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

Thailand is one of the few countries a founder can leave without paying anything for the privilege, and one of the few that gives a Cyprus company room to grow untouched while you stay. There is no exit tax, no exit paperwork and no CFC regime. Relocating from Thailand to Cyprus is worth doing for a narrow, identifiable set of reasons.

Updated for 2026 Cyprus tax law and regulations.

One partner for the whole Cyprus side of a move from Thailand

Sumly is the one-stop, fully digitalized way to create your company in Cyprus from Thailand and operate it from the first day it exists. We handle the registration, open your books the day you order, prepare every Cyprus return box by box, and deliver tax residency and non-dom as a single fixed-price service — one provider and one dashboard across the entire Cyprus half of the journey, instead of a corporate services firm here, a bookkeeper there and a gap between them nobody owns.

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.

What does Thailand give a founder that Cyprus cannot?

More than most pages selling relocation will admit, so take the concessions first. Thailand's system is built around three features that together make it genuinely competitive for a founder in the building phase, and two of them do not exist in most of Europe at all.

Foreign income is taxed on remittance, not on arising. A resident of Thailand is taxable on foreign-source income only upon bringing such assessable income into Thailand. Money that stays offshore is simply outside the charge. That is why the calculator at the top of this page models the investment return on a Thai founder's offshore pot at zero — not because Thailand is generous about investment income, but because the charge does not arise until the money crosses the border.

There are no controlled foreign company rules. None. A Thai tax resident can own a Cyprus company earning at 15% from tax year 2026, or licensing intellectual property at 3% from tax year 2026 on the IP Box, and Thailand attributes nothing to them while the profit sits in the company. There is no low-tax rate line to clear, no control threshold, no passive-income ratio, no substance test and no informative return. Put those two facts side by side and the position is remarkable: a Cyprus company owned by a Thai resident is, from Thailand's point of view, a foreign asset that has not yet paid anything out. In most of Europe a founder has to emigrate to reach that position. In Thailand it is the default.

There is no exit tax, and no exit formality of any kind. No deemed disposal on departure, no departure valuation, no deferral balance, no exit return, and no notice to file. This is unusual enough that it is worth its own section below.

Against that, extracting profit from a Thai company costs 28 per cent all in, against roughly 15 per cent through a Cyprus company held by a non-dom shareholder. That gap is real, but it is narrower than the one a European reader faces, and on its own it is a weak reason to move a life. The strong reason is an exit, and it is worth 35 points rather than 13.

Has Thailand relaxed its remittance rule for 2026?

No. This is the single most important thing on this page, and it cuts directly against a great deal of what has been published since 2025, so here is the whole chain of authority rather than an assertion.

The statute has not changed. Revenue Code section 41 has three separate paragraphs that are routinely conflated: Thai-source income is taxable for anyone whether such income is paid within or outside Thailand; foreign-source income is taxable for a resident only on remittance; and a person is a resident if they stay in Thailand for a period or periods aggregating 180 days or more in any tax year. What changed in 2024 was not the words of the statute but the reading of them.

The instrument that changed it is Departmental Instruction Paw. 161/2566, issued on 15 September 2023. Its clause 1 provides that a resident with foreign-source income who brings that income into Thailand in whatever tax year must include it in the section 48 computation in the year it was brought in. That killed the old planning, under which income earned in one year and remitted in a later one escaped the charge. Clause 2 did the killing: it revoked every conflicting regulation, order, instruction, written answer to a query, or practice. Not a statutory amendment — a wholesale revocation of the rulings the old technique rested on. Clause 3 sets the commencement: the instruction applies to income brought into Thailand from 1 January 2567 onwards, which is 1 January 2024.

Then came the grandfather, and it is enormous. Paw. 162/2566, issued on 20 November 2023, does one thing: it inserts a paragraph into the earlier instruction providing that the rule shall not apply to assessable income arising before 1 January 2567. Foreign earnings that arose before 2024 sit outside the rule permanently, however and whenever they are remitted.

