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

Leaving Switzerland for Cyprus is the one departure in this series where the honest answer opens with concessions. Switzerland charges no personal exit tax, private capital gains are already untaxed, and a company in canton Zug pays less tax on its profit than a Cyprus one does. What is left is a wealth tax charged every year on assets that may have earned nothing at all.

Updated for 2026 Cyprus tax law and regulations.

One partner for the Cyprus half of a Swiss move

Sumly is the fully digitalized way to start a company in Cyprus, move a Swiss business into it and operate it from the first day it exists. We register the company, open your books on the day you order, prepare every Cyprus return box by box, and run the tax residency and non-dom application as one fixed-price service. One dashboard, one provider, prices published before you commit — instead of a Treuhänder for one half, a law firm for the other, and nobody for the part in between.

This is Sumly — and what we actually do for you

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

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

Part 1: What leaving actually costs you

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

Why is every Swiss figure in this guide a Zug figure?

Because a bare "Swiss rate" does not exist, and publishing one would be dishonest. Swiss tax is assembled from three layers: the direct federal tax, the cantonal tax and the communal tax. Each canton fixes a simple tax in its own Steuergesetz, and the canton, the commune and in most places a church then apply their own multiplier — the Steuerfuss — to that simple figure. Two companies with identical accounts, twenty minutes apart by train, pay materially different bills.

So this guide picks a canton and states it every time: canton of Zug, ordinary taxation, no patent box, no special relief. Zug is where founders in this position actually go, and modelling anywhere else would flatter Cyprus. Where a Zürich figure adds something the Zug one cannot, it is labelled as a Zürich figure with its own tax period attached.

One term is worth fixing before the numbers start. The Steuerfuss is not a tax rate. It is a multiplier applied to a rate — 82% of the simple cantonal tax in Zug, for example — and translating it as "rate" is how published comparisons end up wrong by a factor of two.

Does Switzerland charge an exit tax when you leave for Cyprus?

Not on you. There is no deemed disposal of your shareholding, no 1% participation trigger, no departure computation and no deferral mechanism — because there is nothing to defer. The whole of Swiss individual exit taxation is one sentence about when liability stops.

The Federal Act on Direct Federal Tax provides that liability ends on the death or the departure of the taxpayer from Switzerland, or when the assets taxable in Switzerland fall away. The federal tax administration states the same for cantonal law: unlimited liability ends on death or on departure from Switzerland, and from the canton. That is the mechanism in full.

Put that next to Germany, Norway or the Netherlands, all of which tax unrealised share gains on the way out, and Switzerland is genuinely permissive. A Swiss founder walks out of the country carrying their unrealised gains untaxed. Anyone telling you otherwise has imported the German mental model of a personal deemed disposal into a country that does not have one.

The federal tax administration is explicit that the charge applies to cross-border transfers regardless of whether the destination taxes the arrival, and regardless of whether the destination gives any credit for the Swiss charge — and that "abroad" covers treaty and non-treaty states alike. Cyprus being an EU member state and a treaty partner changes nothing about art. 61b.

Is Cyprus actually cheaper than Zug on corporate tax?

No — and a guide that pretended otherwise would deserve to be dismantled in the first comment. The Canton of Zug publishes a total regular taxation rate of 11.8% on company earnings, including federal, cantonal and communal tax. A Cyprus limited company pays 15% from tax year 2026 on its taxable profit. On the corporate line, Zug wins.

The composition behind the Swiss side, so you can check it rather than take it: the federal profit tax is proportional at 8.5% of net profit, levied on profit after tax, which is why it works out lower measured on a pre-tax base. Zug's own simple cantonal profit tax is 3.5%, with a cantonal Steuerfuss of 82%, a capital tax of 0.5 per mille of taxable equity and a minimum annual simple cantonal tax of CHF 250.

The picture changes completely in a high-tax canton. The Zürich cantonal tax office computes the total profit-tax burden for a company seated in the city of Zürich at 19.62% of pre-tax profit, for tax period 2023. The simple cantonal rate underneath it is 7% and has not moved since, which is why the 2023 computation is still the right one to quote — but a communal Steuerfuss can change by budget year, so treat it as a figure with a date attached rather than a constant.

