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

Leaving the Netherlands for Cyprus turns on one Dutch rule and one Dutch misunderstanding of it. The rule is the conserverende aanslag — the Netherlands values your BV shares on the day you go and issues a real tax bill for the gain. The misunderstanding is that it disappears after ten years. It does not, and has not for over a decade.

Updated for 2026 Cyprus tax law and regulations.

One partner for the whole move from the Netherlands to Cyprus

Sumly is the one-stop, fully digitalized way to start a company in Cyprus and move a Dutch business here — then actually run it from the day it exists. We register the company, open your books on day zero, prepare every Cyprus return box by box, and handle the Yellow Slip, the tax residency registration and the non-dom application as fixed-price services. One dashboard, one provider, four published prices. Not a lawyer for the formation, an accountant for the books, and nobody for the eighteen months 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.

Does the Netherlands charge an exit tax when you leave for Cyprus?

Yes, and it is the centre of the whole decision. If you hold a substantial interest — an aanmerkelijk belang, meaning at least 5% of the shares in a company, alone or with your fiscal partner — then walking out of the country is a taxable event on your shares even though nothing has been sold and no money has moved.

The Belastingdienst says it in one sentence: it treats the emigration of an aanmerkelijkbelanghouder as a fictieve vervreemding, a deemed disposal. The proceeds are the waarde in het economisch verkeer — the market value of the shares at that moment. Subtract your verkrijgingsprijs, the historic acquisition cost, and the difference is Box 2 income for the year you leave.

For a 2026 departure that gain is taxed at 24.5% up to €68,843 and 31% above it. On a company that has appreciated meaningfully, essentially the whole gain sits in the 31% band. A BV worth €2 million with a €20,000 cost base produces a Box 2 gain of €1.98 million and an assessment on the order of €630,000 — a number that exists on paper before you have sold a single share.

The result is formalised as a conserverende aanslag: a real, legally issued assessment, distinguished only by the fact that you are not asked to pay it yet. It does not arrive on the day you leave. It follows from the tax return for the year of emigration, filed after that year ends, so expect a lag of a year or more between the move and the paperwork.

You are not, however, asked for the money. Because Cyprus is in the European Union, the Belastingdienst grants deferral automatically — no application, no bank guarantee, no mortgage right, no pledge. Emigrate to an EU or EEA country and, in its own words, you automatically receive deferral of payment. No invorderingsrente accrues while the deferral runs. Outside the EU — with a carve-out for Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein — you must request the deferral in writing and the Ontvanger can demand security.

That is genuinely favourable, and it is a large part of why the Cyprus route is popular with Dutch founders rather than the Dubai route. It is also worth understanding precisely: what you have is a permanent, interest-free, unsecured hold on a debt, not the absence of one.

What actually triggers collection of a Dutch conserverende aanslag?

Three things, and the second is the one that catches people. The deferral ends — wholly or in part — on the prohibited acts in article 25(8) of the Invorderingswet 1990, which the Belastingdienst puts to readers as three questions: do you sell the shares, do you distribute a dividend on them, or does the company you hold them in cease to exist? Its own page frames the revocation events as selling the shares, distributing dividend on them, or the business ceasing.

Read the middle one again. You do not have to sell anything. Simply taking money out of the BV after you have moved starts collection of the exit tax. And this is exactly what a founder who has relocated instinctively does — the company is sitting there with retained profits, life in Limassol needs funding, so a dividend goes out.

The mechanics are a pro-rata clawback rather than an all-or-nothing collapse. On a distribution the deferral is revoked for an amount calculated as the dividend multiplied by a statutory percentage, reduced by Dutch dividendbelasting and by foreign tax actually paid on the same distribution — the Belastingdienst's knowledge group sets out this calculation and its credits in a position published on 14 March 2025. So there is relief for double taxation. There is no relief from the charge itself: money extracted from the BV pulls the exit tax into payment more or less euro for euro.

That same position also closes off the argument a lot of founders reach for. Asked whether collecting on a post-emigration dividend breaches the good faith owed under a tax treaty, the knowledge group answered no, on the reasoning that this is not a levy on the dividend but the collection of an outstanding tax debt on capital appreciation. The treaty's dividend article is therefore not engaged. The position was reached on another treaty, but the reasoning is generic.

There is one relieving rule. Come back to the Netherlands and the assessment can be reduced by the amount still outstanding on it. Note what that does and does not do: it wipes the balance, not the amounts already collected because you triggered something in the meantime. A clean round trip with no dividends and no sale is broadly neutral. One that involved a distribution is not.

The practical rule that falls out of all this is the most useful sentence in the guide: deal with the BV's cash before you leave, on your own timetable, not afterwards under someone else's.

Do Dutch CFC rules catch a Cyprus company?

No — and this is the cleanest good news in the guide, because it can be checked article by article rather than taken on trust. It is also the question nobody writing about this move currently answers.

The Dutch CFC measure sits in article 13ab of the Wet op de vennootschapsbelasting 1969. It adds the undistributed tainted income of a low-taxed controlled foreign entity to a Dutch taxpayer's profit. There are two gates, and a founder-owned Cyprus company walks straight through the first.

