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

Leaving Russia for Cyprus is really two separate projects running at once: closing off the duties that follow a Russian citizen wherever they live, and building a Cyprus company that works from its first invoice. The tax treaty question sits between them, and it is the one almost every summary gets wrong.

Updated for 2026 Cyprus tax law and regulations.

From Russia to Cyprus, with the whole Cyprus side under one roof

Sumly is the one-stop, fully digitalized way to create a Cyprus company and run it from the day it is registered — formation, books open from day zero, every Cyprus return prepared box by box, and the tax residency and non-dom application as one fixed-price service. One dashboard, one provider, and prices published before you order. The Russian side of your move belongs to a Russian adviser, and we say so plainly rather than pretending otherwise.

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.

Who this guide is for, and what Sumly may lawfully do

Sumly Ltd is a Cyprus company, which makes it an EU person, and EU law decides what it may sell. Article 5n(1)(b) of Council Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 prohibits providing accounting, auditing, including statutory audit, bookkeeping, tax consulting and business and management consulting to legal persons established in Russia, and the wind-down for that group of services expired on 5 July 2022. So Sumly cannot provide bookkeeping, accounting, audit, tax or management-consulting services to a company established in Russia — not directly, and not through a Cyprus intermediary, because the prohibition reaches indirect provision as well.

This guide is written for the other case: a person who is moving themselves and building something new in Cyprus. Forming an ordinary Cyprus company and giving it a registered office are not prohibited by that Regulation — article 5m, the only provision in this area, is confined to trusts and similar legal arrangements — and the Commission's own guidance, reconfirmed in its consolidated answers of 24 August 2026, states that the Article 5n prohibitions cover only the Russian government and legal persons established in Russia. Services to you as an individual, and to companies you own that are incorporated outside Russia, are permitted.

If your question is about a business that stays in Russia, we cannot take it on, and we would rather tell you that before a meeting than after one.

Is the Russia–Cyprus tax treaty cancelled, or suspended?

Suspended, in part — and the distinction decides real money, so it is worth stating precisely. Presidential Decree No. 585 of 8 August 2023, published on the official legal portal, suspends articles 5 to 22, 24, 27 and 29 of the agreement with Cyprus of 5 December 1998. A federal law adopted in December 2023 carried the identical list, so the measure rests on statute and not on the decree alone.

Read the list rather than the headline. Articles 1 to 4, 23, 25 and 26 are not on it. That means the article 4 residence tie-breaker for a dual-resident individual is still there, and so is the article 23 mechanism for relieving tax paid in the other state. Those two survivals are the difference between a workable structure and a broken one, and they disappear from almost every English-language summary, which compresses the whole thing to "the treaty no longer applies".

It also matters that the instrument is a suspension and not a denunciation. Latvia, the Netherlands, Ukraine and Denmark are examples of treaties that were actually terminated; those are a different legal position with different consequences for the years ahead. Russian legal drafting uses a distinct word for suspension, and rendering it as denunciation is a translation error with a price tag.

On the Cyprus side, the position is asymmetric and we will not overstate it. The Cyprus Ministry of Finance continues to list the agreement and its two protocols among the double tax treaties in force, and has not annotated or withdrawn the entry. We could not locate any published statement from the Cyprus Ministry of Finance or the Cyprus Tax Department addressing the Russian suspension, so this guide says exactly that and no more. If you need Cyprus's operative view on granting treaty relief in a particular year, that is a question to put to the Tax Department in writing rather than something to infer from a table.

What do Russian withholding rates cost now that the treaty relief is gone?

Full domestic rates, because articles 10, 11 and 12 all sit inside the suspended range. The Federal Tax Service publishes the position plainly:

One honest limitation: we could establish these as the rates currently published, but not the year in which each of the withholding figures took its present value, so this guide does not date the increases. Plan against the rates, not against a history of them.

The practical reading for a founder is short. A Russian operating company paying a foreign holding company is now paying 20% at source on dividends and 25% on interest and royalties with nothing to reclaim under the treaty, and the article 23 relief that survived is a credit mechanism, not a rate reduction. That arithmetic is why the structures built around the 2020 protocol no longer do what they were designed to do.

