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

If your Slovak company turns over less than €100,000 a year, Cyprus is the more expensive option and this guide will say so on the first screen. Above that line the corporate rate steps to 21%, then to 24%, and the arithmetic inverts. This is the departure side of a Slovakia-to-Cyprus move, written from the rules as they stand.

Updated for 2026 Cyprus tax law and regulations.

Slovakia to Cyprus, handled end to end by one provider instead of four

Sumly is the one-stop, fully digitalized route to creating a company in Cyprus, moving a Slovak business onto it, and operating that business from the day it exists. We register the company, open your books the same day you order, prepare every Cyprus return box by box, and deliver the Yellow Slip and the tax residency and non-dom registration as fixed-price services — one dashboard, one partner, four published prices. The alternative is a Bratislava law office for the paperwork, an účtovníčka for the books, and nobody at all holding the handover between two tax systems.

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.

Where does Slovakia genuinely beat Cyprus for a founder?

Below €100,000 of revenue, and not by a rounding error. Slovakia runs one of the friendliest small-company regimes in the European Union, and any page that opens by telling a Slovak founder that Cyprus is automatically cheaper has already disqualified itself.

The Income Tax Act sets three corporate rates rather than one. The reduced rate is 10% where taxable revenue for the tax period does not exceed €100,000, and the Financial Directorate repeats the same structure in prose in its own guidance for the corporate return, confirming 21% above €100,000 and 24% from €5,000,000. There is a personal-side analogue too: business income under section 6(1) and (2) is taxed at 15% where that income does not exceed €100,000.

Then the distribution. A dividend paid to a resident individual out of profits of a period beginning in 2025 or later is withheld at 7%, and the withholding is final — the shareholder does not report the income in a return at all. Stack 10% and 7% and the small Slovak founder is on roughly 16.3% from company profit to money in hand. Cyprus, at 15% corporate plus the health levy, cannot beat that. It is close, but it is on the wrong side of close.

Two more honest concessions before the argument starts. Slovakia has no net wealth tax — the Income Tax Act taxes income and nothing in the 2026 consolidated text creates a charge on capital. And inheritance is not merely untaxed but structurally outside the system: income acquired by gift or inheritance of immovable property, movables, rights or other property values is not the subject of the tax, with no family-relationship test and no exempt ceiling. Succession planning is not a reason to leave Slovakia.

What does a Slovak founder actually pay above the €100,000 line?

Twenty-one percent, and then twenty-four percent, and the ceiling that decides which applies is measured on revenue rather than profit — which is why founders cross it far earlier than they expect. A consultancy billing €120,000 with €90,000 of profit is already outside the reduced band.

Run the stack at 21%. On €250,000 of profit the company pays €52,500, leaving €197,500. Distribute it out of 2025-vintage profit at 7% and the withholding is €13,825, so €183,675 reaches the shareholder. That is an all-in rate of 26.53% — respectable by European standards, and six and a half points above where Cyprus lands the same founder.

Above €5,000,000 of revenue the rate becomes 24% and the same arithmetic gives 29.32% all in. Against a Cyprus company on 15% from tax year 2026 with a non-dom shareholder paying no Special Defence Contribution at all, that is the widest single-country gap on this side of the guide.

The personal schedule tightened too. From the text in force on 1 January 2026 the general tax base runs across four bands rather than two: 19% up to 154.8 times the applicable subsistence minimum, 25% to 212.4 times, 30% to 264 times, and 35% above that, with monthly payroll withholding mirroring the same steps. The multiplier is anchored to the subsistence minimum in force at 1 January of the tax year, which the labour ministry set at €284.13 a month for one adult from 1 July 2025. Multiply the two and the 2026 band edges land at roughly €43,983, €60,349 and €75,010 — but note that those euro figures are our arithmetic on two published inputs, not numbers the Financial Directorate prints. If your planning turns on the exact edge, take the multiples and do the multiplication with your adviser.

Why does the Slovak dividend rate depend on the year the profit was earned?

Because the statute attaches the rate to the tax period in which the profit was reported, not to the calendar year in which the money leaves the company. Nearly every article on Slovak dividends flattens this into a single current rate, and the flattening costs money.

For payments made during 2026, the Financial Directorate's January information sheet sets out three vintages side by side.

That middle row is the whole point. The authority's own worked example makes it concrete: a company resolving in May 2026 to distribute €6,500 of 2024 profit and €15,000 of 2025 profit withholds €650 and €1,050 respectively, remitting €1,700 by 15 June 2026. Same shareholder, same resolution, same payment date, two different rates.

