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. The condition that went was the requirement not to be tax resident anywhere else — which matters here, because with no treaty tie-breaker to fall back on, Cyprus no longer disqualifies you simply because Ireland still has a claim. It also means you cannot rely on Cyprus residency to prove you have left Ireland; the Irish day counts have to be satisfied on their own.

The directorship of your own Cyprus company is normally the office the third condition asks for, so incorporation and residency happen as one project.

And because Ireland is an EU Member State, the Yellow Slip — the registration certificate for EU citizens exercising free movement — is genuinely available to you. It is a registration rather than a discretionary permission, it is one of the four services Sumly sells directly, and it removes the immigration question that dominates these guides for founders from outside the EU. The mechanics are set out in the Yellow Slip explained.

Why do people choose Cyprus over other tax havens?

Because it is a functioning European country with a life attached, which most of the alternatives on the list are not.

Cyprus operates in English across business, banking, professional services and the courts, so an Irish founder loses nothing in translation and everything stays legible. Violent crime is among the lowest in the European Union. The population is already from everywhere, so nobody arrives as the only outsider. Business and property are both busy, and the state lets people trade without wrapping every step in process. Meat, fruit and vegetables cost visibly less than in Dublin. And the coast does the rest: you can swim through a Cyprus winter, and the summers are what people cross the continent for.

The Irish push list is unusual because the headline number goes the wrong way, so what is left has to be honest. It is not the corporate rate. It is a 40% income tax band that begins at €44,000 for a single person and a combined marginal burden around 52% once USC and PRSI are on it, with employer PRSI above eleven per cent on top of that. It is 33% on capital gains with a €1,270 exemption. It is 33% on inheritances over a €400,000 threshold, in a country where Dublin property alone can consume that threshold before a business is even valued. It is 25% on non-trading income where the entity is not a trade. And it is the cost of employing people and renting space in one of the most expensive cities in the EU. None of that is a complaint about Ireland. It is a description of who Ireland's system is designed around, and founders extracting profit are not it.

Can an Irish e-commerce brand run through Cyprus?

Yes, and the honest framing is different from the non-EU version of this question. Ireland and Cyprus are both inside the EU VAT system, so you are not buying single-market access — you already have it. What changes is the tax position of the entity and the quality of the bookkeeping underneath it.

That second half matters more than founders expect. A store generates thousands of small transactions in several currencies with a VAT treatment that shifts by customer type and destination country, and the one-stop shop return is only as good as the coding beneath it. The Shopify and WooCommerce plugins pull orders, refunds, fees and payouts straight into the ledger with Cyprus VAT codes already applied, so each return is produced from the sales rather than rebuilt from an export in the last week of the quarter.

Two worked examples

A consultancy on €250,000 of profit, extracted as salary and dividends. In Ireland the company pays 12.5% on trading profit — better than Cyprus — and then the founder is taxed personally at around 52% at the margin on what comes out, with employer PRSI above eleven per cent on any salary. Run through Cyprus, the company is charged 15% and a non-dom shareholder is left with GeSY alone, which stops at €4,770. The corporate leg goes to Ireland and the personal leg goes decisively to Cyprus, and the personal leg is much the larger of the two. The catch is timing: for the first three tax years after leaving, ordinary residence puts foreign investment income above €3,810 fully back into the Irish net, so the dividend schedule has to be planned around the clock rather than the calendar.

A founder holding a business worth €3 million with children in mind. Here the comparison changes shape entirely. The annual corporate difference of 2.5 points is small change next to Capital Acquisitions Tax at 33% above a €400,000 Group A threshold — but only if the assets do not qualify for Business Relief, which we did not research and which can change the picture very substantially for a trading company. That single question is worth an afternoon with an Irish tax adviser before anything else on this page is acted on. If the answer is that the assets do not qualify, the CAT saving is the largest number in the entire exercise. If the answer is that they do, the Irish case for Cyprus rests on the income side alone, and it is a much closer call.

Both examples assume full distribution and headline rates. Your own bands, the reliefs available, the ordinary residence clock and the section 29A window change the answer, which is what a meeting is for.

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 circumstances, so treat this as shape rather than schedule.