Now the negative, which is the part nobody else has done. A relaxation exempting income remitted in the year it is earned, or in the following year, has been widely reported. No such instrument has been enacted. Three independent checks establish it:

1. The Revenue Department's own index of Royal Decrees issued under the Revenue Code lists every decree by number, year and subject. It runs to No. 807 of 2569, and the eighteen most recent entries concern value added tax extensions, electric vehicles, hotel renovation, solar rooftops, donations, special economic zones and a measure to encourage high-potential Thais working abroad to return home. Not one of them concerns foreign-source income or the remittance rule.
2. No later Departmental Instruction touches section 41. The instructions issued after Paw. 162/2566 concern value added tax on out-of-kingdom sales, not income tax. Nothing in the series amends or supersedes Paw. 161 or 162.
3. The Revenue Department's own current guidance still applies the strict rule. In November 2025 the Department published a taxpayer guide for the foreign tax credit calculator, citing Paw. 161/2566 and Paw. 162/2566 as the operative instruments and stating that where a resident brings foreign income in in whatever tax year after 2567, that income is subject to tax under the law, with the single exception of income that arose before tax year 2567. There is no same-year or next-year exemption anywhere in it.

Two dates therefore do different jobs, and keeping them apart decides whether a specific transfer is taxable.

The practical consequence for a Thai founder is unglamorous and valuable: records that segregate pre-2024 funds from post-2024 funds are now among the most valuable documents you own. A bank statement proving when a balance arose is worth up to 35 per cent of it.

What does a remittance from Cyprus to Thailand actually cost?

It depends on how much you bring in and when, because a remittance is added to your other assessable income and taxed on the ordinary scale. There is no separate rate for it.

Those are the Revenue Department's published bands, with the exempt band running from 0 to 150,000 baht and the top rate of 35% applying above 4,000,000 baht. The current personal allowance is 60,000 baht, with a further 60,000 baht for a spouse — and if you have read a figure of 30,000 somewhere, see the warning about stale English pages further down.

Three features of the charge matter to a founder rather than to a salaried reader. First, there is a floor: where assessable income reaches 120,000 baht or more, the tax computed shall not be less than 0.5 per cent of the total assessable income, excluding employment income — so large gross receipts with thin margins meet a minimum charge on turnover. Second, relief for foreign tax paid is available under the applicable treaty, and the Revenue Department built and published a calculator for it in November 2025, which tells you something about how seriously the remittance charge is now being administered. Third, and most usefully, there is no deemed remittance. Nothing forces the money in. Thailand still runs a genuine remittance basis; what it lost in 2024 was the timing game, not the basis itself.

So the planning question for a Thai founder with a Cyprus company is not "what is my rate" but "how much do I need to live on here, and in which year". Bring in 1.5 million baht a year and the average rate is modest. Bring in a 40 million baht liquidity event in a single year and you are at 35 per cent on most of it.

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

No, and the absence is more complete than in any other country in this series. There is no deemed disposal, no departure valuation, no deferral balance, no exit return, and — the part readers do not expect — no exit formality whatsoever. There is no notification, no clearance certificate, no deregistration filing and no equivalent of the departure notices that Mexico, Spain and Australia require.

That conclusion rests on the structure of the statute rather than on a sentence anyone has published. The Revenue Department publishes a complete index of Chapter 3 of the Revenue Code, which runs to 67 numbered headings from section 38 through section 76 Ter, each with a descriptive title. None of them describes a charge on emigration, a deemed disposal, or an attribution of undistributed foreign profits. We would rather label that a reasoned negative supported by a complete statutory index than dress it up as a denial someone issued.

The residence test itself is a clean mechanical switch. One hundred and eighty days in a calendar year, aggregated and not necessarily consecutive. No permanent-home test, no centre-of-vital-interests test, no habitual-abode test, no nationality presumption and no post-departure tail. You cease to be a Thai tax resident by not being present for 180 days in a calendar year, and that is the whole procedure.

Which turns leaving into a calendar problem rather than a paperwork problem. Cross 180 days in your departure year and you stay resident for the whole of that year, so every remittance in it — including the one that funds the move — is in scope. Leave in the first half of the year and the switch flips cleanly. Nobody sends you a letter either way.

One item deserves correcting before a reader finds it and panics. The Revenue Department's list of the legislation it administers includes the Emergency Decree on Tax on Travelling Out of the Kingdom of 2526, and a statute with that title looks exactly like a departure tax. It is not. It is a per-journey travel levy rather than a charge on wealth, gains or residence, and its current operative status and rate are not something we were able to establish from the Department's own texts, so we quote no figure for it. It has nothing to do with emigrating.