Are you a currency resident or a tax resident of Russia?

Both at once, most likely, and confusing the two is the single commonest error in English-language writing about leaving Russia. They are different statuses, under different laws, with different tests.

Tax residency (налоговый резидент) is a day count. The Federal Tax Service states it as being physically present in Russia for at least 183 calendar days within 12 consecutive months. Move to Cyprus and stay there, and you lose it.

Currency residency (валютный резидент) follows citizenship. It does not lapse because you left, and there is no day count that ends it. A Russian citizen living permanently in Limassol remains a currency resident of Russia.

So the ordinary condition of a founder who has moved is: currency resident, tax non-resident. Everything downstream — which accounts you must notify, which reports you must file, what your Cyprus dividend costs — depends on holding those two apart. One more terminology trap belongs here, because it circulated widely in 2026: the flat-rate, deduction-free treatment reported that year attaches to persons entered on the foreign-agent register, a separate status under separate legislation. It is not what happens to a tax non-resident, and the two are routinely printed as if they were the same measure.

When does Russian tax residency end, and what actually changes?

It ends when the 183-day count within the rolling 12-month window stops being met, and the effect is more selective than most people expect. The default for a non-resident is 30% — the Federal Tax Service applies that rate to all other income of non-resident individuals — but the same page keeps a long list of income types on the ordinary progressive scale even for non-residents, including remuneration paid to a remote worker performing the work remotely under a contract with the employer, remuneration for work done and services rendered, and income of highly qualified specialists.

That scale, which applies from 2025, runs in five bands:

Dividends do not run through that scale. They sit in their own base with two bands: 13% up to 2.4 million roubles and 15% above it, which is also the base that catches gains on the sale of property and securities.

The change that matters most to a founder is not a rate at all. The Federal Tax Service states it directly: if a person is not a Russian tax resident, income received from sources outside Russia is not an object of Russian personal income tax. A dividend from a Cyprus company is foreign-source income. Once residency has genuinely ended, that dividend is outside the Russian charge — which is the whole structural argument for making the move properly rather than halfway.

You will also read that leaving costs you the exemption on selling property. The exemption the Federal Tax Service publishes is written by reference to the holding period — property owned longer than the minimum term is not subject to personal income tax — rather than by reference to residence. What a departure does affect is a sale inside the minimum period, where the reliefs that soften the charge for a resident are not all available. Check your own dates before you sell, not after.

Does Russia charge an exit tax when you move to Cyprus?

No, and this is worth establishing from source rather than repeating. There is no deemed disposal of your shareholdings on ceasing to be a Russian tax resident, and no departure charge on the individual. The nearest thing to a formality sits one step further along: where a person renounces Russian citizenship, the Federal Tax Service's own procedure requires a document from the tax authority confirming there is no outstanding tax debt, issued by the interregional data-processing inspectorate or by the office for the applicant's last place of residence. That is a clearance certificate, not a tax.

The other half of the question is what happens to the company, and here the answer is structural. Russian law provides for redomiciliation inbound only — there is a route for a foreign company to become Russian, and no mirror of it going the other way. So "move the Russian company to Cyprus" is not a thing that exists. If you want a Cyprus company, you incorporate one, and you deal with the Russian entity separately on Russian advice.

Do Russian CFC rules catch a Cyprus company?

While you are still a Russian tax resident, yes — and this is the regime that most often turns a simple plan into an expensive one. The Federal Tax Service sets out the control test in two limbs: a direct or indirect participation of more than 25%, or a participation of more than 10% where the participation of all Russian tax residents in that company exceeds 50%. Control can also arise without any shareholding at all, through the ability to exert determining influence over how profit is distributed.