For anyone planning a departure this rearranges the order of operations. A founder who has been leaving profit in the company since the pandemic is sitting on a layered balance where the 2024 layer is permanently more expensive than the layers either side of it. That layer does not improve with age. Distributing it while you are still comfortably Slovak resident, and clearing the older 2017-to-2023 tranche at the same 7%, is a decision to make deliberately rather than to discover afterwards.

One more rule matters once you own a Cyprus company. Foreign-source dividends received by a Slovak-resident individual go into a special tax base and are charged at 7%. So a founder who forms in Limassol but stays tax resident in Slovakia pays Slovak tax on the Cyprus dividend anyway. The rate rises to 35% where the payer is a taxpayer of a non-cooperating state — Cyprus is an EU member state and nowhere near that list, so the punitive rate is not in play, but it is worth knowing which side of it you are on.

Does a dormant Slovak company still pay the minimum tax?

It does, and this is the line item that quietly decides what to do with the company you are leaving behind. The old daňová licencia came back under a new name: the minimum tax now sits in section 46b as minimálna daň právnickej osoby, reinstated with effect from 1 January 2024.

It bites whenever the liability computed in the return falls below the floor for the company's revenue band or the company reports a loss. The floors are €340 up to €50,000 of revenue, €960 to €250,000, €1,920 to €500,000, €3,840 to €5,000,000, and €11,520 above that — the top band being the addition for 2026. Where at least a fifth of the average registered headcount are employees with disabilities the amounts are halved to €170, €480, €960 and €1,920, and the excess of minimum tax over computed tax is creditable in the three immediately following tax periods, but only against the part of a future liability that exceeds the minimum.

There are real exemptions. A newly formed taxpayer filing its first return does not pay, unless it is the successor of an entity dissolved without liquidation, and the Financial Directorate's guidance works through the case of a company registered in May that reports a loss for its first period and owes nothing.

The departure consequence is specific. Founders often plan to keep the s.r.o. alive but idle — for a domain, an old contract, a lease, the name. In Slovakia that costs €340 a year for the privilege of doing nothing, every year, forever. Cyprus has no equivalent floor: a Cyprus company that earns nothing pays no corporation tax. If the plan is a shell, price the shell honestly, and if the plan is a wind-down, get the wind-down onto the calendar rather than letting it drift.

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

Not on you. On the company, and only if the company moves. That distinction is the whole of the Slovak exit story, and collapsing it into one warning is how most published material manages to frighten the wrong readers.

The provision is section 17f, and its heading names the trigger directly: taxation on the transfer of a taxpayer's assets, the departure of the taxpayer, or the transfer of a taxpayer's business activity abroad. It applies to a legal person with a Slovak seat or place of effective management, and to a foreign taxpayer's Slovak permanent establishment. It does not reach individuals. There is no deemed disposal of your shareholding on emigration, no departure clearance charge, no German-style Wegzugsteuer waiting for you. The Financial Directorate's own support portal files the topic under international taxation as zdanenie pri odchode, exit tax.

What is charged, where it applies, is a special tax base. Section 17f(1) catches a transfer of assets abroad without a change of owner, measured as the difference between reálna hodnota — fair value — at the moment of transfer and the assets' tax cost. Section 17f(2) catches the fair value of assets and liabilities at the point the taxpayer ceases to be a Slovak-resident legal person or transfers its business activity or part of it abroad, excluding whatever stays functionally connected to a permanent establishment left behind in Slovakia.

Three mechanical features decide whether the charge is survivable. The rate is a flat 21% on the special tax base irrespective of which corporate band the company otherwise sits in — so the €95,000-revenue company that has been paying 10% on its trading profit pays 21% on its exit gain. The special base may not be negative, so a departure loss cannot be netted against anything. And there is a narrow twelve-month exception for securities-financing transfers, collateral, prudential capital requirements and liquidity management, where the asset is expected back within a year — with an additional return required if it does not come back.

The valuation is where the money is. Fair value on a software portfolio, a brand, or a customer book has nothing to do with its carrying amount, and a company whose worth is entirely in its code is precisely the company for which section 17f is expensive. Selling or licensing the assets to a fresh Cyprus company instead of migrating the s.r.o. is not a way around it — that is a disposal at market value with transfer-pricing exposure attached.

How do the five-year exit-tax instalments under § 17g work?

Better than nothing and worse than most summaries suggest. Section 17g gives a real deferral, but it is drafted with the taxpayer on the back foot at every step, and the detail almost never appears in Slovak or English content.