Read that table honestly and it segments the audience for you. A Zürich founder has a corporate-tax reason to look at Cyprus. A Zug founder does not — and a Zürich founder should at least price the cheaper intermediate move of relocating inside Switzerland before pricing a move to another country. We would rather say that than pretend the option does not exist.

One further Swiss corporate fact removes a common worry. Switzerland's minimum-taxation response applies a domestic top-up of 15% to large international groups above a EUR 750 million turnover test, and the federal tax administration is explicit that the ordinary federal and cantonal profit taxes continue unchanged for every other company. Pillar Two is not a reason for an owner-managed company to move.

What is the cantonal wealth tax, and why is it the real reason Swiss founders leave?

Because it is annual, it is charged on the stock of your worldwide net assets rather than on any income, and Cyprus has nothing equivalent. This is the one line in the comparison that survives contact with a Zug reader, and it is the reason the calculator at the top of this page carries a wealth-tax row at all.

There is no federal wealth tax. The levy sits entirely in the cantonal statutes, applied to total net assets — movable and immovable property, the surrender value of life and annuity policies, business capital — valued in principle at market value, less debts, less the statutory allowances.

Zug's tariff and allowances, as published by the federal tax administration in the cantonal sheet, valid from tax period 2025 with the indexed amounts shown:

Those brackets and allowances come from § 44 StG ZG, with the indexed amounts valid from tax period 2025, and Zug indexes both its brackets and its allowances annually to the consumer price index. Remember what the right-hand column is: the simple cantonal tax. The canton then applies its Steuerfuss of 82%, and your commune and any church apply theirs to the same figure.

Here is the arithmetic for a single founder with CHF 4,000,000 of net assets in canton Zug — our own calculation from the sourced tariff above, not a published number. Deduct the CHF 204,000 allowance and CHF 3,796,000 remains. The first three bands produce CHF 107.95, CHF 215.90 and CHF 323.85; the CHF 3,034,000 above CHF 762,000 produces CHF 5,157.80 at 1.700 per mille. The simple cantonal tax is about CHF 5,805 a year. The canton takes 82% of that, and the commune and church take their own multiples of the same CHF 5,805 — so the true annual bill is a multiple of it that only your commune's Steuerfuss can settle. We publish no combined Zug multiplier here, because the current communal figure is not something we could verify to the standard the rest of this page is held to.

Zürich's tariff is steeper. The cantonal sheet records that the wealth tax runs from 0 to a maximum of 3 per mille of the simple state tax, with the first CHF 81,000 free for a single taxpayer and the first CHF 161,000 for a married couple, and the top band reached above CHF 3,304,000. Multiply that by a cantonal and a communal Steuerfuss and the effective annual rate lands several times higher than Zug's. We deliberately publish no combined Zürich percentage, because the multiplier we could verify carries a 2023 date and the product of the two would be arithmetic dressed up as a source.

Why this matters for exactly the reader Sumly meets: an owner-manager's net worth is usually dominated by shares in their own company, valued for wealth-tax purposes at market value, paying little or no dividend. The tax on that illiquid holding has to be funded out of salary, or out of a distribution that is itself taxed. Cyprus levies no net wealth tax and no inheritance tax — there is no provision to cite, because there is no levy.

Do not overstate it either. For a founder whose assets are a mortgaged home and a pension, the wealth tax may be modest. The calculator, and your own balance sheet, should decide that — not this page.

Are your capital gains already tax-free in Switzerland?

On private movable assets, yes — and this is where most Cyprus marketing aimed at Swiss readers quietly falls apart. The statute is one line: capital gains from the disposal of private assets are tax-free. A Swiss founder who sells shares held in private assets pays nothing today.

So Cyprus's exemption on disposals of securities is parity for you, not a gain, and we would rather say that than sell you a benefit you already have. It also removes most of the compounding advantage Cyprus has over other departure countries: if your investment returns are already untaxed at home, the ten-year projection has one fewer engine in it. What remains on the compounding side is what you keep out of each year's profit, and what the wealth tax takes back out of the pot annually.

Three qualifications are where Swiss founders actually get caught, and they belong in the open rather than in a footnote.