• Before you go — and this is where we start. We put an Irish adviser from our network on ordinary residence and on whether section 29A could reach any disposal you are contemplating. They assess the CAT reliefs against your actual assets and check the 280-day combined count for the year you intend to leave.
• Month 1. We register the Cyprus company, ordered online with the books opening the same day, and start the Yellow Slip registration, which is your route as an EU citizen. Your adviser requests your PRSI contribution record.
• Months 1–3. We complete the VAT and, where relevant, social insurance, employees and UBO registration, and get banking and EU payments working. You take up the directorship the 60-day rule needs.
• Months 3–6. You take the Cyprus home the residency rule requires, and we tell you what qualifies. You move real decision-making across and we minute it there. Your Irish adviser deals with the Irish company — wind down, retain, or migrate under section 627 with the five-year instalment election — on their own timetable, and we keep the two in step.
• From month 12. We apply for the Cyprus tax residency certificate and register you as non-dom. Then we run the two Irish clocks deliberately with your adviser: three tax years to clear ordinary residence, five before section 29A stops mattering.

What mistakes do Irish founders actually make?

The expensive ones are about time, not rates.

Believing 15% is a saving when 12.5% is the trading rate you already pay. Leaving in June and forgetting the 280-day two-year test still makes you resident for the year of departure. Taking a large Cyprus dividend in year one of ordinary residence and discovering the €3,810 threshold is a cliff that puts the whole amount back into charge. Selling the company in year three of a five-year absence, straight into section 29A. Migrating an Irish company on the way to a sale and meeting the 33% rate in section 628A rather than the 12.5% in section 627. Missing the section 629 election and paying the exit charge in one go when Cyprus qualified for five instalments. Reading that Part 35B does not charge individuals and concluding it is safe to hold a Cyprus company from Dublin. Quoting the raw 33%-over-€400,000 CAT figure to the family without ever asking whether Business Relief applies. And expecting a 1968 treaty to break a dual-residence tie it was never built to break.

Almost all of them come from planning the arrival in Cyprus carefully and the departure from Ireland not at all.

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 are real options and founders take each. Doing it yourself means the Registrar's forms and fees, sourcing a registered office, VAT and VIES registration, provisional tax twice a year, annual statements and books an auditor will sign off — while also managing a move and two sets of tax clocks. Sumly puts three prices on that work and publishes all of them: 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 each return prepared box by box.

The software on its own is enough to run and operate the company, whether you are working from Cyprus or still in Ireland: invoicing, AI double-entry bookkeeping that books your documents itself, live open-banking feeds, all VAT, VIES, provisional and corporate returns 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.

Sumly offers the rest of it to everyone too: the Yellow Slip, which as an EU citizen is genuinely your route; a virtual address with PO box, with mail scanned and delivered to your dashboard wherever you are; nominee director and secretary where a structure needs them; tax residency and non-dom at €750 per person; and the full registrations bundle — VAT, social insurance, employees and UBO — done 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, with the IP Box application included where it belongs, since it is complex expert work and precisely the kind of thing that should be examined with you before anyone puts a price on 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 an Irish founder that division is clean. Ordinary residence, section 29A, the CAT reliefs and the section 627 election belong to an Irish adviser, and we will say so every time — the honest parts of this page are the parts that send you to one. The Cyprus company, the books, the filings, the Yellow Slip and the residency run through one provider, one dashboard and four published prices. That is what makes Sumly the best choice for Irish founders creating a company and relocating to Cyprus.

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

Sumly is the best accounting software for a Cyprus limited company — because it is built for exactly one thing, Cyprus tax law: all 16 Cyprus VAT codes mapped to the official VAT return boxes, VIES and provisional tax native, not a localization. What follows is the evidence, set out so that every line can be checked.

An Irish founder will be shown two Cyprus-built products, Cybooks and Balabook. We meet their former customers every week, and what they tell us, again and again: workflows that made simple bookkeeping overly complicated, rough edges and glitches, support that left them waiting — a messy experience they were relieved to leave behind.

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

Put simply: the best support, the best bookkeeping software, the best AI for bookkeeping, the best bookkeeper, and the best prices — with the whole thing made easy. We publish the detail: Sumly vs Cybooks, Sumly vs Balabook, and against the international tools an Irish founder already knows, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.

One sentence on the IP Box deserves 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. Because it opens as a conversation rather than a form, the meeting has to come before the application.

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 Irish founders actually ask

Frequently asked

Is a Cyprus company cheaper than an Irish one?