What happens to your Thai company if you keep it?

It stays Thai, and it stays Thai permanently, because Thai corporate residence follows incorporation rather than management. A company incorporated under Thai law is within the charge, and so is a company incorporated abroad and carrying on business in Thailand. There is no place-of-effective-management test to fail and, correspondingly, nothing for a corporate exit charge to attach to: a Thai company cannot cease to be Thai-resident while it continues to exist. Moving its management to Limassol changes nothing about its residence.

That relieves a real anxiety — founders leaving countries with management-based residence tests face a deemed liquidation the moment they board the plane, and Thai founders do not. But it has a price, and it is the trap most likely to catch a reader of this page.

You lose the imputation credit the day you stop being Thai resident. Thailand runs a full imputation system. A resident individual receiving a dividend from a Thai company is entitled to a credit calculated by multiplying the dividend by the income tax rate divided by the difference between 100 and that rate — one quarter of the dividend at a 20 per cent corporate rate. The credit is grossed into assessable income, the tax is computed, the credit comes off, and any excess is refunded. The alternative is the election: a resident of Thailand may elect to pay tax at the rate of 10.0 per cent of the income on a dividend from a Thai company instead of putting it in the return, which lands the all-in cost of extracting profit at 28 per cent.

Both routes are gated on residence. Section 47 Bis provides that the credit shall not apply to a taxpayer who is not domiciled in Thailand and is not a resident of Thailand, and the 10 per cent election is expressly for a resident. So the founder who moves to Cyprus and keeps the Thai operating company goes from a 28 per cent outcome with a refund mechanism behind it to 20 per cent corporate tax plus 10 per cent unrelieved withholding — still 28 per cent, but with no credit, no refund and no treaty saving, because the treaty ceiling on dividends and the domestic rate are both 10 per cent. The Cyprus saving only materialises if the operating company moves too.

Two deadlines are worth putting in front of anyone who decides to wind the Thai company up rather than keep it.

Can the Revenue Department tax your Cyprus company while you are still in Bangkok?

Not on residence grounds — but yes, in a narrower way that almost nothing written about this corridor mentions, and it is the exposure to manage.

Because section 66 turns residence on incorporation, a Cyprus company managed from a Bangkok apartment does not become a Thai tax resident. It was not incorporated under Thai law, so the first limb cannot reach it. What can reach it is the second limb, "carrying on business in Thailand", and that phrase is deemed satisfied more easily than a reader expects. A foreign company with an employee, an agent or a go-between for carrying on business in Thailand and as a result receiving income or profits in Thailand is deemed to be carrying on business here — and the person acting as that employee, agent or go-between is deemed to be the representative of the company, with the duty and liability to file a tax return and pay tax on that income. Where net profit cannot be computed, assessment on a gross basis is available to the official.

Read that against the actual fact pattern. A founder living in Bangkok who is the sole officer and operator of a Cyprus company is, on any ordinary reading, an employee, agent or go-between of that company. Whether section 76 Bis bites then turns on whether the company thereby receives income or profits in Thailand — and the precise scope of that phrase, applied to a Cyprus company with no Thai customers, is not something the Department has published guidance on that we could verify, so we state the risk and not a conclusion.

The point to take away is that the Thai risk is a deemed permanent establishment with the founder personally on the hook, not a residence risk. That is narrower and more manageable than the residence-follows-management rule most of Europe applies — but it is not the "Thailand only taxes Thai companies" reassurance that gets repeated on expat forums. If the Cyprus company sells to Europe and is run from Cyprus, the question does not arise. If it is run from Bangkok and has Thai revenue, it should be looked at properly.

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

More than most treaty tables report, because the tables flatten it. The Convention between Thailand and Cyprus entered into force on 4 April 2000 and has had effect from 1 January 2001, which means the protection has been sitting there for a quarter of a century and is not something you acquire by moving.

Dividends, article 10. Where the recipient is the beneficial owner, source tax shall not exceed 10 per cent of the gross amount of the dividends. Be clear about what that is worth: Thailand's domestic rate on dividends to a non-resident company is already 10 per cent, so the treaty delivers no dividend saving at all. It delivers a ceiling and it delivers certainty. Anyone presenting the dividend article as a reduction has not compared it to the domestic rate.