• Immovable property is taxed at cantonal level. Zug's property gains tax runs at a minimum of 10% and a maximum of 60%, reduced by 2.5 percentage points a year from a holding period of twelve years and by 25% after twenty-five years or more, with gains under CHF 5,000 untaxed.
• Professional securities dealing is not a private capital gain. Where trading is carried on professionally, the gains are self-employment income and are taxed as such.
• Indirect partial liquidation and transposition. Art. 20a DBG recharacterises the proceeds of selling a participation of at least 20% out of private assets into another person's business assets as investment income, to the extent distributable non-operating substance existing at the sale date is paid out within five years with the seller's cooperation. Transposition catches a transfer into a company in which the transferor holds at least 50% afterwards, above nominal value plus capital contribution reserves. A founder restructuring shortly before emigrating is standing directly inside this provision.

Where does Swiss inheritance tax leave you, and does Cyprus improve it?

For the typical reader, it does not — this is parity again, and we will say so. There is no federal inheritance or gift tax at all; the levy is cantonal, and taxing rights follow the deceased's or donor's canton of domicile, except for immovable property, which is taxed where it sits.

Both cantons a Swiss founder is likely to be in already exempt the people most founders are leaving assets to. Zürich's statute exempts the spouse, the registered partner and the descendants of the deceased or donor outright, and no return is even required for those transfers. Zug goes further and exempts the spouse, a life partner, descendants, stepchildren, and parents and step-parents. Cyprus abolished its estate duty. Spouse and children: zero either way.

The inheritance argument only bites outside that circle. Zürich's simple tariff runs from 2% to 7% and is then multiplied by a factor set by degree of kinship, reaching six times for an unrelated beneficiary; Zug's schedule runs from 10% to 20% on the transfer with a relationship multiplier reaching 100% for an unrelated beneficiary. If your intended beneficiaries are siblings, nieces and nephews, an unmarried partner in Zürich, or someone unrelated, the Swiss position is genuinely expensive and Cyprus genuinely is not. If they are your spouse and your children, this section changes nothing for you.

Does Switzerland have CFC rules that would catch a Cyprus company?

No. Swiss law contains no controlled-foreign-company regime — no Hinzurechnungsbesteuerung provision exists in the federal or the harmonisation statute, and the Federal Council's own stocktake of aggressive tax policy discusses CFC rules consistently as instruments of other states.

That is much less comforting than it sounds, because what Switzerland has instead does more work than a CFC regime would. Legal persons are liable to Swiss tax on the basis of personal attachment where their seat or their effective management is in Switzerland. Switzerland does not need to attribute passive income to a shareholder: if the effective management is in Zug, a Cyprus-registered company is simply a Swiss taxpayer on its worldwide profit. That is a blunter instrument, and it applies from the first franc.

So the model that dominates German-language search results for this move — incorporate in Cyprus, stay in Switzerland, invoice through the new company — fails on the plainest provision in the book, before anyone reaches a treaty article or an anti-abuse rule. The only clean answer is that the person and the management both actually move.

What the effective-management test asks in practice is where the company is really run day to day: where the decisions are taken, where the substantive management acts happen, where the people and the offices are — not what the registration certificate says. We deliberately quote no case, no circular and no percentage-of-days rule here, because Swiss case law and administrative practice on tatsächliche Verwaltung were not part of the research behind this page and we will not paraphrase from memory. Our guide to nominee directors in Cyprus is honest about where a nominee helps and where it does not.

When does Swiss tax liability actually end, and what do you file?

On the day you leave — but the rate is set as though you had stayed all year, and that catches people every time.

The administrative side runs through your commune. You deregister at your old commune and register at the new one; the deregistration is done in person and you take away your Heimatschein, together with the family record book where there are children. Health cover follows the move: people moving abroad are no longer required to hold Swiss health insurance, and for an EU or EFTA destination the rule is that you insure in the state where you work. Cyprus is an EU state, so you insure in Cyprus. Swiss citizens living abroad also register with the competent Swiss representation, which performs the role the commune performed at home; we quote no deadline for that step, because the one that circulates online is not something we could verify against the ministry's own pages.

The tax timing is where the real distinction sits, and readers routinely conflate two different rules:

The catch on the second row is the rate. The federal tax administration's own worked example runs the other way — an arrival on 1 July on a monthly salary of CHF 5,000 gives taxable income of CHF 30,000 for the year, but the rate applied is the one for the theoretical annual income of CHF 60,000. The same annualisation applies on the way out. A short, well-paid final Swiss year is taxed at the rate of a full one.