Gate one, control. The Belastingdienst requires an interest of more than 50% of the nominal paid-up share capital and more than 50% of the statutory voting rights, or alternatively an entitlement to more than half the profit. A typical Cyprus company owned by its founder is comfortably controlled. Gate one is satisfied.

Gate two, the jurisdiction. This is where the whole analysis ends. The rule only bites on an entity in an aangewezen staat — a state designated by ministerial regulation, which either subjected companies to no profit tax or to profit tax at a statutory rate of less than 9%, tested on 1 October of the preceding calendar year, or appeared on the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions.

Two things follow, and both are decisive.

First, the threshold is a statutory rate of 9%, not an effective rate. Cyprus's headline corporate rate has never been near it, and the move to 15% from tax year 2026 pushes it further clear, not closer. If you have read that the Cypriot rate rise creates Dutch CFC exposure, that page has the direction of travel backwards.

Second, and conclusively, the list is closed and Cyprus is not on it. In the version of the Regeling laagbelastende staten en niet-coöperatieve rechtsgebieden in force from 1 January 2026, the designated low-tax jurisdictions are Anguilla, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, the Cayman Islands, Turkmenistan, the Turks and Caicos Islands and Vanuatu, and the non-cooperative list adds the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Panama, the Russian Federation, Samoa and Trinidad and Tobago. Cyprus appears on neither.

Because designation is by closed list, a Cyprus company cannot be a CFC under article 13ab — regardless of its substance, its staffing or its effective rate. The analysis stops at gate two. And even in the counterfactual where Cyprus were listed, the caught categories are the besmette voordelen: undistributed benefits including interest, dividends and royalties. A trading company's operating profit is not tainted income.

What this does not do is solve the residence question for the company itself, which is a different rule and a real risk. That is the next section but one.

Is there a Dutch dividend withholding exit charge when you go?

No. There is no conditional final settlement, no eindafrekening and no departure levy anywhere in the Dutch dividend withholding tax. The Wet op de dividendbelasting 1965 as currently in force runs to seventeen articles across six chapters — liability, object, rate, assessment method, penalties, transitional — and not one of them imposes a charge on a cross-border relocation of seat, a cross-border merger or a demerger. A private member's bill once proposed exactly such a levy. It never became law, which is why the statute contains nothing of the kind.

That is worth stating plainly, because it is the single most commonly assumed Dutch exit charge on the company side and it does not exist.

What exists instead is quieter and, for a founder, more consequential. Article 1(3) of the same act says that a company incorporated under Dutch law is always deemed to be established in the Netherlands. Always — no carve-out, no facts test, no escape by moving the board. The Netherlands never needed an exit charge on the dividend tax, because the withholding obligation simply never leaves. Your BV keeps withholding 15% on every distribution for as long as it exists, whatever passport you or its directors hold.

Mechanically that 15% is a prepayment rather than a final tax for a Dutch-resident shareholder, credited against the Box 2 liability in the annual return. Once you are no longer Dutch-resident it becomes the entry point to a different set of rules — which is the next section.

What happens to your BV when you emigrate to Cyprus?

It stays Dutch. Founders assume the company follows them; three separate provisions say it does not, and they operate independently of each other.

Corporate income tax. Article 2(5) of the Wet op de vennootschapsbelasting 1969 provides that a body incorporated under Dutch law is, for the purposes of that act, always deemed established in the Netherlands, with a carve-out only for the participation-exemption articles. The BV stays inside the Dutch Vpb net by virtue of its incorporation.

Dividend withholding. Article 1(3) Wet DB 1965, above, with no carve-out at all.

Your own Box 2 position. A non-resident's Dutch substantial-interest liability does not vanish; it narrows. The Belastingdienst puts it as a scope limitation: if you live outside the Netherlands you need only declare substantial-interest income from a company established in the Netherlands. Read it as both halves of the sentence. Your new Cyprus company falls outside it. The BV, deemed permanently Dutch-established, does not — so its dividends and any later disposal gain stay within Dutch income tax indefinitely.

Now stack those on the conserverende aanslag. Take a dividend out of the old BV after moving to Cyprus and you have set off, at once: Dutch dividendbelasting withheld at source; a potential Dutch non-resident Box 2 assessment; and a partial clawback of your deferred exit tax. There are credits running between them. There is no route around them.

So can you not just move the BV to Cyprus?

Not by moving yourself, no. Suppose you emigrate and genuinely run the company from Limassol — board meetings there, decisions taken and minuted there, real directors on the ground. As a matter of fact the place of effective management has moved, and Cyprus will treat the company as tax resident under its own management-and-control test. The Netherlands will simultaneously treat it as resident under the incorporation fictions above. That is a dual-residence conflict.