Interest, article 11. The ceiling is 10 per cent where the recipient is a financial institution, or where the interest is paid on the credit sale of industrial, commercial or scientific equipment or of merchandise, and 15 per cent in all other cases. Interest paid to the government of the other state is exempt at source, with the definition covering the Central Bank of Cyprus and Cyprus Development Bank on one side and the Bank of Thailand and the Export–Import Bank on the other.

Royalties, article 12 — and this is where the money is for a software business. The article has three tiers, not one. Copyright of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic or scientific work, including software, cinematograph films and radio or television tapes, is capped at 5 per cent; industrial, commercial or scientific equipment and know-how at 10 per cent; and patents, trade marks, designs, plans, secret formulae and processes at 15 per cent. Thailand's domestic withholding on royalties to a non-resident company is 15%. So a Cyprus company licensing software into Thailand pays five rather than fifteen — a two-thirds reduction that most treaty summaries hide by reporting only the third tier. Whether an intellectual property licence is drafted as a copyright licence or as a patent, trade mark or know-how licence is therefore worth ten points of withholding, and the distinction is drawn in the treaty text itself.

Capital gains, article 13 — the single most valuable provision in the Convention. Gains on immovable property go to the situs state; gains on the movable property of a permanent establishment go to the situs state; and everything else is taxable only in the Contracting State of which the alienator is a resident. The exception is real-property-rich companies: shares deriving their value wholly or principally from immovable property in the other state may be taxed in that other state.

Now put article 13(4) next to Thai domestic law, because that is where the number comes from. Thailand has no separate capital gains tax; gains on transferring shares are ordinary assessable income under section 40(4), taxed on the progressive scale up to 35 per cent, with no participation exemption, no substantial-shareholding relief and no roll-over for a founder selling their own company. Cyprus, by contrast, does not tax gains on qualifying securities. A founder who is Cyprus resident when the sale completes takes the gain outside the Thai charge entirely — and that is worth up to 35 points of tax on the largest transaction of their working life. Nothing else in this comparison is worth as much, and it is the reason the honest advice on this page is timing rather than urgency.

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 from Thailand?

Flatter, and easier to model. A Cyprus limited company pays 15% from tax year 2026 on taxable profit — one rate on the first euro and the last, with no small-company band of the kind Thailand offers a company with paid-up capital under 5 million baht, which pays 15% on net profit from 300,000 to 3,000,000 baht and 20 per cent above that. Qualifying intellectual property income comes down to 3% from tax year 2026.

The shareholder side is where the systems diverge most. A Cyprus tax resident who is not domiciled in Cyprus — which is nearly every arriving founder — pays no Special Defence Contribution on dividends for 17 years, and dividends sit outside Cyprus personal income tax altogether. What remains is the health contribution at 2.65% on income up to €180,000 a year, so at most €4,770 however large the distribution. Skip the non-dom registration and a Cyprus-domiciled shareholder meets 5% on dividends from 2026 profits instead — which is why it is done at the beginning rather than eventually. Salary runs on a scale of 0% to €22,000 rising to 35% above €72,000, topping out at the same 35 per cent Thailand does. The shareholder detail is in Cyprus non-dom status and the wider picture in Cyprus tax benefits for foreigners.

Consumption tax moves the wrong way, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Cyprus VAT is 19% with registration beginning at turnover of €15,600. Thai VAT is quoted everywhere as 7 per cent, and the way that number is built is worth understanding, because it confuses people and because it is temporary. The Revenue Code sets the rate at 10 per cent and has never repealed it. A Royal Decree reduces it and provides that it shall continue to be collected at six point three per cent — the 7 per cent everyone quotes is that 6.3 per cent plus the 0.7 per cent local element. And it is a sunset, not a rate: the current reduction runs to 30 September 2570, extended annually by successive decrees. If one is ever not renewed, the rate reverts to the statutory 10 per cent. Any page describing 7 per cent as Thailand's VAT rate is describing a decree, not a law.

Cyprus levies no net wealth tax and no inheritance tax. Thailand levies no net wealth tax either — but it does have an inheritance tax, which is the next section, and which a surprising volume of published content denies.

Does Thailand tax an inheritance, and does leaving change it?