Can you keep paying into the AHV from Cyprus?

No — and this is the single most useful correction in this guide, because German-language emigration content tells readers the opposite as a matter of routine.

What is true is gentler than it sounds. The AHV entitlement you have already accrued is not lost; it is the continued accrual that stops. From Cyprus you fall under the EU social-security coordination rules and insure locally, and contribution periods completed in Switzerland and in Cyprus are coordinated rather than discarded. What this page cannot tell you is how that changes the size and timing of your eventual AHV pension on your specific record — that is a question for the Swiss compensation office, and it is worth asking before you go rather than after.

And one deliberate blank, stated plainly because the alternative is guessing on a page people make decisions from: the treatment of your Pensionskasse — the second pillar — on emigration to an EU state was not researched for this guide. Vested benefits, what portion may or may not be taken in cash when the destination is inside the EU or EFTA, and the vested-benefits foundation route are all outside what we verified. For most Swiss founders that question is financially comparable to the wealth tax. Take Swiss advice on it specifically, and treat anyone who answers it casually with suspicion.

What does the Switzerland–Cyprus tax treaty actually give you?

Good rates on interest and royalties, and a worse dividend position than founders assume. The instrument is SR 0.672.925.81, the first agreement of its kind between the two states: the federal tax administration records that it was signed on 25 July 2014 and entered into force on 15 October 2015, with an amending protocol signed on 20 July 2020 and in force from 3 November 2021.

Interest and royalties are clean. Both articles provide that income arising in one state and beneficially owned by a resident of the other may be taxed only in that other state — zero at source, in each direction.

Dividends are where the detail matters. Source-state tax is capped at 15% of the gross amount, and the source state exempts the dividend entirely only where the beneficial owner is a company holding directly at least 10% of the payer's capital for an uninterrupted period of at least a year, a recognised and supervised pension institution, or the government or central bank of the other state.

Read that list again and notice who is missing: an individual. A founder living in Cyprus who has kept their Swiss company sits in the 15% paragraph, not the 0% one. That is a permanent 15% leakage on every dividend from the retained Swiss company, on top of whatever the company already paid, and it is the strongest argument on this page for not leaving the operating company behind. Nothing comes back the other way: the Swiss finance department's own country sheet for Cyprus records that Cypriot law levies no withholding tax on dividends, interest or royalties at all.

What happens to your existing GmbH or AG?

Three routes, and the first is the one most redomiciliation pitches quietly assume.

Keep it and run it from Cyprus. Do not do this without advice. Moving the effective management to Cyprus ends the company's Swiss tax liability, and art. 61b then charges every untaxed hidden reserve including self-created goodwill at that moment. You collect a Swiss exit charge and a Cyprus corporate residence in the same tax year. Note too that moving functions abroad is a trigger in its own right, so shifting the intellectual property, the customer contracts or the management out while leaving a shell in Switzerland does not sidestep it.

Keep it, with genuine Swiss management. Viable, and for some readers correct. The company stays Swiss-resident under art. 50 DBG, keeps its Zug rate, and pays dividends to you in Cyprus. The price is the treaty's 15% residual, permanently, plus the real burden of demonstrably running a company from a country you no longer live in.

Liquidate. Then model these, in this order:

• Swiss federal withholding tax on the liquidation surplus is 35% of the taxable payment, deducted at source and reclaimed under the treaty — for a Cyprus-resident individual, down to the 15% residual and no further.
• A liquidation surplus is not a tax-free private capital gain. Art. 20 para. 1 lit. c DBG lists liquidation surpluses as taxable income from movable assets, and art. 16 para. 3 does not rescue it. Founders who assume "Switzerland doesn't tax private capital gains" covers winding up their own company are wrong, and it is an expensive place to be wrong.
• Partial taxation applies, and it is an inclusion percentage rather than a rate. Where the participation is at least 10% of nominal capital, 70% of the amount enters the federal base, and Zug includes 50% cantonally, on the same 10% threshold. Those percentages are then taxed at the ordinary progressive tariff and multiplied by the Steuerfuss. Nobody's dividend is taxed "at 70%".
• Art. 61b applies to a liquidation too, because a liquidation is an end of tax liability. And Zug's minimum simple cantonal tax of CHF 250 a year runs until the company is deleted from the commercial register.