Profit only enters your tax base once it passes a floor: CFC profit is taken into account when it exceeds 10 million roubles. And there are nine grounds of exemption, of which a working Cyprus company will usually be looking at only two or three: an active foreign company, an active foreign holding or subholding company, an effective rate of tax on its profits above a threshold set by reference to the Russian weighted average, a bank or insurer operating under licence, a bond issuer, participation in production-sharing or concession mining projects, an operator of a new offshore hydrocarbon field, a non-profit that does not distribute, and an international holding company. We do not print the effective-rate percentage here, because it is the figure that gets misquoted most often and the test is a computation rather than a headline.

Here is the part that catches people who did everything else right.

There is a third route, and it is genuinely useful for some people: an individual may elect to pay tax on a fixed profit instead of on the computed profit of each company. The amount does not depend on how much the companies earned, but it does depend on how many of them there are, from 2025 onwards:

The election removes the duty to compute each company's profit and to file supporting financial statements, but the annual CFC notification survives it, the exemptions in article 25.13-1 are lost while it runs, and credits for foreign tax go with them. It also locks you in: for elections made from the 2022 period onwards the minimum is five tax periods. That is a long commitment for someone whose plan is to stop being a Russian tax resident within a year, which is exactly why it suits a small number of readers very well and the rest not at all.

What are the Russian currency-control rules once you have left?

Looser than the internet says on the transfer side, and still real on the reporting side. Take them in that order, because most of the confusion is in the first half.

The monthly ceiling on transferring currency abroad is gone. The Bank of Russia announced on 5 December 2025 that, given the stable situation on the currency market, from 8 December 2025 it was cancelling the previously established limits on transfers of foreign currency abroad for Russian citizens and for non-resident individuals from friendly countries. Anything you read that still quotes a monthly dollar ceiling for a Russian citizen is describing a regime that ended. What remains is narrower and pointed elsewhere: the Bank has kept, on rolling six-month extensions, a set of restrictions applying to non-resident individuals and legal entities from unfriendly states, the current window running from 8 June to 7 December 2026 inclusive. That is a date to re-check rather than a settled regime.

The reporting side is where a departed founder still has work. A currency resident must notify the tax authority of opening, closing or changing the details of an account with a bank or other financial-market organisation outside Russia within one month of the event, and must file an annual report on the movement of funds on those accounts by 1 June of the following year. There is a de minimis: no report is needed where the bank sits in an EAEU state or a state that exchanges financial information automatically with Russia and either total credits or debits for the year, or the year-end balance where nothing was credited, stay within 600,000 roubles.

Then comes the exemption that people rely on, and the trap inside it.

Part 2: What Cyprus gives you

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

What does the Cyprus side actually cost?

One rate on the company, and very little on the way out. A Cyprus limited company pays 15% from tax year 2026 on taxable profit — flat, no bands, no regional split, the same on €60,000 as on €6 million. Where the profit comes from qualifying intellectual property, the IP Box can bring the effective rate on that income to 3% from tax year 2026.

Then the shareholder takes it out. A Cyprus tax resident who is not domiciled in Cyprus — the non-dom status that essentially 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 the health contribution: 2.65% on income up to €180,000 a year, so never more than €4,770 however large the distribution. A domiciled shareholder pays 5% on dividends from 2026 profits, which is the comparison the non-dom application is worth. Cyprus levies no net-wealth tax and no inheritance tax at all.

On the trading side, VAT registration bites at €15,600 of taxable turnover and the standard rate is 19%. The detail sits in our guides to Cyprus non-dom status and Cyprus tax benefits for foreigners.

What is Article 5r, and why does it apply after you move?

Because it is triggered by nationality, and nothing in it turns on where you live. This is a genuine, recurring obligation that many relocated founders have never heard of, and it is one of the compliance jobs Sumly can lawfully take on for you.

Article 5r of Regulation 833/2014 imposes a reporting obligation on companies established in the Union whose proprietary rights are directly or indirectly owned for more than 40% by a legal person established in Russia, a Russian national, or a natural person residing in Russia. The threshold is cumulative rather than per payment: the duty bites on transfers out of the Union exceeding, in sum, 100,000 EUR made in one or several operations within the reporting period, and reporting is due two weeks after the end of each quarter. In Cyprus the competent authority is the National Sanctions Implementation Unit, a directorate of the Ministry of Finance, which publishes its own notification template and takes submissions online.