Where the destination is an EU or EEA state with a mutual assistance agreement on the recovery of tax claims — Cyprus qualifies — the taxpayer may pay the exit tax either in one sum by the return deadline or in instalments over five years, counted from the year of assessment. Everywhere else the tax falls due in full. The request has to be made in the tax return itself, which means the decision is taken before the filing, not afterwards.

Then the conditions. The administrator fixes the amount and timing of each instalment by decision, and no appeal lies against that decision, and the deadlines cannot be extended or waived. Interest runs on the deferred instalments. Where there is demonstrable or actual risk of non-payment the administrator may secure the debt with a lien — but not where the exit tax does not exceed €3,000. That €3,000 is the only monetary threshold in the entire regime, and at the 21% rate it corresponds to a special tax base of a little over €14,000 — small enough that most real migrations sit above it.

Symmetry exists on the way in. Assets arriving in Slovakia are valued at the amount used for exit taxation abroad, capped at fair value, and where the origin state charges no exit tax, at the foreign tax value on the same cap. That is worth knowing if a Cyprus company ever moves the other way.

Do Slovak CFC rules catch a Cyprus company?

For a company shareholder, yes, potentially — and the test is about people, not about income categories. For an individual shareholder, no, and that is the correction this section exists to make.

Start with the repeal. Slovakia used to be an EU outlier: it applied controlled-foreign-company rules to natural persons through sections 51h and 51i, with their own special tax base. Those sections are gone from the operative text. The transitional provision states that the tax liability tied to them ceased on 1 August 2023, and tax already paid on it is treated from that date as a tax overpayment. A great deal of published material — including material written well after 2023 — still describes Slovakia as having individual CFC rules. It does not. A Slovak individual holding shares in a Cyprus company directly is outside any CFC regime.

Now the corporate regime, which is alive and well at section 17h. A foreign company is a CFC of a Slovak company where two limbs are met together. Control is more than 50% of registered capital, or of voting rights, or of profit entitlement, counted with dependent persons. The low-tax limb asks whether the corporate tax actually paid abroad is lower than the difference between the tax computed for it under Slovak rules and the foreign tax actually paid — the ATAD half-the-tax test written as a subtraction.

Here is where Slovakia diverges from its neighbours, and the divergence matters more than the rates. Slovakia took ATAD's non-genuine-arrangement option rather than a closed list of passive income. What comes into the Slovak base is income flowing from arrangements that are not genuine and were carried out to obtain a tax advantage, an arrangement being non-genuine to the extent the assets and risks generating the income would not belong to the foreign company but for the Slovak taxpayer performing the significant people functions relating to them.

Read that again, because it changes the planning question entirely. Slovakia does not ask what kind of income your Cyprus company earns. It asks where the people who make the decisions sit. Cyprus-based directors who genuinely decide, staff who genuinely do the work, and risk genuinely borne on the island put the arrangement outside the rule even where the income is wholly passive. A Cyprus company whose significant people functions are performed from Žilina is exposed no matter how respectable the nominal rate looks.

The comparison is against tax computed under Slovak rules in sections 17 to 29, not against the Cypriot base — which is why a Cyprus company paying little actual tax because of the IP Box, the notional interest deduction or exempt disposals can fail the low-tax limb while displaying a perfectly ordinary headline rate. Both limbs have to be satisfied, so in practice the substance analysis decides the case. Relief mechanics are decent: foreign tax is creditable to the extent of the attribution, later dividends from the CFC reduce the base by amounts already attributed, and a subsequent sale of the CFC shares is reduced by amounts already taxed.

The scope limit is the practical takeaway. Section 17h binds a Slovak company holding the Cyprus company — the classic Slovak-holdco-over-Cyprus-opco shape. Hold the Cyprus shares personally and the regime does not reach you at all. What reaches you instead is your own residence, which is the next section, and place of effective management, which is the one after.

How does Slovak tax residency actually end — and why is trvalý pobyt the trap?

By breaking three separate hooks, not one. Section 2(d)(1) makes you a taxpayer with unlimited liability if you have in Slovakia a trvalý pobyt, a bydlisko, or if you habitually stay here. Any one of the three is enough on its own, which is exactly what founders get wrong.

Two of the three are defined in the statute. Bydlisko means having accommodation available that does not serve only occasional accommodation, where an intention to stay there permanently is apparent having regard to all related facts and circumstances, including personal ties and economic ties to Slovakia. That is a centre-of-vital-interests test wearing a property test's clothes, and keeping a flat "for visits" is precisely the fact pattern the drafting is aimed at. Habitual stay means presence for at least 183 days in the relevant calendar year, continuously or in several periods, with every commenced day counting. Note the counting rule: a day you land at Bratislava in the evening is a whole day.