Sequencing is the single most valuable hour you will spend. Whether the liquidation falls while you are still Swiss-resident or after your liability has ended under art. 8 para. 2 changes the result materially. Take advice before the deregistration or the liquidation resolution — whichever comes first sets the frame for the other. Restructuring relief exists in Swiss law but only where Swiss tax liability continues, so a cross-border reorganisation into Cyprus does not qualify for it.

Are you taxed under the Pauschalbesteuerung — and should you give it up?

If you are, ask before assuming you are overpaying. The lump-sum regime is open to individuals without Swiss citizenship who become liable for the first time or after at least ten years away, and who carry on no gainful activity in Switzerland. The federal floor is a deemed expense base of at least CHF 435,000, or seven times the annual rent for a taxpayer with their own household, or three times the annual board-and-lodging price otherwise, whichever is highest.

Two cantonal facts decide whether this section applies to you at all. First, the regime has been abolished at cantonal and communal level in Zürich, Basel-Stadt, Schaffhausen and Appenzell Ausserrhoden. If you live in Zürich, you are not on the forfait and cannot be. Second, Zug applies it with its own floor: a minimum taxable income of CHF 500,000, and a deemed taxable wealth of at least twenty times the expense base — so at least CHF 10 million of notional assets running through the § 44 wealth-tax tariff and the Steuerfuss, every year.

The honest counterpoint, which nobody selling relocation will offer you: the forfait is a capped, predictable figure, and a reader whose actual worldwide income and wealth sit far above the floor may already be paying less under it than under any ordinary regime anywhere, Cyprus included. Bring your assessment to the meeting. We would rather tell you to stay than sell you a move that costs you money.

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 Swiss founder?

Flat, and short to describe. A Cyprus limited company pays 15% on taxable profit from tax year 2026 — one rate, no communal multiplier, no simple-tax-times-Steuerfuss arithmetic, the same on €80,000 of profit as on €8 million. Income from qualifying intellectual property can fall to 3% from tax year 2026 under the IP Box.

At the shareholder level the second charge all but vanishes. A Cyprus tax resident who is not Cyprus-domiciled — the non-dom position nearly every arriving 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 pays 5% on dividends from 2026 profits instead. What is left for the non-dom is the health contribution, GeSY, at 2.65% on income up to €180,000 a year — a ceiling of €4,770 however much you distribute. Salary meets the ordinary personal tariff, which runs from 0% to €22,000 rising to 35% above €72,000.

Cyprus levies no net wealth tax and no inheritance tax. VAT registration starts at €15,600 of taxable turnover at a standard rate of 19%. The detail sits in Cyprus non-dom status, Cyprus corporate tax and what the 2026 reform changed.

How does a Swiss founder become Cyprus tax resident?

Usually through the 60-day rule, which got easier in 2026. One route is simply to be in Cyprus for more than 183 days a year. The alternative asks for far fewer days and more genuine presence.

From tax year 2026 the rule has four conditions, after a 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 Cyprus tax-resident person held through the year; and a permanent home in Cyprus, owned or rented. The condition that disappeared — not being tax resident anywhere else — was the awkward one for mobile founders, because another state's claim no longer disqualifies you on its own. Competing claims resolve under the treaty instead.

For a Swiss founder the useful detail is that a directorship of your own Cyprus company can be the office the third condition requires, so forming the company and establishing residency are usually one project rather than two — and the same directorship, if it is real, is what makes the effective-management story hold together on the Swiss side. Day counting in detail is in the 60-day rule guide.

One point of order, stated rather than sold: Switzerland is not an EU member state, so the Yellow Slip registration route for EU citizens is not something we will promise you either way. Which residence route applies depends on your citizenship and your circumstances, and we will tell you which one fits your file rather than implying the easy one does. Tax residency and non-dom are a separate step from immigration status in every case, and that is the step we price at €750 per person.

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 on the list. Tax is what makes a Swiss founder open the question; it is almost never what settles it.