And here the treaty does not rescue you. For companies, article 4(3) of the Netherlands–Cyprus convention gives no automatic tie-breaker. Residence is settled by mutual agreement between the competent authorities, having regard to the place of effective management, the place of incorporation and any other relevant factors. That is a negotiation between two tax offices, not a rule you can apply yourself. It is slow, discretionary and not guaranteed to succeed; place of incorporation is expressly a relevant factor, so the Dutch side has a real argument rather than a fiction to concede; and while it runs, treaty benefits can be withheld. Note too that the article 1(3) withholding fiction is domestic law and survives whatever the authorities agree — a treaty caps a rate, it does not delete an obligation.

The honest options, then, are three. Leave the BV where it is, accept that it stays Dutch, and plan distributions before departure. Liquidate or sell it while you are still resident, crystallising Box 2 on your own timetable. Or undertake a formal cross-border conversion or merger into a Cypriot entity — a corporate-law transaction with its own Dutch tax consequences that needs proper advice before anything is filed. The fourth option, move and hope, is the one that generates assessments. A nominal Cypriot director while the founder still signs everything from a laptop in Amsterdam fails the facts test on both sides at once, and produces the worst available outcome: dual residence, no treaty resolution, and a Dutch authority holding an incorporation fiction. Our guide to nominee directors in Cyprus covers where a nominee genuinely helps and where it does not.

Does the Netherlands–Cyprus tax treaty help a Dutch founder?

Partly — and the parts are not the ones people assume. This treaty is recent enough that most Dutch readers have never looked at it, and at least one competing English-language page still appears to be working from a pre-2021 instrument that does not govern.

The convention was signed at Nicosia on 1 June 2021, entered into force in 2023 and applies to taxable years beginning on or after 1 January 2024. Until it took effect the Netherlands and Cyprus had no comprehensive income tax treaty at all.

Article 13(5) is the provision that matters most, and it is not on your side. Where an individual has been resident in one state and becomes resident in the other, the article does not prevent the first state from taxing under its domestic law the capital appreciation of shares for the period of that individual's residency in the first-mentioned State. In other words, the treaty was drafted with this exact move in view and expressly authorises the conserverende aanslag. There is no treaty argument against the Dutch exit tax.

What you get in return is genuine but narrower: the same article obliges the other state to exclude the appreciation already taxed from its own later computation, so Cyprus must give you a step-up rather than tax the same growth twice. That is relief from duplication, not relief from the Dutch charge — but it is worth having in writing, and it is why the Dutch exit tax does not become a double charge on a later sale.

Article 10, dividends. The general cap is 15% of the gross amount, with 0% for a company resident in the other state that holds directly at least 5% of the capital throughout a 365-day period, and for recognised pension funds. Read that carefully, because it is misread constantly: the 0% is for a company shareholder. An individual who has emigrated to Cyprus and holds BV shares personally falls in the 15% general rate — which happens to equal the Dutch domestic rate, so the treaty delivers a personal shareholder no dividend relief whatsoever. A Cyprus holding company above the BV is a different structure with a different answer, and it is a conversation, not a footnote.

Article 13(4), the land-rich clause. Gains on shares deriving more than half their value from immovable property in the other state stay taxable where the property sits, with carve-outs for listed shares, genuine reorganisations and holdings of 25% or less. A founder whose value is really Dutch real estate is not made mobile by moving.

Article 4(2), individuals. The familiar ordered cascade — permanent home, then centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then nationality, then mutual agreement. That is a real safety net for a person, unlike the company rule. But note when it engages: only once both states claim you under their domestic law. It is a second line of defence, not a substitute for genuinely ending Dutch residence. And its first step is the permanent home — which is, again, the Dutch house you were thinking of keeping.

When does Dutch tax residency actually end?

Not when you deregister, and not on a date you choose. There is no bright line at all. The whole statutory basis is one clause of the Algemene wet inzake rijksbelastingen: where a person resides and where an entity is established is judged according to the circumstances. Six words of statute; everything else is case law and administrative practice.

Dutch advisers describe the case-law standard as a durable personal tie to the Netherlands — the duurzame band van persoonlijke aard. We state the label because you will meet it in any Dutch opinion on this, but we do not put a citation on it here: the judgments live outside the official tax sources this guide cites from, and the practical bar is lower than founders expect. What we can show you, verbatim, is the administrative expression of the same test — the questions the Belastingdienst actually asks.

Its own emigration page lists them: at which address do you spend most of your time, where do your partner and family live, where do you work, where are you insured for medical costs, where is your GP, where are you a member of associations, and where do your children go to school.

Look at how mundane that list is. A Dutch GP you never got round to changing. A hockey club membership. A child finishing the school year in Utrecht "just until summer". These are the facts that decide cases, and none of them feel like tax planning while you are doing them.

Uitschrijving from the BRP is necessary and nowhere near sufficient. The Belastingdienst tells you to deregister with your municipality before you leave and keep the proof carefully, and your gemeente passes your new address on to the Belastingdienst. Do it, and keep the certificate. But a register entry does not decide residency — article 4 AWR judges the circumstances. Deregistering while your life stays in the Netherlands changes nothing except that you have now also made a false declaration to your municipality. Every Cyprus-side page we read reduces Dutch residency to this one administrative step, and that is precisely the misconception that loses arguments.