The good news is that the treaty override is written into Slovak domestic law rather than being left to the convention alone. A person who meets the domestic tests but is treated as a resident of the other contracting state by application of a tax treaty is a taxpayer with limited tax liability in Slovakia. Someone who habitually stays here only for study or medical treatment is likewise limited.

The documentary spine of any of this is the residence certificate. The tax administrator is obliged to issue a potvrdenie o daňovej rezidencii on request, and a confirmation of tax paid to a limited-liability taxpayer. Your Cypriot certificate does the mirror job on the other side. Collect both.

One procedural date to put in the calendar: the Slovak corporate return for a period is due on 31 March, with an extension of three months — or six where the taxpayer has foreign-source income — available by simple notification. In a departure year that notification is close to free and buys real breathing room.

Can a Cyprus company be Slovak tax resident through miesto skutočného vedenia?

Yes, and this is the exposure that survives an otherwise clean personal move. It is also drafted more bluntly in Slovakia than in most of the region.

A legal person is a Slovak resident if it has here either its sídlo or its miesto skutočného vedenia, and the Act defines the second as the place where fundamental management decisions and commercial decisions for the legal person as a whole are made or received — adding, in a clause that leaves no room to argue, that this holds even if the address of that place is not entered in the commercial register.

Registering the company in Limassol therefore settles nothing by itself. If the decisions are taken in Slovakia, the Cyprus company is a Slovak tax resident on worldwide income — which is a materially bigger exposure than CFC, because CFC attributes a slice while residence taxes the whole thing. And the same definition works in both directions: ceasing to be a section 2(d)(2) taxpayer is itself the event that triggers section 17f(2)(a) on the way out.

The realistic failure mode is not aggressive planning. It is a founder who incorporates in Cyprus, then spends eighteen months in Bratislava "while things settle", signing every contract and approving every hire from a kitchen table. What protects the position is unglamorous and cumulative: board decisions genuinely taken and minuted on the island, a director who actually directs, material spend approved in Cyprus, books kept in Cyprus, and a founder who is physically there. Our guide to nominee directors in Cyprus is honest about where a nominee helps with this and where it emphatically does not.

What does the 1980 Slovakia–Cyprus treaty actually give you?

Less certainty than you would like, and we are going to be straight about the limits of what we verified rather than fill the gap with plausible numbers.

The instrument itself is genuinely remarkable. The Financial Directorate's official register of treaties in force records Cyprus with entry into force on 30 December 1980, published as 30/1981 Zb., and the same list is maintained by the finance ministry on its treaty pages. That is the Czechoslovakia–Cyprus treaty, inherited by Slovakia on the dissolution of the federation and never renegotiated. The operative instrument between Slovakia and Cyprus is older than the Slovak Republic. Czechia replaced the same inherited treaty with a modern one; Slovakia did not.

What follows from that is a warning rather than a rate. We could not obtain an authoritative text of 30/1981 Zb. from an official source — the Slov-Lex treaty pages serve a JavaScript shell that returns no text, and the Cyprus finance ministry's treaty pages returned an access error — so this guide states no article-level figure for it. Not the dividend cap, not the interest or royalty articles, not the corporate tie-breaker, not the capital-gains article. Anyone quoting you those numbers should be asked where they read them, and anyone reasoning about a Slovak structure by analogy with the modern Czech treaty is reasoning about the wrong instrument entirely.

Two things soften the practical impact. Both countries are EU member states, so the Parent-Subsidiary and Interest and Royalties Directives apply between them independently of any treaty, which handles most of the flows a founder actually cares about. And the treaty is overlaid by the BEPS multilateral instrument, whose principal purpose test is an OECD minimum standard. Plan on the assumption that a purpose test applies: a real relocation with real people is not what such a rule was written for, and a paper arrangement is exactly what it was.

What happens to Slovak social insurance and your pension?

Your contribution years travel with you. Your insurance state changes, and the mechanics differ depending on whether you are an employee, voluntarily insured, or a self-employed SZČO.

Sociálna poisťovňa states the coordination principle without hedging: a person can be insured for social security in only one member state, and is insured in the state where the work is actually performed. For an employee ending Slovak employment there is a pleasant surprise buried in the same guidance: the worker has no deregistration or notification duties toward Sociálna poisťovňa — the employer performs every employment-related step, including deregistration from the system.