Among European Union member states, Cyprus sits among the lowest for violent crime. It is an English-speaking country in every practical sense — business, banking, professional services and most of the paperwork run in English, which for a Swiss founder removes the friction of moving into yet another administrative language. People from all over the world are already here, so nobody is the only foreigner in the room. Business and real estate are booming, and the state is friendly and open to people doing business without wrapping everything in regulation. Groceries — meat, fruit, vegetables — cost noticeably less than in Zug or Zürich. And the beaches: in a Cyprus winter you can still go to the beach, and the summers are what people cross the world for.

The honest Swiss push list is shorter than most, and we are not going to pad it.

The wealth tax is the real one, for the reasons above: annual, on the stock, on an illiquid holding, with no Cypriot equivalent. Administrative layering is the second: three tax layers plus a church tax, a Steuerfuss that can move by budget year, an annual valuation exercise on an unlisted company, and a withholding-tax reclaim procedure on every distribution. That is friction rather than scandal, but it is real friction, and a single-rate national system removes most of it. Cost base is the third, and here we are deliberately qualitative: Swiss salaries, offices and professional services are materially more expensive than Cypriot ones, and we publish no percentage because we verified none from the Swiss statistical office. Anyone quoting you a precise cost-of-living gap between the two countries should be asked where it came from.

What we will not claim is that Switzerland is a bad place to run a company. It is an excellent one. The question this page answers is narrower: whether the specific combination of an annual wealth tax on your own shares and a shareholder-level charge on every distribution is worth what it costs you.

Can a Swiss e-commerce brand run through Cyprus?

Yes, and for a Swiss seller the single-market question is often larger than the tax one. Switzerland is not in the EU, so a Swiss company deals with the bloc as a third country: customs formalities, import VAT, and a separate route to sell digital goods or distance-sell to EU consumers. A Cyprus company sits inside the EU VAT system with an EU VAT number customers can check in VIES, zero-rates intra-EU business sales on the usual conditions, and uses the one-stop shop for consumer sales across the whole union.

The bookkeeping is where this usually goes wrong. A store produces thousands of small movements across several currencies and payment providers, with a VAT treatment that changes by customer type and destination. Sumly's Shopify and WooCommerce plugins pull orders, refunds, fees and payouts straight into the books with the right Cyprus VAT code, so the return is built out of the sales rather than reconstructed from a CSV export the week it is due. The VAT feature shows that return growing through the month rather than appearing at the end of it.

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?

How long each step takes turns on your own circumstances, so treat the list below as a shape and not a calendar.

• Before anything else — and this is where we start. We put a Swiss adviser from our network on art. 61b for your company and on the sequencing of any liquidation. They ask your compensation office what your AHV record looks like and take the Pensionskasse separately. Together we settle which canton's figures your comparison is actually using, because that alone moves the answer.
• Month 1. We order the Cyprus company, and your books open the same day. We start the residence paperwork for the route that applies to your citizenship, and help you find the permanent home the 60-day rule requires.
• 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 both the 60-day rule and the management story.
• Months 2–4. You deregister at your commune and collect your Heimatschein. We let the facts lead the paperwork rather than the other way round: the Abmeldung records a move, it does not create one, and we will not let it be treated as though it did.
• Months 3–6. You move real decision-making to Cyprus and we minute it there. Your Swiss adviser winds down or restructures the Swiss company on their own timetable, not on a website's, and we keep the two in step.
• Month 12 onward. We apply for the tax residency certificate and the non-dom registration, then keep the day counts and the board records clean, because the effective-management question does not stop being asked after year one.

What mistakes do Swiss founders actually make?

The expensive ones are specific to Switzerland, and none of them is exotic.

Moving to Cyprus, keeping the GmbH, running it from Limassol, and meeting art. 61b on self-created goodwill nobody had ever valued. Comparing a Zürich burden with a Cyprus rate and calling it "Switzerland versus Cyprus". Comparing a Zug burden with a Cyprus rate and concluding there is no case, without ever looking at the wealth tax or the distribution layer. Assuming the voluntary AHV is available and discovering after the one-year window that it never was. Winding up the company on the assumption that a liquidation surplus is a tax-free private capital gain. Restructuring the shareholding shortly before departure and landing inside art. 20a. Leaving the operating company in Switzerland and absorbing a 15% treaty residual on every dividend for the rest of its life. Reading "70% federal inclusion" as a 70% tax rate. And treating the Abmeldung as a tax event, when the tax question turns on where you and the company actually are.

