Originally Posted by Nathan

Even in the US, _company_ income is not _personal_ income, except if your company is setup as such. That does of course not mean that opening a company in cyprus and you being in the US solves your taxes in the US. There is always the issue of substance. Meaning, even if you are in the US and company in Cyprus, unless everything or the vast majority done for that company is handled in Cyprus, or whoever else handles it does 1) not own the company and 2) actually charge standard rates for their work, you will have to pay your income as if it was made in the US, since the US will just pierce cyprus's corp veil.

Since most people here open a company in Cyprus and then just have nothing there and still do all the work, this obviously does not work... But for the bigger corps in this industry, they are usually setup correctly. For example, Private's Fraserside Holdings in Cyprus, owns all copyrights for their content, and licenses it out to the corps that use it. There is staff that is there and they license it at certain rates which match the rates any third party would do the same, the governments can then not really say anything against it since its just as if they would buy content from third parties.

Taxes is not simple. And to set it up right, you need to be a certain size and you need to get real advice. Also, do not forget, if you have started your business in the US and have been running it for some time, and want to move to Cyprus, you can not just switch and be done with it. The IRS will expect a sale from the US to Cyprus at true company value and they will take you capital gains on it in the US of course...