Now compare it with the two provisions that people confuse it with, because the difference is the whole point:

So a founder who has relocated genuinely, holds a Cyprus residence permit and is outside articles 5m and 5b entirely is still inside article 5r. If your Cyprus company pays a supplier, a shareholder or an affiliate outside the Union and the payment clears EUR 100,000 in a quarter, the report is due two weeks after that quarter closes. It is a calendar obligation, which is precisely the kind of thing that goes wrong when nobody owns it — and precisely the kind of thing a bookkeeping system that knows about it does not let you miss.

One thing we will not tell you, because no one honestly can: whether a nominee shareholding changes any of this. The Commission's test for a "similar legal arrangement" under article 5m turns on whether an arrangement creates a fiduciary bond and separates legal from beneficial ownership, and there is no guidance or case law directly on nominee holdings for a Russia-connected owner. We are not asserting that they are caught and we will not assert that they are not. It is out for legal review, and until that is settled we do not offer nominee arrangements into this fact pattern.

Why will Cyprus onboarding ask you for more than you expect?

Because the law now requires it, and being told the reason in advance makes the process much shorter. Russia was added to the EU list of high-risk third countries with strategic deficiencies in its anti-money-laundering framework, with effect from 29 January 2026. Where a business relationship or transaction involves a high-risk third country, EU obliged entities — and accountants, auditors, tax advisers and administrative service providers all are — must apply enhanced customer due diligence.

Two things follow, and they are different from each other. The first is that this is a legal requirement, not a matter of one firm's appetite, and the trigger is the country nexus rather than anything about you personally. The second is that banks and service providers still apply their own risk policies on top, which are frequently stricter than the law demands, and no provider can promise you a particular bank's decision.

In practice, enhanced due diligence means identity and address evidence for every beneficial owner, a documented source of funds for the money going into the company and a documented source of wealth behind it, and clear evidence of what the business actually does. Assembling that before the first meeting rather than during the fourth is the single biggest thing you can do to shorten your own onboarding. It is also, honestly, why our file-opening asks for more than a competitor might: the alternative is not a lighter file, it is a file that fails later.

How does a founder from Russia become Cyprus tax resident?

Usually through the 60-day rule, which got easier in 2026. The route everybody already knows is spending more than 183 days a year on the island. The alternative wants fewer days from you and rather more real presence.

From tax year 2026 the rule carries four conditions, after the old fifth was removed from the 60-day rule: at least 60 days in Cyprus; no more than 183 days in any other single state; a business, employment or office in a person who is tax resident in Cyprus, held through the year; and a permanent home in Cyprus that you own or rent. The condition that went — not being tax resident anywhere else — was the awkward one, and its removal matters here more than in most countries, because it means another state's claim no longer disqualifies you by itself. Where a competing claim does arise, the treaty article 4 tie-breaker survived the suspension and is the mechanism that resolves it.

The office that the third condition asks for can be a directorship of the Cyprus company you are already forming, so the two pieces of work normally run as one. Note also what this guide does not promise: the Yellow Slip is for EU citizens only, and that is EU law rather than a Sumly limitation. A Russian national uses the residence routes open to third-country nationals, and we handle the Cyprus paperwork and bring in immigration specialists where a file needs them. The Yellow Slip guide explains the distinction if you want it in full.

Why do people choose Cyprus over other tax havens?

Because people genuinely want to live here, which is not true of most of the alternatives. Tax is what makes founders look at Cyprus; it is seldom what keeps them here.

Violent crime here sits among the lowest levels recorded anywhere in the European Union. It is an English-speaking country in the way that matters — banking, contracts, professional services and schools all run in English, so nothing important depends on your Greek. There are people from all over the world here already, which means the practical infrastructure of being a newcomer exists: schools, doctors, tradespeople, the whole apparatus. Business and real estate are booming. The state is friendly and open to people doing business without wrapping it in heavy regulation. Groceries — meat, fruit, vegetables — are cheap by European standards. And the beaches — a Cyprus winter still lets you walk into the sea, and the summer here is what people cross continents to reach.