Two worked examples

Both assume canton Zug, ordinary taxation, full distribution, and that you have genuinely become Cyprus tax resident. The Swiss shareholder-level figure is derived, and we show its composition rather than dressing it as a published rate.

A consultancy on €200,000 of profit. In Zug the company pays the canton's stated 11.8% — €23,600 — leaving €176,400. On distribution, the calculator on this page applies a modelled 22% at the shareholder level, giving €38,808 and leaving the founder about €137,600. That 22% is not a Swiss statutory rate and no source publishes it: it is the composition of a 70% federal inclusion and a 50% Zug cantonal inclusion on a qualifying participation of at least 10%, each run through an ordinary progressive tariff and then multiplied by the Steuerfuss. Your commune and your total income move it. Through Cyprus the company pays 15% — €30,000 — and a non-dom shareholder distributing €170,000 meets only GeSY at 2.65%, €4,505, keeping about €165,500. The company level favours Zug by €6,400; the shareholder level hands that back and about €21,500 more. And the Zug founder pays the wealth tax on top, every year, whether or not anything was distributed.

A software company on €500,000 of profit with qualifying IP. In Zug the company pays €59,000 and the modelled shareholder charge on €441,000 is €97,020, leaving about €344,000. In Cyprus, IP-Box-qualifying income is taxed at an effective 3% — €15,000 — and the non-dom founder meets only the €4,770 GeSY ceiling, leaving about €480,200; without the IP Box, at 15%, about €420,200. This is the profile where the gap turns structural rather than incremental — and it is also the profile where moving the existing Swiss company is most dangerous, because art. 61b values self-created goodwill on the way out and a fast-growing software business is exactly what such a valuation rewards. Incorporate fresh, and take Swiss advice on the old entity.

The wealth tax is deliberately not folded into those two lines, because it depends on your balance sheet rather than your profit. Add it separately: on CHF 4,000,000 of net assets, the simple cantonal tax alone is about CHF 5,805 a year on the Zug tariff above, before the cantonal, communal and church multipliers.

Part 4: Who does the work

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

Do it yourself — or have Sumly do it

Both routes genuinely work. 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 filings and books your auditor will accept — on top of a two-country move you are already running, in a system you have never used. 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 books from day zero and every return prepared box by box.

The software on its own runs the whole company, from Cyprus or from Switzerland: 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 Sumly offers all of it to everyone: 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 needs them; tax residency and non-dom at €750 per person; and every registration handled — VAT, social insurance, employees and UBO, filed right the first time.

Each of those is an extra, scoped to your case. Tell us what you need in the meeting and you get one clear package-deal offer covering all of it — the IP Box application included where it fits, since it is complex expert work and exactly the kind of thing that should be looked at with you before anyone quotes 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 Swiss founder that division of labour is the whole point. The Swiss half of this move — art. 61b, the valuation, the sequencing, the second pillar — belongs to a Swiss adviser, and we will say so every time you ask. The Cyprus half — the company, the books, the filings, the residency — is one provider, one dashboard and four published prices. That is what makes Sumly the best choice for Swiss 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. We are happy to be held to that sentence, and everything under it is the evidence for it.

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

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

Put plainly, and we mean each one: the best support, the best bookkeeping software, the best AI for bookkeeping, the best bookkeeper, the best prices — and everything done easily. We publish the detail rather than asserting it: Sumly vs Cybooks, Sumly vs Balabook, and for the international tools a Swiss founder may already be running, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.

One line on the IP Box is worth repeating here: 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, so the meeting has to come before anything is quoted. If you want the working detail, it is set out in how to claim the IP Box, and the IP Box service page explains what we do on it.

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 Swiss founders actually ask

Frequently asked

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

Not on you personally. Art. 8 para. 2 DBG ends unlimited tax liability on death, on departure from Switzerland, or when the Swiss taxable assets fall away — and that is the whole mechanism. There is no deemed disposal of your shares, no participation threshold and no instalment plan, because there is nothing to defer. What Switzerland does tax is the company: art. 61b DBG charges untaxed hidden reserves, including self-created goodwill, when a company's seat or effective management moves abroad.