A voluntarily insured person has a genuine choice: withdraw, or keep paying. But overlapping compulsory insurance in one state with voluntary insurance in another is prohibited under EU law, so "keep the Slovak voluntary cover as a safety net while I start in Cyprus" is not an option that survives contact with the rules. For a short posting by a Slovak employer of under twenty-four months, the portable document A1 keeps Slovak contributions running instead.

On pensions the answer is reassuring and worth saying plainly, because it is the fear that stops more moves than tax ever does. Periods completed in another coordinating state are counted on the basis of the other institution's confirmation, on form E205 or P5000, and a pension awarded in one member state remains payable when the pensioner moves to another. Your Slovak years are not forfeited by leaving; they are aggregated with your Cypriot ones.

Two gaps we are not going to paper over. The self-employed case is genuinely different — an SZČO who relocates and keeps invoicing has to establish where they are insured under the coordination regulation, and that determination is separate from tax residence and separate from where the company is registered. And we did not verify 2026 Slovak contribution rates or the maximum assessment base against an official source, so this guide publishes no contribution percentages. Ask Sociálna poisťovňa directly while you are still in the country and it is easy to do.

What do the numbers look like for two Slovak founders?

Two profiles, both plausible, and they point in opposite directions. The arithmetic below uses headline rates and assumes full distribution of profit, which is the same simplification the calculator at the top of this page makes.

Marek, a two-person software studio in Košice. Revenue €85,000, profit €70,000. In Slovakia the reduced corporate rate applies, so the company pays €7,000 and €63,000 remains. Distributed out of 2025-vintage profit at 7%, the withholding is €4,410 and Marek keeps €58,590 — an all-in rate of 16.3%. Move the same business to Cyprus and the company pays 15%, or €10,500, leaving €59,500; a non-dom shareholder pays no Special Defence Contribution but GeSY takes 2.65%, or €1,577, so €57,923 arrives. Slovakia wins by about €667 a year. On those numbers, relocating for tax reasons alone would be a mistake, and we would tell Marek so on the call rather than after the invoice.

Zuzana, an agency in Bratislava that grew. Revenue €820,000, profit €250,000. The reduced band is long gone, so the company pays 21%, or €52,500, leaving €197,500; the 7% withholding takes €13,825 and €183,675 reaches her — 26.53% all in. The Cyprus version pays €37,500 at 15%, leaving €212,500, and GeSY is capped: 2.65% on income up to €180,000 a year means a maximum of €4,770 however large the distribution. Zuzana keeps €207,730, a difference of €24,055 in a single year. Add the minimum tax she no longer pays and the fact that the gap grows with every year the business does, and the decision stops being close.

There is a third calculation neither profile covers, and it is worth running before you do anything else: what the retained profit already sitting in the company would cost to release. Every €100,000 of 2024-vintage profit costs €10,000 to distribute; the same €100,000 from 2025 costs €7,000. Sequencing that correctly, while you are still plainly Slovak resident, is the cheapest planning decision on this page.

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 Slovak founder?

Short, which after the Slovak stack is the point. One corporate rate, no revenue ceiling to fall out of, no annual floor, and almost nothing at the shareholder.

Taxable profit in a Cyprus limited is charged once, at 15% from tax year 2026, with no band above it and no floor below it. Qualifying intellectual property brings the effective rate on that income down to 3% from tax year 2026 under the IP Box — powerful, and, as the CFC section above explains, the one Cyprus feature that makes the section 17h substance analysis non-optional if a Slovak company sits above yours.

Then the distribution. A Cyprus tax resident who is not Cyprus-domiciled — the non-dom position essentially every relocating founder qualifies for — pays no Special Defence Contribution on dividends for 17 years of Cyprus residence, and dividends sit outside personal income tax entirely. A domiciled shareholder would instead pay 5% on dividends from 2026 profits, which is why the non-dom registration is a step rather than a formality. Salary is taxed on a scale running from 0% to €22,000 rising to 35% above €72,000. VAT registration becomes compulsory once taxable turnover passes €15,600, and the standard rate on the island is 19%. Cyprus levies no net wealth tax and no inheritance tax, so on those two Slovakia and Cyprus simply draw.

Three pages carry the detail we are compressing here: Cyprus non-dom status, Cyprus tax benefits for foreigners, and what the 2026 reform changed. If you want the mechanics of incorporation rather than the tax, how to register a company in Cyprus and what it costs are the pages that own those questions.