It does tax one, and the claim that it does not is simply wrong. The Inheritance Tax Act of 2558 charges the recipient, not the estate, at ten per cent, or five per cent where the recipient is an ascendant or a descendant, on the value received from each deceased person above one hundred million baht, net of liabilities assumed. Filing and payment are due within 150 days of receiving the inheritance.

Then read the limits, because they matter as much as the charge. A spouse is outside the Act entirely. Only five classes of asset are within it: immovable property, securities, deposits and monies of the same character, registered vehicles, and financial assets prescribed by Royal Decree. And the territorial rule is the one that matters to a family that stays: Thai nationals and non-Thais domiciled in Thailand are within it on assets situated in Thailand or outside Thailand, while other non-Thais are within it only on Thai-situs assets.

For the overwhelming majority of readers this is not a reason to move anywhere, and we will not pretend it is. For a founder whose business is worth more than 100 million baht and whose heirs are Thai nationals, it is a real number attached to a worldwide base — and Cyprus, which levies no inheritance tax at all, removes it for a family that genuinely relocates.

Gifts are handled inside the income tax rather than by a separate statute, and the thresholds are generous and annual rather than lifetime: support and gifts from ascendants, descendants or a spouse are exempt up to twenty million baht throughout the tax year, customary or ceremonial gifts from others up to ten million baht, and the excess may be taxed at 5 per cent by election in place of the progressive scale. Do not confuse the absence of a wealth tax with the absence of the Land and Building Tax, which is real, is a recurrent charge on land and buildings, and is administered by local authorities rather than by the Revenue Department — we quote no figures for it here because it sits outside the Department's own published texts.

How does a founder from Thailand become Cyprus tax resident?

Usually through the 60-day rule, which lost a condition and got easier from tax year 2026. There is also the plain route, which is spending more than 183 days a year on the island and needing no further conditions at all. The alternative asks for fewer days and more commitment on the ground, and it now has four conditions rather than five, the old requirement not to be tax resident anywhere else having been removed from the 60-day rule. What remains: 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 you own or rent.

The dropped condition matters specifically here. A founder who has not yet fallen below Thailand's 180-day line is tax resident in Thailand — which under the old rule would have disqualified them from the Cyprus 60-day route outright. It no longer does. Competing claims resolve under the Convention, which for this pair has been in force since 2000. The day counts and the certificate are covered in the Cyprus 60-day rule.

A directorship of your own Cyprus company can serve as the office the third condition asks for, which is why the company and the residency are usually one project rather than two. On immigration, be precise: the Yellow Slip is a registration certificate for EU citizens under EU law, so it is not a route available to a Thai national and this guide promises nothing about it. Thai citizens use the routes that apply to third-country nationals, and where a file needs specialist immigration input we bring it in rather than improvise.

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

Yes, and for a store the single-market question usually outweighs the tax one. A Thai seller shipping into the European Union is a third-country seller for EU VAT purposes on every consignment, and a Thai VAT registration does nothing about that — it is a domestic registration in a system the Union does not recognise. An EU-resident company changes the seller's legal status: an EU-established taxable person with a VAT number a customer can verify on VIES, and access to the Union one-stop shop rather than only the import route.

We are not printing EU-side thresholds here. The intrinsic-value limit, the deemed-supplier rule for electronic interfaces and the application dates all move, and we could not verify them against the primary legislation while writing this page. Take them from the European Commission's One Stop Shop pages and treat any page quoting a figure without linking to the Commission with suspicion.

The part that actually breaks in practice is not the VAT rule but the bookkeeping behind it, because a store produces thousands of small transactions in several currencies whose treatment shifts by customer type and destination. Sumly's Shopify and WooCommerce plugins pull orders, refunds, fees and payouts into the ledger with the right VAT codes already attached, so the return is built from the sales as they happen rather than reconstructed from a CSV export at quarter end.

Why do people choose Cyprus over other tax havens?

Because it is a country you can actually live in, which is not true of most of the shortlist, and because what keeps people is rarely what brought them.

English is the working language of everything a business touches — banking, professional services, contracts, the courts — which for a founder arriving from Bangkok removes the language transition that most of the European Union would impose. Violent crime is among the lowest in the Union. The island is already full of people from everywhere else, so nobody arrives as the curiosity. Business and real estate are both busy, and the administration is broadly willing to let people trade without wrapping the attempt in process. Groceries — meat, fruit, vegetables — are affordable in a way that will not shock anyone used to a Thai market. And the sea is not a brochure line: in a Cyprus winter you can still go to the beach, and the summers are what people cross the world for.