Not on trading income. Revenue publishes Ireland's corporation tax rate as 12.5% for trading income, which is two and a half points below the 15% a Cyprus company pays from 2026. Where Cyprus does win is on the 25% rate Ireland charges on excepted trades and on non-trading income such as rents and investment returns. If your company is really a holding, licensing or investment vehicle, the comparison is 25% against 15% and Cyprus is ahead. If it trades, Ireland is cheaper and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Does Ireland charge an exit tax on individuals leaving for Cyprus?

There is no general deemed disposal for individuals who cease Irish residence — no equivalent of Canada's section 128.1 or Australia's CGT event I1. That makes leaving Ireland structurally easier than leaving either. What exists instead is section 29A, a targeted temporary non-residence charge, and the three-year ordinary residence tail. Ireland's exit cost is measured in years of genuine absence rather than in a lump sum on departure day.

What is ordinary residence and why does it matter after I leave?

Three consecutive tax years of Irish residence make you ordinarily resident from the start of the fourth, and after leaving you stay ordinarily resident for three more tax years. During those years Ireland taxes your worldwide income, with carve-outs only for a foreign trade or profession performed wholly outside Ireland, a foreign employment whose duties are all performed abroad, and foreign investment income of €3,810 or less. Above €3,810 the whole amount is taxable, not the excess.

Will section 29A catch me if I sell my company from Cyprus?

It can. Section 29A applies to an individual who was domiciled in Ireland before departure, who is not taxable in the State for a period of no more than five years of assessment before becoming taxable again, and who disposes during that period of a shareholding of 5% or more of a company's issued share capital or worth more than €500,000. The gain is deemed to arise on the last day of the last year of residence and taxed at 33%. A genuine, durable departure is what defeats it.

Does moving my Irish company to Cyprus trigger an exit charge?

Yes. Section 627 TCA 1997 treats an Irish-resident company transferring its residence to another country as having disposed of and reacquired its assets at market value, immediately before residence ceases, at 12.5%. Section 628A imposes 33% instead where the exit is part of a transaction to dispose of the asset and the purpose was to get the lower rate. Section 629 allows the tax to be paid in five annual instalments, and Cyprus qualifies for that deferral as an EU Member State.

Do Irish CFC rules catch a Cyprus company I own personally?

Part 35B's charge does not attach to individuals. Revenue's manual defines a controlling company as a company resident in the State that controls a CFC, and confirms the CFC charge can only arise to chargeable companies. Individuals' holdings are counted for the control test but the charge lands on companies. That is narrower than Canada's FAPI or Australia's Part X. It does not mean an Irish resident can hold a Cyprus company tax-free — other rules that we have not researched here remain in play.

Does the Ireland–Cyprus treaty resolve dual residence?

No, and this is the unusual part. The Convention was signed in London on 24 September 1968 and has no modern Article 4 tie-breaker. Instead Article 3 defines a resident of Ireland as a person resident in Ireland and not resident in Cyprus, and vice versa. A person resident in both under domestic law is therefore a treaty resident of neither, with no permanent home or centre of vital interests cascade to fall back on. Your protection is actually ceasing Irish residence, not treaty argument.

Can I get the Cyprus Yellow Slip as an Irish citizen?

Yes. The Yellow Slip is the registration certificate for EU citizens exercising free movement, and Irish citizens are EU citizens, so the route is open to you in a way it is not to an Australian or Canadian founder. It is a registration rather than a visa application, and it is one of the four services Sumly sells directly. Both Ireland and Cyprus being EU Member States also means social security coordination applies in principle to your contribution record.

Does Sumly advise on Irish tax?

No. Sumly builds and runs the Cyprus side: the company, the books from day one, Cyprus VAT, VIES and corporate returns, and the tax residency and non-dom application. This page states Revenue's own published rules so you can see the shape of the decision, but ordinary residence, section 29A and the CAT reliefs on your particular assets are questions for an Irish adviser. 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 vs an Irish company — the two company types compared head to head
• Cyprus non-dom status — what the 17-year exemption actually covers
• The Cyprus 60-day rule — day counting and the residency certificate
• The Yellow Slip explained — the EU citizen's registration, step by step
• 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 outcome; it does not model CAT reliefs, ordinary residence or section 29A. Irish figures are stated for 2026 from Revenue and from the Department of Social Protection's January 2026 contribution guide, with PRSI shown on both sides of the 1 October 2026 change. 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.