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

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

The obvious path is more than 183 days a year on the island. The alternative asks for fewer days and more commitment on the ground, and it got easier in 2026: the old fifth condition, that you not be tax resident anywhere else, 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 owned or rented.

For a Slovak founder that change cuts in a specific way. Another state's residual claim no longer disqualifies you from the Cyprus side by itself, which is genuinely useful in a transition year — but it does nothing about the Slovak hooks. Acquiring Cyprus residence and ending Slovak residence are two projects running in parallel, and each supplies evidence to the other. The directorship of your own Cyprus company can satisfy the third condition and is simultaneously the substance the miesto skutočného vedenia analysis wants to see. The Cypriot lease that satisfies the fourth condition is the same lease that undermines any argument that your bydlisko is still in Slovakia.

The Yellow Slip records that you live here under EU free movement. It registers where you live, not how you are taxed, and the two get conflated constantly — our guide sets out the difference and Sumly runs the application. The 60-day rule guide works through the day counting in detail.

Do you sell online from Slovakia, and what happens to the store?

Nothing dramatic, because you are moving inside the single market. What changes is who keeps the books and how much of it you do by hand.

A Slovak seller on Shopify or WooCommerce already deals with the one-stop shop, distance-selling thresholds, VIES for B2B and a payout file that arrives as a spreadsheet nobody enjoys. Move the trading company to Cyprus and the same EU rules apply from a Cyprus VAT number instead of a Slovak one. Sumly's Shopify and WooCommerce plugins pull orders, refunds, fees and payouts into the books with the right Cyprus VAT treatment on each line, so the store's accounting runs itself and the VAT return is built from real transactions rather than reconstructed at quarter end.

Why do founders choose Cyprus over the tax havens the Slovak internet talks about?

Because most of what ranks in Slovak for "daňový raj Cyprus" is selling an idea from a decade ago — several of the top results still print a 12.5% Cyprus corporate rate that no longer exists — and because a serious founder is not actually shopping for a haven. They are shopping for a place to live and work that happens to tax reasonably.

The real reasons people stay, said without decoration. Cyprus has among the lowest violent crime rates in the European Union, which is the first thing a family notices and the last thing anyone mentions in a tax article. It is an English-speaking country in practice: business, banking, schooling and government forms all work in English, so the ramp is short. There are people from everywhere already here, so you are not the strange foreigner — you are one of thousands, with a ready-made network of founders who did the same thing two years earlier. Business and real estate are booming, and the island is friendly and genuinely open to doing business without the weight of regulation that grinds down small companies elsewhere. And the beaches: in a Cyprus winter you can still go to the beach, and the summers are the ones people fly across the world for. Groceries — meat, fruit and vegetables — are affordable, which surprises people who assumed island prices.

Then the honest Slovak-specific push factors, none of them generic. Twenty-one percent corporate tax the moment revenue passes €100,000, and 24% above €5,000,000. A minimum tax that came back in 2024 and is payable even in a loss year, reaching €11,520 at the top. Thirty and thirty-five percent personal bands in the four-band schedule now in force. Retained 2024 profits carrying 10% withholding whenever they finally come out. And an operative treaty with Cyprus that has not been touched since 1980. Those are checkable facts about Slovakia rather than complaints about it — Slovakia is a good place to run a small company and a comparatively expensive place to run a growing one.

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, from Slovakia?

Timelines are qualitative here on purpose: the Cyprus side moves at the Registrar's pace and the Slovak side moves at your municipality's. What follows is the order that works, not a promise about dates.

• Before anything else — and this is where we start. We model the distribution of retained profit by vintage with you, and clear the 2024 layer and the 2017–2023 layer deliberately rather than by accident. Together we settle whether the s.r.o. is kept, wound down, or migrated — and if migrated, we put the section 17f fair-value question in front of a Slovak adviser early, because it drives everything else.
• Month one. We order the Cyprus company: name check, paperwork, submission to the Registrar, and your Sumly books open the day you order rather than the day the certificate arrives. You start the Cypriot property search in parallel, and we tell you what will satisfy both the 60-day rule and the bydlisko argument.
• Months one to three. We register the company, sort banking and EU payments, and run the VAT, social insurance, employee and UBO registrations as a bundle. You take the board decisions in Cyprus and we minute them — which is the day your substance file starts, not the day someone asks for it.
• Around the move. You deregister your trvalý pobyt with the municipality. If you were employed in Slovakia, your employer handles the Sociálna poisťovňa side; if you are an SZČO, your Slovak adviser determines your insurance position under the coordination regulation rather than assuming it follows the tax.
• Months three to six. We file the Yellow Slip application and start the Cyprus day count in earnest. You handle personal banking, health cover and the practical side of living somewhere — and we will point you at people for each.
• The following spring. Your Slovak adviser files the return for the departure year, due 31 March with the notification-based extension available if you want it, and requests the potvrdenie o daňovej rezidencii for the years that need one. We request the Cypriot tax residence certificate once the year supports it, and we keep both where they will still be found in five years.