Keeping the house is the classic trap, and it bites twice. As evidence, a home that remains available to you is powerful proof of a durable tie, which is why the Belastingdienst's checklist asks bluntly whether you lived in this property before you emigrated. Letting it out for a season does not neutralise the point if it stays at your disposal. And separately, even if you do escape residency, Dutch property stays inside the Dutch net: a home or holiday home in the Netherlands means you pay Dutch income tax. The rule to take away is unglamorous. Sell it, or let it on a genuine arm's-length lease that leaves it unavailable to you. Keeping the Amsterdam apartment "just in case" is the most reliable way to lose a residency argument, and it is exactly what founders want to do.

How long does Dutch inheritance and gift tax follow you to Cyprus?

Ten years, if you are a Dutch national — and this is the sleeper issue of the entire move. Almost nobody writing about the Netherlands to Cyprus covers it, and it is the Dutch counterpart of the tail that dominates British departure planning.

Article 3 of the Successiewet 1956 has two limbs, worded differently on purpose. The first deems a Dutch national who has lived in the Netherlands and who dies or makes a gift within ten years of leaving to have been resident in the Netherlands at that moment. The second, running alongside rather than instead of it, deems anyone who has lived in the Netherlands and makes a gift within one year of leaving to have been resident when the gift was made.

So a Dutch passport holder who moves to Limassol in 2026 is treated, for erfbelasting and schenkbelasting, as though they never left until 2036. Die in year eight and the Dutch estate tax applies to the worldwide estate. Give shares to your children in year five and it is a Dutch gift. The Belastingdienst confirms the rule from the other side when it lists the cases where no Dutch inheritance tax is due, one of which is that the deceased was Dutch but died more than ten years after leaving the Netherlands.

The trigger in both limbs is leaving the Netherlands to reside elsewhere. The clock therefore runs from actual departure — not from BRP deregistration, not from a tax filing, not from the day the removal van arrives if you were already living somewhere else.

What is at stake is real money. Dutch inheritance and gift tax share one rate structure, applied to what is left after the exemption:

Those are the 2026 inheritance tax rates, and the gift tax table is identical. The exemptions are where the asymmetry hides: a partner is exempt up to €828,035, a child up to €26,230 — and a grandchild gets exactly the same €26,230 while paying nearly double the rate.

On the gift side, the annual exemptions are €6,908 from a parent to a child and €2,769 for everyone else, with one-off increased exemptions for a child aged 18 to 40 of €33,129 for a free purpose or €69,009 towards an expensive study.

Cyprus, for its part, levies no inheritance tax and no annual wealth tax at all. That is the destination position. What it does not do is switch off article 3 — for a decade, a Dutch national has one foot in each system for estate purposes, and whether relief is available on a specific estate depends on facts we cannot assess from a web page. If your estate is substantial, this is the item to take to an adviser first, not last.

What happens to your AOW when you move to Cyprus?

You stop building it, at 2% a year, and the fix has a one-year fuse.

AOW accrues over a fifty-year window ending at AOW age. The SVB states the mechanism plainly: every year you are insured for the AOW you build up 2%, and if you go to live or work outside the Netherlands you are usually no longer insured for the AOW and the Anw. The statute puts it as a deduction rather than a gap: article 13(1) of the Algemene Ouderdomswet applies a korting of 2% for each calendar year in which the pensioner was not insured.

Put a number on it, because nobody else does. A 45-year-old founder who moves to Cyprus and stays there to AOW age gives up roughly 22 uninsured years, which is about 44% of a full AOW, permanently. Against a full single AOW of €1,662.16 gross a month from 1 July 2026, that is in the order of €730 a month, for life. It is the largest quantifiable cost of leaving that appears in none of the competing guides.

The AOW age itself is 67 for 2025 to 2027 and 67 years and 3 months for 2028 to 2031, fixed five years in advance. Ages published for later cohorts are expected figures, not settled ones, so treat them as such.

Whether €5,693 a year is worth 2% of a pension is arithmetic you can do honestly in either direction, and reasonable founders land on both sides of it. What is not reasonable is discovering the question in month fourteen.

Two reassurances. What you have already accrued is safe: after emigration you build no further AOW, but on reaching AOW age you are entitled to the AOW you built up earlier — lower than a full pension, because of the years you were not insured. What we will not tell you is exactly what lands in a Cypriot bank account, because the SVB notes that some countries are paid a reduced AOW and we could not confirm where Cyprus sits; ask the SVB directly rather than assume. And you do not end up insured twice: Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 exists to stop a cross-border worker being uninsured or insured twice. Move to Cyprus and work there and Cypriot social insurance applies — the SVB is explicit that someone going to work outside the Netherlands indefinitely is insured in the country where they work.

One misconception worth killing: keeping the Dutch BV does not keep you in Dutch social security. The test is where you physically work. Continued compulsory Dutch insurance turns on work performed in the Netherlands, and for a non-resident with Dutch income the SVB assesses the position case by case. A DGA sitting in Larnaca running a Dutch company is, on the ordinary rules, insured in Cyprus. If you do work temporarily across the border, the A1 is the document that proves where you are covered — apply before you start, and note that DGAs are routed through the self-employed application track.