The push list from the Russian side is not a grievance, it is a set of dated facts. Corporate profit tax stands at 25% and personal income runs to a 22% top band. The treaty relief that used to make a Cyprus holding structure efficient is suspended, so payments out of Russia meet full domestic withholding. The CFC notification regime imposes penalties per company for paperwork rather than for tax. And since January 2026 every EU professional relationship you open carries mandatory enhanced due diligence by law. None of that is an argument about anything except administration and rates, which is the only argument this page makes.

Can a Russian-founded e-commerce brand sell into Europe through Cyprus?

Yes, and for a seller who has been trading from outside the Union the single-market question is usually larger than the tax one. A Cyprus company sits inside the EU VAT system with a VAT number that customers can verify in VIES, zero-rates intra-EU business sales, and uses the one-stop shop to handle consumer sales across the bloc from one registration instead of twenty-seven.

The place this normally falls apart is the bookkeeping, because a store throws off thousands of small transactions in several currencies with a VAT treatment that changes by customer type and country. Sumly's Shopify and WooCommerce plugins pull orders, refunds, fees and payouts into the books with the right VAT codes, so the return is assembled from the sales themselves rather than reconstructed from a spreadsheet export at quarter end.

Part 3: How the move runs

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

What does the move look like, month by month?

Timelines depend on your own circumstances and on how the residence file moves, so read this as shape rather than schedule.

• Before you go — and this is where we start. We put a Russian adviser from our network on the departure year and on what happens to any Russian entity. We count your days with you deliberately — the 183-day tests on both sides are calendar arithmetic, not intention — and we assemble the source-of-funds and source-of-wealth file you will need for onboarding.
• Month 1. We form the Cyprus company, with books open the day you order, and start the residence paperwork. If you cross a 10% participation in a foreign company while still a Russian tax resident, we diarise the three-month participation notification with your adviser so it is not missed.
• Months 1–3. We register for VAT and, where relevant, social insurance, employees and UBO, and get banking and EU payments moving. You take up the directorship that anchors the 60-day rule.
• Months 3–6. You rent or buy the permanent home the 60-day rule requires, and we tell you what qualifies. Your Russian adviser notifies the tax authority of any foreign account within a month of opening it. We put the Article 5r quarterly check into the calendar before the first quarter closes on you.
• Month 12 onward. Once you are through the first clean year outside Russia, we apply for the Cyprus tax residency certificate and register the non-dom status. We keep the day counts, because the currency-control relief is re-tested every calendar year.

What mistakes do founders from Russia actually make?

The expensive ones are rarely exotic.

Reading "the treaty is suspended" as "the treaty is gone", and abandoning the article 4 tie-breaker and the article 23 credit along with it. Incorporating the Cyprus company in the spring while still a Russian tax resident and missing the three-month participation notification. Assuming the CFC notification is unnecessary because an exemption applies, when the exemption is exactly what has to be filed and evidenced. Treating the end of tax residency as the end of currency residency. Relying on the 183-day currency-control relief and then spending a heavy year back, which reverses it. Budgeting a Cyprus dividend against reduced treaty withholding that no longer exists. Building a Cyprus structure whose real purpose is to keep serving a Russian operating business, which is what the anti-circumvention article in Regulation 833/2014 is written to reach — and it now extends to conduct undertaken merely while aware that circumvention may result. And, most ordinary of all, arriving at onboarding with no source-of-funds documentation and being surprised by a four-week delay that was entirely predictable.

Two worked examples

A consultancy at €200,000 of profit. Through Cyprus, the company pays 15% — €30,000 — and the €170,000 distributed to a non-dom shareholder meets only the health contribution at 2.65%, so a little over €4,500, leaving roughly €165,000 in hand with no wealth tax and no inheritance tax behind it. Run the same profit through a Russian company and the profit tax alone is 25%, before the dividend enters its own two-band personal base. The gap on one year is meaningful; the calculator at the top of this page compounds it, because each year's saving is reinvested and Cyprus does not tax the return on it.