What do Slovak founders get wrong when they move to Cyprus?

Six mistakes, in rough order of how expensive they turn out to be.

1. Keeping the trvalý pobyt. By far the most common, and the only one that can undo an otherwise perfect move on its own. It is an administrative act, it costs nothing, and people forget it for years.
2. Running the Cyprus company from Slovakia. Miesto skutočného vedenia does not care what the commercial register says — the Act says so in as many words. Decisions taken in Bratislava make the company Slovak on worldwide income.
3. Distributing the wrong vintage first. Paying out 2025 profit while the 2024 layer sits there at 10% is money left on the table for no reason at all.
4. Assuming the individual CFC rules still exist and structuring around a ghost. They ceased on 1 August 2023. The corporate regime is what remains, and it is a substance test, not an income-category test.
5. Leaving the s.r.o. dormant without pricing it. €340 a year, forever, plus the filings that go with it. Sometimes that is worth paying; it should be a decision.
6. Building the Cyprus substance file after somebody asks for it. Minutes, payroll, banking and books created retrospectively are worth a fraction of the same records created contemporaneously. Start on day one, when it costs nothing.

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, from Slovakia

Everything on this page is doable alone. The question is what your time is worth and how much of the Cyprus half you want to carry personally while also managing a Slovak departure.

The bookkeeping software starts from €39/mo and does everything needed to run and operate the company, whether you are already in Limassol or still in Bratislava: invoicing, AI double-entry bookkeeping, live open-banking feeds, VAT, VIES, provisional and corporate returns prepared box by box, live reports, a document inbox with its own email address, mobile receipt capture that books itself, multi-currency invoicing, team roles and the AI assistant — plus the payroll (€15/employee/mo), IP Box tracking (€50/mo) and Projects (€10/mo) add-ons and the e-commerce plugins.

Against the alternatives a Slovak founder is actually choosing between:

And the comparison founders ask about most directly:

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.

Whatever the Cyprus side needs, Sumly offers it: formation, books from day zero, all tax compliance, IP Box applications, nominee director and secretary, a virtual address with PO box and digital mail scanning, the Yellow Slip for EU citizens, tax residency and non-dom at €750 per person, the registrations bundle covering VAT, social insurance, employees and UBO, audit through our Partner Auditors, the Shopify and WooCommerce plugins, banking and EU payments, and the expert-lawyer network for complicated relocations. Anything beyond the four published prices is scoped in the meeting and comes back as one clear package-deal offer, so you see the whole number before you commit to any of it.

For a Slovak founder the division of labour is the point. The Slovak side — the trvalý pobyt deregistration, the section 17f modelling, the SZČO insurance determination — belongs with a Slovak adviser, and we will say so every time. The Cyprus side comes from one provider, in one dashboard, at prices printed on this site. That is what makes Sumly the best choice for Slovak founders creating a company in Cyprus and relocating their business to it.

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

Sumly is the best accounting software for a Cyprus limited company — because it is built for exactly one thing, Cyprus tax law: all 16 Cyprus VAT codes mapped to the official VAT return boxes, VIES and provisional tax native, not a localization. That sentence is the whole product strategy, and the evidence follows.

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

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

Plainly: the best support, the best bookkeeping software, the best AI for bookkeeping, the best bookkeeper and the best prices, with everything made easy. The detail is published rather than asserted — Sumly vs Cybooks and Sumly vs Balabook, plus Xero, QuickBooks and Sage if one of those is what you are running today. The AI, bank feeds, invoicing, IP Box, payroll, purchases and VAT pages show each piece working.

On the IP Box, one line is worth repeating, and for a Slovak founder it carries an extra edge because the 3% effective rate sits below the section 17h low-tax line: 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 one more reason the meeting comes before the paperwork. Sumly runs it as an expert service.

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 Slovak founders actually ask

Frequently asked

Is it true that a Slovak company only pays 10% tax?

It is true below the line and false above it. Section 15(b) of the Income Tax Act sets 10% where taxable revenue for the period does not exceed €100,000, 21% for everyone in between, and 24% where revenue exceeds €5,000,000. The Financial Directorate states the same three bands in its own return guidance. The ceiling is measured on revenue, not profit, so a business with real turnover leaves the 10% band long before it feels rich.