The push list from the Thai side is short, specific and honest — and shorter than for almost any other country on this site. There is no exit tax to escape and no CFC regime to outrun. What is actually pushing founders out is this: a share sale is taxed as ordinary income at up to 35 per cent with no relief of any kind, so the largest transaction of a founder's life attracts the highest rate in the system. The remittance basis that makes staying attractive rests on an administrative instruction rather than on a statute, and clause 2 of that instruction revoked every prior ruling at a stroke — what was done by instruction can be redone by instruction. A founder who moves but keeps the Thai company loses the imputation credit and gets nothing back for it. A Cyprus company operated from Bangkok has a section 76 Bis question hanging over it that a Cyprus-run company simply does not. And a company outside the Union deals with the single market as a third country on every invoice, which scales with the share of your revenue that comes from Europe.

Two worked examples

A Bangkok software consultancy with 6,000,000 baht of net profit. In Thailand the company pays corporate income tax at 20% of net profit, which is 1,200,000 baht, leaving 4,800,000 to distribute. The founder elects the 10 per cent final tax on the dividend — 480,000 baht — because their marginal rate is above 28 per cent, and the all-in cost of extraction is 1,680,000 baht, or exactly 28 per cent. Run the same business through a Cyprus company on €160,000 of taxable profit and the company pays 15 per cent, €24,000, with a non-dom shareholder meeting only the health contribution on the distribution, capped at €4,770. That is roughly 17 per cent against 28 — a real gap of about eleven points a year, but not one that on its own justifies moving a household. Note also that if the Thai company has paid-up capital under 5 million baht it pays 15 per cent on the tranche from 300,000 to 3,000,000 baht, which narrows the gap further at smaller profits.

A founder selling the business for a 400,000,000 baht gain. This is the profile the whole page exists for. Sold as a Thai tax resident, the gain is ordinary assessable income under section 40(4) with no participation exemption, no substantial-shareholding relief and no roll-over, taxed on the progressive scale to 35 per cent — on the order of 140,000,000 baht. Sold after the founder has become Cyprus resident and ceased to be Thai resident, article 13(4) of the Convention makes the gain taxable only in the state of residence, and Cyprus does not tax gains on qualifying securities. The exception to check first is article 13(5): if the company's assets consist wholly or principally of Thai immovable property, the gain goes back to Thailand and the whole argument collapses. The trigger for this decision is not your tax rate. It is your exit — and the timing has to be right, because ceasing Thai residence means being absent for 180 days across a full calendar year before the sale, not after it.

Both examples assume headline rates and full distribution. Your own reliefs, timing and shareholding will move the answer, and the calculator at the top of this page shows the shape of the difference rather than predicting your result.

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?

No two files move at the same speed, so treat the list below as the order of the work rather than as dates in a diary.

• Before anything else — and this is our first question to you. We count days with you and work out which calendar year you can realistically end below 180 days in Thailand, because that year decides everything else on this list. We put a Thai adviser from our network on your own facts, particularly if a sale is anywhere in the picture.
• Documentation, in parallel. We assemble the records that segregate pre-2024 foreign earnings from post-2024 earnings with you. They are permanently grandfathered and the evidence cannot be reconstructed later, which is why we start it now rather than when someone asks.
• Month 1. We order the Cyprus company and the registration begins, with your books opening the same day. We start the residence paperwork; you take the directorship that anchors the 60-day rule.
• Months 1–3. We register for VAT and, where relevant, social insurance, employees and UBO, and get banking and EU payments moving. You stop making the Cyprus company's operational decisions from Thailand and start making them in Cyprus, and we minute them.
• Months 3–6. You rent or buy the permanent home the 60-day rule requires, and we tell you what qualifies. Together with your Thai adviser we settle the fate of the Thai company deliberately: keeping it costs the imputation credit, and winding it up runs on a 15-day notification clock.
• Months 6–12. If profits are being moved out of a Thai entity, we price the 10 per cent disposal charge and its seven-day payment deadline into the plan with your adviser, rather than you discovering it. We keep the Thai day count where you intended it.
• Month 12 onward. We apply for the Cyprus tax residency certificate and the non-dom registration. Only then is a sale considered, if a sale is the point — and we bring your Thai adviser back in before it happens.