A software company at €500,000 of profit with qualifying intellectual property. This is where the difference stops being incremental. Income that qualifies under the Cyprus IP Box is taxed at an effective 3%, and the dividend still meets only the health contribution capped at €4,770. Against Russian IT-sector treatment at a 5% federal rate with no regional component, the headline gap narrows — but the shareholder-level outcome does not, because a non-dom takes the dividend free of Special Defence Contribution and outside personal income tax. Both examples assume full distribution and headline rates; your own timing, reliefs and residency dates change the answer, which is what the meeting is for.

Part 4: Who does the work

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

Do it yourself — or have Sumly do it

Both are genuine options. Doing it yourself means the Registrar's forms and fees, a registered office you arrange, VAT and VIES registration, provisional tax twice a year, annual statements and books that will stand up to your auditor — while you are also managing a move between two countries. The Sumly route has three published prices — formation from €950 one-time, the bookkeeping 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 whole company from Cyprus or from wherever you are today: invoicing, AI double-entry bookkeeping that books documents itself, live open-banking feeds, every VAT, VIES, provisional and corporate return prepared box by box, live reports, a document inbox with its own email address, mobile receipt capture that books itself, multi-currency invoicing, team roles and the AI assistant — plus payroll at €15 per employee per month, IP Box tracking at €50 a month, Projects at €10 a month, and the e-commerce plugins.

And Sumly offers all of this to everyone: a virtual address with PO box, including digital scanning of your mail into your dashboard wherever you are; every registration handled — VAT, social insurance, employees and UBO; audit through Partner Auditors; banking and EU payments sorted alongside the formation; and the expert-lawyer network for a complicated relocation. The Yellow Slip is on that list too, for EU citizens, which is not the Russian route.

Each of those is an extra, scoped to your case. Tell us what you need in the meeting and you get one clear package-deal offer covering all of it — the IP Box application included where it fits, since it is complex expert work and exactly the sort of thing that should be looked at with you before anyone quotes it. No hourly billing, and 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 founder arriving from Russia that combination is the point, and so is the honesty about its edges: there is a defined set of services we cannot provide into a company still established in Russia, and we tell you where the line is instead of quoting around it. Everything on the Cyprus side — the company, the books, the filings, the residency, the Article 5r calendar — is one provider, one dashboard and four published prices. That is what makes Sumly the best choice for Russian founders creating a company and relocating to Cyprus.

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

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

Cybooks and Balabook are the two Cyprus-built alternatives you will be pointed at. 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 plainly: the best support, the best bookkeeping software, the best AI for bookkeeping, the best bookkeeper and the best prices, with everything done easily. The detail is published: Sumly vs Cybooks, Sumly vs Balabook, and for the international tools you may already be using, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.

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

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 founders from Russia actually ask

Frequently asked

Is the Russia–Cyprus double tax treaty cancelled?

No. It is suspended in part, which is a different legal act with different consequences. Presidential Decree No. 585 of 8 August 2023 suspended articles 5 to 22, 24, 27 and 29 of the 1998 agreement, and a federal law adopted in December 2023 put that same list on a statutory footing. Articles 1 to 4, 23, 25 and 26 were never on the list, so the article 4 residence tie-breaker and the article 23 relief for foreign tax both remain operative. Treaties that were actually denounced — Latvia, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Denmark — are in a different position entirely, and the two situations are constantly reported as if they were one.

What does a Russian company withhold on a dividend to a Cyprus company now?

Twenty per cent, because the treaty article that reduced it is inside the suspended range. The Federal Tax Service publishes 20% on dividends received by a foreign organisation on shares of Russian organisations, and 25% on other income of foreign organisations not connected with a Russian permanent establishment, which is the rate that reaches interest and royalties. No treaty relief is available from the Russian side while the suspension stands, so these are the rates to plan against rather than the reduced ones you will still find quoted.