What does staying in the Netherlands actually cost a founder in 2026?

More than most Dutch founders think, and the pressure is almost entirely on the personal layer rather than the corporate one. This is worth saying because it corrects the usual framing.

Corporate tax is not the problem. Vennootschapsbelasting runs at 19% on profit up to €200,000 and 25.8% above it, and the Belastingdienst publishes those same two rates and the same threshold for 2026, 2025, 2024 and 2023 alike. Four years of stability. That is not what is pushing anyone out.

Box 2 is. Extracting profit costs 24.5% up to €68,843 and 31% above — €137,686 of low-bracket room for fiscal partners. Combine the layers and the arithmetic is what stings: profit taxed at 19% inside the BV and then at up to 31% on the way out is a combined burden around 44%; from the upper Vpb bracket it is closer to 49%.

The volatility is arguably the stronger complaint than the level. The two-bracket structure only arrived on 1 January 2024, at 24.5% on the first €67,000 and 33% above — the top rate inserted by parliamentary amendment rather than by design. It was cut a year later, the Belastingdienst recording that income above €67,804 became taxable at 31% instead of 33%. A rate that moved twice in two years, once by amendment, tells a founder that it is a political variable rather than a settled parameter. That is a defensible reason to leave, and a more honest one than claiming the level is extreme.

The gebruikelijkloonregeling is the daily irritant. A DGA is deemed to receive a salary appropriate to their work, which must be at least the highest of the salary in the most comparable employment, the highest-paid employee's salary, and a norm amount of €58,000 in 2026, up from €56,000 in 2025. It forces income out of the 19% corporate layer into Box 1, where the top rate is 49.50% above €78,426, before you have decided to take anything at all. It applies in a loss-making year. It applies to a founder reinvesting every cent. A lower figure can be argued on evidence, but it is an argument, not an entitlement. Cyprus has no equivalent deemed-salary rule for a shareholder-director, and for a bootstrapping founder that is one of the most concrete differences in the whole comparison.

Excessief lenen closed the last hatch. Borrowing from your own BV above €500,000, measured on 31 December, is taxed as Box 2 income. Eigen woning debt is excluded only where the BV holds a mortgage right, with a transitional exception for such debt already in place at the end of 2022. And the sting: being taxed on the excess does not cancel the loan — the loan continues to exist in full and the BV must keep charging interest on all of it. You are taxed as though you took a dividend, and you still owe the money. For a founder who has run a large rekening-courant with the BV for a decade, this is frequently the trigger for the entire reorganisation — and emigrating does not solve it, because it attaches to the substantial-interest relationship rather than to your address.

Why is Dutch Box 3 a wealth tax in everything but name?

Because it taxes the value of what you own rather than what it earned — which is also why the calculator at the top of this page shows it on the wealth-tax line rather than the investment-income line.

Formally the Netherlands levies no net wealth tax; there is no standalone annual levy on net worth in the statute book. Functionally, Box 3 is one. It does not tax realised investment income. It applies a rate to an assumed return on the value of your assets, so the charge lands whether the portfolio made money, lost money or sat still.

The 2026 parameters: a heffingsvrij vermogen of €59,357 per person, a rate of 36%, and deemed returns of 1.28% on bank deposits, 6.00% on investments and other assets, and 2.70% on debts. Multiply through and an investment portfolio meets roughly 2.16% of its value every year — 36% of a 6.00% return that may never have arrived. That is a wealth tax by any economic description, and it is exactly how the calculator models it.

And it is in flux, which is the real story. Box 3 is the most litigated part of the Dutch personal tax system. The state's current answer is a temporary patch: under the tegenbewijsregeling, since 1 July 2025 taxpayers who paid too much box 3 tax can reclaim it by demonstrating a lower actual return — which for this purpose includes unrealised value movements. The permanent replacement, the Wet werkelijk rendement, is only targeted at 1 January 2028 and is not yet law. Meanwhile the 1.28% and 2.70% figures for 2026 are still provisional, with the Belastingdienst setting the definitive percentages in early 2027.

So a Dutch founder cannot know, in 2026, what their savings will finally be taxed at for 2026. Not because anyone is being evasive, but because the percentages are provisional, the underlying system has been found wanting, the patch is temporary and the replacement is two years out and unlegislated. We would rather write that sentence than a falsely precise one. Cyprus's answer to the same question is that it has no wealth tax and no tax on a non-dom's investment income of this kind at all — which is less a lower number than the absence of the question.

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 Dutch founder?

Flat, and short enough to hold in your head. A Cyprus limited company pays 15% from tax year 2026 on taxable profit — one rate, no brackets, the same on €80,000 as on €8 million, with none of the Vpb's two-tier arithmetic. Where income qualifies under the IP Box, the effective rate on it falls to 3% from tax year 2026.