What mistakes do Thai founders actually make?

The expensive ones are ordinary rather than exotic.

Planning around the relaxation of the remittance rule that was never enacted, and remitting on that basis. Confusing the two 2024 dates — income arising before 1 January 2024 is grandfathered forever, income remitted before that date is a different question, and the difference decides whether a specific transfer is taxable. Failing to keep records that prove when offshore funds arose, and so losing a grandfathered position that was worth up to 35 per cent. Crossing 180 days in the departure year and then remitting the proceeds of the move into a year they are still resident in. Moving to Cyprus while leaving the operating company in Thailand, and losing the imputation credit for nothing. Assuming Thailand has no inheritance tax. Reading a personal allowance or a three-sevenths dividend credit off the Revenue Department's English summary pages, which are a decade stale, rather than off the current Thai form instructions. Running a Cyprus company entirely from a Bangkok apartment and assuming section 76 Bis is somebody else's problem. And selling the company first and moving afterwards, which is the one mistake on this list that cannot be repaired.

On social security, pensions and provident fund balances we deliberately publish nothing. The Social Security Fund is administered by the Social Security Office under the Ministry of Labour rather than by the Revenue Department, we could not verify contribution rates, voluntary continuation for an emigrant, pension portability or whether any totalisation arrangement exists between Thailand and Cyprus from a government source, and a wrong number on any of those would cost a reader real money. Ask your Thai adviser, and treat any page that quotes them without a government link with the scepticism it deserves.

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 work. The self-run route means the Registrar's forms and fees, a registered office you arrange yourself, VAT and VIES registration, provisional tax twice a year, annual statements and a ledger an auditor will sign — all on top of a two-country move you are already managing across six time zones. The Sumly route is three published prices: formation from €950 one-time, the bookkeeping software from €39 a month, and a Sumly certified bookkeeper at €390 a month, with books opened on day zero and every return prepared box by box.

The software on its own runs the whole company, whether you are sitting in Limassol or still in Bangkok: invoicing, AI double-entry bookkeeping, 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.

Sumly offers all of this to everyone: a virtual address with PO box and your mail scanned into the dashboard wherever in the world you are that month; nominee director and secretary where a structure genuinely calls for them; the Yellow Slip, which is available to EU citizens only and is therefore not the Thai route; and the registrations bundle handled properly the first time — VAT, social insurance, employees and UBO.

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 the lot, the IP Box application included where it belongs, because that is complex expert work and precisely the thing that should be examined with you before anybody puts a price on it. No hourly billing and no surprises afterwards.

Sumly, a law firm, and a traditional bookkeeping firm

Law firm vs Sumly — and what happens when a case 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 Thai founder that is the whole proposition. The Thai side of this move needs a Thai adviser and we will say so every time you ask. Everything on the Cyprus side of the line — forming the company, running the books, filing the returns, landing the residency — arrives from a single provider, in a single dashboard, against four prices we publish. That is what makes Sumly the best choice for Thai 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 put that in writing precisely so it can be checked, and the rest of this section is the checking.

The two Cyprus-built alternatives a founder arriving from Thailand will be pointed at 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.

In plain terms, and with nothing hedged: the best support, the best bookkeeping software, the best AI for bookkeeping, the best bookkeeper and the best prices, with everything done easily. We publish the detail rather than assert it: Sumly vs Cybooks, Sumly vs Balabook, and for the international tools a Thai business is more likely already running, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage.

One line deserves repeating for anyone whose profit sits in licensed software, because the treaty's 5 per cent royalty rate and the Cyprus IP Box compound: 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. It begins as a conversation about what your licensing revenue is really composed of, and that conversation has to happen before anyone can quote you a figure. The service page is at IP Box.

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 Thai founders actually ask

Frequently asked

Has Thailand relaxed the rule on foreign income remitted in the year it is earned?

No. As at the date on this page no such instrument has been enacted. The Revenue Department's own index of Royal Decrees issued under the Revenue Code runs to No. 807 of 2569 and contains nothing on foreign-source income or remittance; no Departmental Instruction issued after Paw. 162/2566 touches section 41; and the Department's own November 2025 taxpayer guide on foreign income applies the strict rule without qualification. The operative position is Paw. 161/2566 as amended by Paw. 162/2566. Anyone planning around the reported relaxation is planning around a press report rather than a published rule.