Can I stop being a Russian tax resident but stay a currency resident?

Yes, and almost everyone who leaves is in exactly that position. Tax residency is a day count — at least 183 calendar days in Russia within 12 consecutive months. Currency residency follows citizenship and does not lapse when you move. So a founder living in Limassol is simultaneously a Russian currency resident and a Russian tax non-resident, and the two statuses carry entirely separate duties. English-language summaries collapse them into one word, and that is where most of the bad advice starts.

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

No. There is no deemed disposal of your shares on ceasing to be a tax resident, and the Federal Tax Service's own page on renouncing citizenship describes the requirement as a document confirming there is no outstanding tax debt, not a departure charge. Russian law also provides for redomiciliation inbound only, so there is no mechanism for moving a Russian company itself to Cyprus. If you want a Cyprus company, you incorporate one.

Do Russian CFC rules catch my Cyprus company?

They catch it while you are still a Russian tax resident. Control is a participation of more than 25%, or more than 10% where Russian tax residents together hold more than 50%. CFC profit enters your tax base once it exceeds 10 million roubles, and there are nine grounds of exemption. The point people miss is that the notification duties are separate from the tax: they carry no profit threshold and they apply even where you claim an exemption, and the penalty for a missed CFC notification is 500,000 roubles for each company.

Is the one-million-dollar monthly transfer limit still in force?

No. The Bank of Russia announced on 5 December 2025 that from 8 December 2025 it was removing the limits previously set on transfers of foreign currency abroad by Russian citizens and by non-resident individuals from friendly countries. What remains, on a rolling six-month extension, are restrictions aimed at non-residents from unfriendly states — currently running to 7 December 2026. Any page still quoting a monthly ceiling for Russian citizens is describing a regime that ended.

My Cyprus company has nothing to do with Russia. Why does it have a reporting duty?

Because Article 5r of Regulation 833/2014 is triggered by nationality, not by residence. An EU-established company more than 40% owned, directly or indirectly, by a Russian national must report transfers of more than 100,000 euro out of the Union, within two weeks of the end of each quarter in which they were made. There is no residence-permit carve-out in that article, unlike articles 5m and 5b. A founder fully resident in Cyprus with a Cyprus residence permit is still caught, and this is the obligation people breach without knowing it exists.

Why does Cyprus onboarding ask me for more paperwork than it used to?

Because Russia was added to the EU list of high-risk third countries with effect from 29 January 2026. Enhanced customer due diligence is then a legal requirement on EU accountants, auditors, tax advisers and administrative service providers, not a matter of any one firm's appetite, and the trigger is the country nexus rather than anything about you. In practice it means identity and address evidence for every beneficial owner, a documented source of funds and source of wealth, and a longer file. Knowing that in advance shortens it considerably.

Can Sumly keep the books of my company in Russia?

No, and neither can any other EU provider. Article 5n(1)(b) of Regulation 833/2014 prohibits accounting, auditing, bookkeeping, tax consulting and business and management consulting to a legal person established in Russia, and the wind-down for those services expired on 5 July 2022. Routing the work through a Cyprus company does not change the answer, because the prohibition covers indirect provision. What we can do is form your Cyprus company, give it a registered office, run its books, and act for you personally and for your non-Russian companies.

Keep reading

• Every country's route to Cyprus — the departure guide for wherever you are now
• Cyprus non-dom status — the seventeen-year exemption in detail
• The Cyprus 60-day rule — day counting and the residency certificate
• What changed in the 2026 Cyprus tax reform
• How to register a company in Cyprus and what it costs
• Company formation for non-residents and the IP Box service

The calculator on this page uses headline rates, an assumed 10% annual return and full distribution of profit, so it shows the shape of the difference rather than your own result. Russian figures are stated as published by the Federal Tax Service and the Bank of Russia at 29 August 2026, and the treaty position is stated as at the same date on the basis of Decree No. 585 of 8 August 2023 and the December 2023 federal law carrying the same list of suspended articles; both instruments are open-ended, so re-check before relying on them in a later year. 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.