Why is the Slovak dividend rate 7% in some places and 10% in others?

Because the rate follows the year the profit was earned, not the year you pay it out. For a payment made in 2026 the Financial Directorate applies 7% to profits of periods from 2017 to 2023, 10% to profits of periods beginning in 2024, and 7% again to profits of periods beginning in 2025. Retained 2024 earnings therefore carry a higher charge than 2025 earnings do, permanently. Distribution order matters, and almost no published article mentions this.

Does Slovakia have an exit tax on me personally when I move to Cyprus?

No. Section 17f applies to legal persons with a seat or place of effective management in Slovakia and to Slovak permanent establishments of foreign taxpayers. There is no deemed disposal of a founder's shares on emigration and no Slovak equivalent of a departure charge on private shareholdings. The exit tax is entirely a company-level question, and it only arises if you move the company rather than only yourself.

Do Slovak CFC rules apply to a Cyprus company I own personally?

Not any more, and this is the correction most needed in Slovak content. Sections 51h and 51i, which reached natural persons, were repealed: the transitional provision in section 52zzpb states that the associated tax liability ceased on 1 August 2023 and that tax already paid on it counts as an overpayment. The corporate regime in section 17h is untouched, so a Slovak holding company sitting above a Cyprus company is still very much in scope.

Does my Slovak company still pay tax if it makes no profit?

Yes. The minimum tax in section 46b was reinstated with effect from 1 January 2024 and is due whenever the computed liability falls below the prescribed floor or the company reports a loss. The floors run €340, €960, €1,920 and €3,840 by revenue band, with €11,520 above €5,000,000. It is halved where at least a fifth of average headcount are employees with disabilities, and a first return by a newly formed company is exempt.

Why is keeping my trvalý pobyt in Slovakia a problem?

Because section 2(d) makes registered permanent residence a residency trigger standing entirely on its own, alongside bydlisko and the 183-day habitual-stay test. Where you actually sleep does not cure it. A founder who moves to Limassol but leaves the registration at their parents' address in Košice has kept a live Slovak residency hook open, and will be arguing the treaty tie-breaker instead of pointing at a clean file.

Can Slovakia treat my Cyprus company as Slovak?

Yes, through miesto skutočného vedenia. Section 2(d)(2) makes a legal person Slovak resident if either its seat or its place of effective management is here, and the Act defines that place as where fundamental management and commercial decisions are made for the entity as a whole, adding expressly that it counts even if that address is not entered in the commercial register. A Cyprus company run from Bratislava is a Slovak taxpayer on worldwide income.

What treaty applies between Slovakia and Cyprus?

An old one. The Financial Directorate's list of treaties in force records Cyprus with entry into force on 30 December 1980, published as 30/1981 Zb. That is the Czechoslovak treaty, inherited on the dissolution of the federation and never replaced — the operative instrument is older than the Slovak Republic. We could not obtain the article text from an official source, so this guide describes it qualitatively and states no article-level rate.

Does Sumly advise on Slovak tax?

No. Sumly builds and runs the Cyprus side: the company, the books from day zero, Cyprus VAT, VIES, provisional and corporate returns, the Yellow Slip, and the tax residency and non-dom registration. This guide quotes Slovakia's own published rules with links to Slov-Lex and the Financial Directorate so you can see the shape of the decision, but how section 17f values your intellectual property is a question for a Slovak daňový poradca. Where a case needs one, we connect you with expert lawyers from our network.

Keep reading

• Every country's route to Cyprus — the departure guide for wherever you are now
• Cyprus non-dom status — the 17-year exemption in detail
• The Cyprus 60-day rule — day counting and the residency certificate
• The Yellow Slip explained — the EU registration certificate, step by step
• What changed in the 2026 Cyprus tax reform
• How to register a company in Cyprus and what it costs
• Cyprus vs Bulgaria and Cyprus vs Estonia — the two comparisons Slovak founders raise most
• The savings calculator, VAT calculator and salary calculator

The calculator on this page uses headline rates, an assumed annual return and full distribution of profit, so it shows the shape of the difference rather than your own result. Slovak figures are stated for 2026 and cited to Slov-Lex and the Financial Directorate; the euro edges of the personal income tax bands are our own arithmetic on two published inputs rather than figures the authority prints, no article-level rate is given for the 1980 treaty because we could not obtain its text from an official source, and no Slovak social-insurance percentages appear here for the same reason. 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.