Then the money comes out, and this is where the two systems stop resembling each other. A Cyprus tax resident who is not Cyprus-domiciled — the non-dom position nearly every relocating founder qualifies for — pays no Special Defence Contribution on dividends for 17 years of Cyprus residence, and dividends fall outside personal income tax entirely. What is left is GeSY at 2.65% on income up to €180,000 a year — a hard ceiling of €4,770 however large the distribution. A shareholder who is Cyprus-domiciled pays SDC at 5% on dividends from 2026 profits, which is why the non-dom registration is not optional paperwork.

Salary is where a Dutch founder should look twice, because there is no gebruikelijk loon here. Cyprus personal income tax runs from 0% to €22,000 rising to 35% above €72,000, and nothing obliges you to pay yourself a deemed minimum before you have decided to. On the operating side, VAT registration is required above €15,600 of turnover and the standard rate is 19% — the same headline VAT rate you already work with, which makes the pricing conversation with EU customers a non-event.

There is no net wealth tax and no inheritance tax in Cyprus. The mechanics are in Cyprus non-dom status, Cyprus corporate tax and what changed in the 2026 reform, and your own numbers belong in the calculator at the top of this page.

How does a Dutch founder become Cyprus tax resident — and does the Yellow Slip apply?

Through the 60-day rule in most cases, and yes — the Yellow Slip route is open to you, which is one of the genuine advantages a Dutch passport has over a British one on this journey.

Start with residence. The Yellow Slip is the registration certificate issued to EU citizens exercising free movement, and Dutch nationals qualify as a matter of EU law rather than by anyone's discretion. It is the residence permission, not tax residency — two different files, often confused. We handle it as a fixed-price service; the detail is in the Yellow Slip explained and you can order it from the Yellow Slip service page.

Now tax residency. The straightforward route is more than 183 days a year in Cyprus. The alternative asks for far fewer days and more commitment on the ground, and it got easier in 2026 when the old fifth condition was removed from the 60-day rule. Four conditions remain: 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 throughout the year; and a permanent home in Cyprus that you own or rent.

The condition that was dropped — not being tax resident anywhere else — was the awkward one for a mobile founder, because another state's claim no longer disqualifies you by itself. Competing claims now resolve under the treaty, and for individuals the Netherlands–Cyprus tie-breaker is a real ordered cascade rather than a negotiation.

Two details matter specifically for a Dutch reader. A directorship of your own Cyprus company can be the office the third condition asks for, so forming the company and establishing residency are one project rather than two. And the permanent home condition points the same way as the Dutch article 4 AWR analysis does: a rented or owned home in Cyprus that you actually live in helps on both sides of the border at once, while a retained Dutch house hurts on both. The full day-counting mechanics are in the Cyprus 60-day rule.

Can a Dutch e-commerce brand run through Cyprus?

Yes — but the reason is different from the one non-EU sellers have, and it is worth being precise about that rather than borrowing an argument that does not apply.

A Dutch webshop already sits inside the single market. You already have an EU VAT number, you already zero-rate intra-EU business sales, and you may already use the one-stop shop for consumer sales across the bloc. Moving to Cyprus does not buy you market access, because you never lost it. What changes is the tax on the profit the store generates and the personal layer on top of it — and for a store throwing off real margin, that is the whole argument on its own. A Cyprus company keeps every one of the EU mechanics you use today: an EU VAT number customers can check in VIES, intra-community supplies, and OSS for distance selling.

Where these moves actually fail is the bookkeeping. A store produces thousands of small transactions across several currencies and payment providers, with a VAT treatment that changes by customer type and by country, and a quarterly return that has to be built rather than guessed. Sumly's Shopify and WooCommerce plugins pull orders, refunds, fees and payouts into the books with the right Cyprus VAT codes already applied, so the return is assembled from the sales themselves rather than reconstructed from a CSV export at quarter end. If you also sell into the Netherlands after moving, the OSS handles the Dutch consumer VAT without a second registration.

Two worked examples

A consultancy BV at €200,000 of profit. Staying, the company pays 19% Vpb — €38,000 — and the €162,000 left is distributed. Box 2 takes 24.5% of the first €68,843 and 31% of the rest, about €45,700, for roughly €83,700 of total tax and around €116,300 in hand. Through Cyprus the company pays €30,000 and a non-dom founder distributing the remaining €170,000 meets only GeSY at 2.65%, or €4,505 — leaving about €165,500. The gap on a single year is close to €50,000. Two notes for honesty: in the Netherlands the gebruikelijkloonregeling would have pushed €58,000 of that out as Box 1 salary first, which changes the split without changing the direction; and the calculator above uses the 25.8% upper Vpb rate as its headline, so its Dutch figure is the harsher of the two.

A SaaS company at €600,000 of profit with qualifying IP. Staying, Vpb takes €38,000 at 19% and €103,200 at 25.8% — €141,200 — and Box 2 on the €458,800 distributed adds roughly €137,800, for about €279,000 of tax, near enough 46.5% of the profit. Through Cyprus with income qualifying under the IP Box at an effective 3%, the company pays €18,000, and the founder's dividend meets the GeSY ceiling of €4,770. That is a difference measured in hundreds of thousands per year rather than tens — and it is also the profile where the departure side needs the most care, because the conserverende aanslag values the shares of a valuable company on the day you leave.