Does Thailand have controlled foreign company rules that would catch a Cyprus company?

No. There is no controlled foreign company regime in the Revenue Code, and the Revenue Department's own complete index of Chapter 3 contains no heading that attributes an offshore company's undistributed profits to a Thai shareholder. A Thai tax resident can own a Cyprus company, including one taxed on the IP Box, and Thailand attributes nothing at all while the profit stays offshore. What Thailand taxes is the remittance, in the year the money is brought in.

Is there an exit tax when a Thai tax resident moves to Cyprus?

There is none, and there is no exit formality either — no deemed disposal, no departure valuation, no notification, no deregistration filing. You stop being a Thai tax resident by not being present for 180 days or more in a calendar year, and that is the entire procedure. One statute on the Revenue Department's books has a confusingly similar name, the Emergency Decree on Tax on Travelling Out of the Kingdom of 1983, but that is a per-journey travel levy rather than a charge on emigration.

What does the Thailand–Cyprus treaty do for a founder selling their company?

Article 13 paragraph 4 gives the gain to the state where the seller is resident, and nothing else. Thailand has no capital gains tax as a separate charge, so a share sale is ordinary assessable income taxed on the progressive scale up to 35%. A founder who is Cyprus resident when the sale happens takes the gain outside Thailand's charge entirely, unless the company's assets consist wholly or principally of Thai real property, which paragraph 5 sends back to Thailand.

Should a Thai founder in the accumulation phase move to Cyprus at all?

Often not, and we would rather say so. If you are building rather than selling, Thailand already gives you a genuine remittance basis, no CFC rules, no exit tax and no exit paperwork, and a Cyprus company can accumulate profit that Thailand does not touch while you stay. The readers this page converts are narrower: founders approaching a sale, and founders who need an EU entity for commercial reasons whatever the tax arithmetic says.

What does it cost to take money out of a Thai company in 2026?

Twenty-eight per cent all in, for a shareholder at or near the top of the scale. Corporate income tax takes 20% of net profit, and a Thai-resident individual may elect a 10% final tax on the dividend instead of putting it in the return. The alternative is to gross up and take the section 47 Bis imputation credit, which at a 20% corporate rate is one quarter of the dividend, and that is better than the election only where your marginal rate is below 28%.

Does Thailand really have an inheritance tax?

It does, and a great deal of published content says otherwise. The Inheritance Tax Act of 2558 charges the recipient at 10%, or 5% where the recipient is an ascendant or descendant, on the value received from each deceased person above 100 million baht. A spouse is outside the Act entirely. Only five classes of asset are within it, and Thai nationals and domiciled non-Thais are within it on worldwide assets. For most readers it is a non-event; for a founder holding a business worth more than that, it is a real number.

Can the Revenue Department tax my Cyprus company while I still live in Bangkok?

Not on residence grounds, because Thai corporate residence follows incorporation rather than management, so a Cyprus company managed from Bangkok does not become Thai resident. The exposure is different and narrower: section 76 Bis deems a foreign company to be carrying on business in Thailand where it has an employee, agent or go-between here through whom it receives income or profits in Thailand, and makes that person the company's representative with the duty to file and pay.

Does Sumly advise on Thai tax?

No. Sumly builds and runs the Cyprus side — the company, the books from day zero, Cyprus VAT, VIES and corporate returns, and the tax residency and non-dom application as one fixed-price service. This page sets out what the Revenue Department publishes so you can see the shape of the decision, but how the remittance rule, section 76 Bis and the treaty apply to your own facts is a question for a Thai-qualified adviser, and 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 — how the 17-year exemption works
• The Cyprus 60-day rule — the day counts and the certificate
• Cyprus tax benefits for foreigners — the full list in one place
• How to register a company in Cyprus and what it costs
• Company formation for non-residents — the route that applies to a Thai national
• What changed in the 2026 Cyprus tax reform

Figures on this page are stated for Thailand's 2026 calendar tax year, which is 2569 in the Buddhist Era used by the Thai instruments cited, and for Cyprus tax year 2026. The calculator above uses headline rates with full distribution, which makes it an illustration of the difference rather than a forecast of your result. All Sumly prices exclude VAT, and government expenses on a formation are invoiced separately once your application is approved.