Is a Cyprus company actually cheaper than a company in canton Zug?

Not at the company level. The Canton of Zug states a total burden of 11.8% on company profits including federal, cantonal and communal tax, which is below the 15% a Cyprus company pays from tax year 2026. The gap opens one level up, when the owner takes the money out: a Cyprus non-dom pays only the health contribution on dividends, while a Swiss shareholder puts part of the dividend into a progressive tariff and multiplies it by the Steuerfuss. Everything in this guide is modelled on Zug.

How much is the Swiss wealth tax on a founder's own company shares?

It depends on the canton, the commune and the valuation, and it is charged every year whether or not the company pays anything out. In Zug the tariff runs from 0.425 to 1.700 per mille of the simple cantonal tax, after allowances of CHF 204,000 for a single taxpayer and CHF 408,000 for a married couple, and the canton then applies a Steuerfuss of 82% while the commune and any church apply their own. Cyprus levies no net wealth tax at all.

Can I keep paying voluntary AHV contributions after moving to Cyprus?

No, and this is the most commonly mis-stated fact in German-language emigration content. Merkblatt 10.02 requires that your residence lies outside the EU and EFTA before you can join the voluntary AHV/IV, and Cyprus is listed there as an EU member state. What you have already accrued is not lost — it is the continued accrual that stops. From Cyprus you insure under the Cypriot system, and periods in both states are coordinated under the EU rules.

What does the Switzerland–Cyprus tax treaty do for a dividend from my Swiss company?

Less than founders expect. The treaty caps source-state tax on dividends at 15% and drops it to zero only for a company holding at least 10% of the payer for at least a year, for recognised pension institutions and for governments. An individual shareholder living in Cyprus is not in that list, so the Swiss residual on every dividend from a retained Swiss company is up to 15%, permanently. Interest and royalties are taxable only in the state of residence.

What happens to my GmbH if I run it from Cyprus?

It stops being a Swiss taxpayer, and that is exactly the problem. Unlimited liability for a company ends when the seat or the effective management moves abroad — and art. 61b DBG taxes the untaxed hidden reserves at that moment, including self-created goodwill that has never appeared in the accounts. For an owner-managed company whose value is its people and its software, that is usually the largest number on the exit balance sheet. Take advice before you move, not after.

Are my capital gains already tax-free in Switzerland?

On private movable assets, yes. Art. 16 para. 3 DBG makes capital gains on the disposal of private assets tax-free, so a Swiss founder selling shares held privately already pays nothing. Cyprus's securities exemption is therefore parity for you, not an improvement — and we say so rather than selling it as a gain. The exceptions worth knowing are property gains, professional securities dealing, and the indirect partial liquidation and transposition rules in art. 20a DBG.

What happens to my Pensionskasse when I leave for Cyprus?

We did not research it, so we will not tell you. Second-pillar treatment on emigration to an EU state — vested benefits, what can and cannot be paid out in cash, and the vested-benefits foundation route — was outside the scope of the work behind this guide, and it is financially comparable to the wealth tax for most Swiss founders. Take Swiss advice on it specifically. Everything else on this page is sourced; this one is a deliberate blank rather than a guess.

Does Sumly advise on Swiss tax?

No. Sumly builds and runs the Cyprus side: company formation, books from day zero, Cyprus VAT, VIES, provisional and corporate returns, and the tax residency and non-dom application. This guide reproduces Switzerland's own published law so you can see the shape of the decision, but how art. 61b or a cantonal valuation applies to your facts belongs with a Swiss 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
• Cyprus tax benefits for foreigners — the whole picture in one place
• What the 2026 Cyprus tax reform changed
• How to register a company in Cyprus and what it costs
• Cyprus holding companies — where a retained Swiss entity can sit underneath one

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 result. Every Swiss figure is modelled on canton Zug at ordinary taxation with no patent box, and the shareholder-level 22% is derived arithmetic — a 70% federal and 50% Zug cantonal inclusion on a qualifying participation, run through ordinary tariffs and a Steuerfuss — not a published rate; your own commune moves it. Zürich figures carry their own tax period. 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.