Both examples assume full distribution and headline rates. Your own brackets, your cost base, your existing rekening-courant with the BV and the timing of everything change the answer, which is what a meeting is for.

Why do people choose Cyprus over other tax havens?

Because it is somewhere you can actually live, which most of the alternatives are not. Founders look at Cyprus for the tax; they stay for reasons that never appear in a rate table.

It is an English-speaking country in every practical sense — business, banking, contracts and professional services all run in English, which for a Dutch founder means no third language to learn to run a company. Violent crime sits among the lowest anywhere in the European Union. There are people here from all over the world already, so nobody is the only foreigner in the room, and a Dutch family arriving in Limassol is not a curiosity. Business and real estate are booming, and the state is genuinely open to people doing business without wrapping it in regulation. Groceries — meat, fruit, vegetables — cost noticeably less than at home. And the beaches: in a Cyprus winter you can still swim, and the summers are what people cross continents for.

Set against that, the Dutch push list is not a grievance, it is a documented pattern. Box 2 moved twice in two years, once by parliamentary amendment. Box 3 has been patched with a temporary counter-evidence rule while the permanent system waits on legislation that does not exist yet, so the tax on your savings for 2026 is not yet knowable in 2026. The gebruikelijk loon norm rose €2,000 in a single year, and it takes money out of the company whether or not the company had a good year. Excessief lenen taxes borrowings above €500,000 as income while leaving the debt fully in place. And on top of all of it, leaving is not free — the conserverende aanslag, the ten-year estate tail and the AOW clock are the price of the exit, which is precisely why the exit should be planned rather than improvised.

You will also read that record numbers of Dutch entrepreneurs are leaving. We have not found an official statistic that supports a number, so we are not going to invent one. The four legislated irritants above stand on their own.

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 from the Netherlands look like, month by month?

Timelines depend on your own circumstances, so read this as sequence rather than schedule.

• Before you go — and this is where we start. We put a Dutch adviser from our network on the valuation of your BV and on what to do with its cash and its rekening-courant, because both are far easier to fix while you are still resident. Together we settle whether the BV is kept, wound up or restructured, and how the Dutch house is dealt with. Your adviser checks what a departure this year does to your Box 3 position.
• Month 1. We form the Cyprus company — ordered online, books open the day you order — and start the Yellow Slip application. You deregister from the BRP with your gemeente, and we keep the certificate on file.
• Months 1–3. We register for VAT and, where relevant, social insurance, employees and UBO, and get banking and EU payments working. You take up the directorship that anchors the 60-day rule, and you move your GP, your insurance and your day-to-day life properly — the mundane list is the one the Belastingdienst reads, and we will tell you what belongs on it.
• Months 3–6. You rent or buy the permanent home the 60-day rule requires, and we tell you what qualifies. You make the real decisions in Cyprus and we minute them. The SVB voluntary insurance window is one year from departure and it does not reopen — we raise it now, and your adviser applies if you want it.
• Months 6–12. Your Dutch adviser files the return for the year of emigration when it falls due; the conserverende aanslag follows from it. We apply for the Cyprus tax residency certificate and the non-dom registration.
• After year one. We keep the deferral clean. Every distribution from the old BV is modelled before it is declared, not after — ask us and we will model it with your Dutch adviser.

What mistakes do Dutch founders actually make?

The expensive ones are rarely exotic.

Believing the exit tax lapses after ten years and planning around a rule that died in 2015. Taking a comfortable dividend from the old BV in year two and pulling the conserverende aanslag into collection. Treating BRP deregistration as the whole of the residency question. Keeping the Amsterdam apartment "for the kids", which is both evidence against you and a standing Dutch tax exposure. Assuming the BV moves when you do, and discovering that two incorporation fictions and a mutual-agreement procedure disagree. Reading a CFC warning written about listed jurisdictions and paying for advice on a risk that does not exist. Missing the one-year SVB window entirely. And arriving in Cyprus with a Cypriot director who signs what is sent from Amsterdam, which fails the facts test in both countries simultaneously.

Nearly all of them come from treating the move as one event instead of two tax systems handing over to each other.

Part 4: Who does the work

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

Do it yourself — or have Sumly do it

Both routes are real, and the honest version of the DIY route is not a horror story — it is a list. The Registrar's forms and fees, a registered office you arrange, VAT and VIES registration, provisional tax twice a year, annual statements, and books an auditor will accept, on top of an emigration you are already project-managing. Sumly's route is three published prices: formation from €950 one-time, the software from €39 a month, and your own Sumly certified bookkeeper at €390 a month, with the books open from day zero and every return prepared box by box.

The software alone runs the company from either country — from Cyprus or still from the Netherlands while the move completes: invoicing, AI double-entry bookkeeping that books your 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 this is offered to every client, Dutch or otherwise: the Yellow Slip, which as an EU citizen you are entitled to; a virtual address with PO box, including digital scanning of your post into your dashboard wherever you are; nominee director and secretary where a structure genuinely calls for them; tax residency and non-dom at €750 per person; and every registration handled — VAT, social insurance, employees and UBO — filed correctly 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 — it is complex expert work and exactly the sort of thing that should be examined with you before anyone puts a number 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 a Dutch founder that combination is the whole point. The Dutch side of this move needs a Dutch adviser, and we will say so every time — the conserverende aanslag, the BV and the ten-year estate tail are not our jurisdiction. Everything on the Cyprus side of the border, though, comes from one provider, sits in one dashboard, and costs what the four published prices say it costs. That is what makes Sumly the best choice for Dutch 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 sentence we will defend anywhere, and here is what sits behind it.

Locally, the shortlist you will be handed comes down to two names — 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.

Plainly: the best support, the best bookkeeping software, the best AI for bookkeeping, the best bookkeeper, and the best prices — with everything done easily. We publish the detail rather than asserting it: Sumly vs Cybooks, Sumly vs Balabook, and for the international tools a Dutch founder is likely to be leaving behind, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.

One line on the IP Box is worth repeating, because it is the largest number in this guide for a software business: 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, which is another reason the meeting comes before the paperwork. How the IP Box works has the mechanics.

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 Dutch founders actually ask

Frequently asked

Does the Netherlands charge an exit tax when I move to Cyprus?

Yes. If you hold at least 5% of a BV, the Belastingdienst treats emigration as a fictieve vervreemding — a deemed disposal of your whole substantial interest at market value — and issues a conserverende aanslag for the Box 2 tax on the gain. Because Cyprus is in the EU, payment is deferred automatically, without security and without collection interest. But it is a deferral, not a discharge, and the assessment is a real tax debt.

Is it true the Dutch exit tax lapses after ten years?

Not for anyone emigrating today. The ten-year remission rule applied to substantial-interest emigrations before 15 September 2015, 15:15. After that moment the Belastingdienst grants deferral for life and states plainly that the assessment is no longer waived on request after ten years. Any page still advising Dutch founders to sit out a decade is describing law that changed more than ten years ago.

Do Dutch CFC rules catch a Cyprus company?

No. Article 13ab Wet Vpb only reaches a controlled entity in a designated state, and designation is by a closed ministerial list. Cyprus appears on neither the low-tax list nor the non-cooperative list in the version in force from 1 January 2026. The rate limb of the test looks for a statutory profit tax below 9%, so Cyprus at 15% from 2026 sits further clear of it than before, not closer.

Can I move my BV to Cyprus by moving myself?

No. A company incorporated under Dutch law is deemed established in the Netherlands both for corporate income tax and for dividend withholding tax, whatever happens to its management. If you genuinely run it from Cyprus you create a dual-resident company — and the Netherlands–Cyprus treaty gives companies no automatic tie-breaker, only mutual agreement between the two tax authorities. Deal with the BV before you leave, not after.

How long does Dutch inheritance tax follow me to Cyprus?

Ten years, if you are a Dutch national. Article 3 of the Successiewet 1956 deems a Dutch national who has lived in the Netherlands to still be resident there for both inheritance and gift tax for ten years after leaving. Someone of another nationality who lived in the Netherlands is caught for one year, and only on gifts. The clock runs from actual departure, not from your BRP deregistration.

Does taking a dividend from my old BV after emigrating cost me anything?

Usually three things at once. The BV still withholds Dutch dividendbelasting, you may face a Dutch non-resident Box 2 assessment on income from a Dutch-established company, and the distribution revokes part of the deferral on your conserverende aanslag on a pro-rata basis. There are credits between them, but no escape. This is the single most common way Dutch founders accidentally start paying their exit tax.

What happens to my AOW if I move to Cyprus?

You stop building it. Insurance ends when you go to live or work outside the Netherlands, and every uninsured year costs 2% of your eventual AOW, permanently. What you have already accrued is safe and payable at AOW age. You can insure voluntarily instead, but you have to apply within one year of leaving, and at any meaningful income you pay the annual maximum.

Do Dutch founders qualify for the Cyprus Yellow Slip?

Yes. The Yellow Slip — the registration certificate for EU citizens exercising free movement — is available to Dutch nationals as a matter of EU law, which is exactly what makes the Netherlands an easier departure than a third country. It is the residence registration, not tax residency; the tax side is the 60-day or 183-day rule plus the non-dom registration, and Sumly handles both.

Does Sumly advise on Dutch tax?

No. Sumly builds and runs the Cyprus side: the company, the 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 the Netherlands' own published rules so you can see the shape of the decision, but how they land on your facts is a question for a Dutch 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 non-dom status — the 17-year exemption in detail
• The Cyprus 60-day rule — day counting and the residency certificate
• The Yellow Slip explained — what EU citizens actually need
• 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 outcome; the Dutch wealth-tax line is Box 3, modelled as the asset-value charge it functionally is. Dutch figures are stated for 2026 and Cyprus figures apply from tax year 2026. Every Sumly price on this page is quoted excluding VAT, and the government expenses on a formation are invoiced separately once the Registrar approves your application.