Aruba

1–3 working days once the basic document set is ready — and the whole process runs fully remotely within a single week, courier time included.

The path from first call to live company, in order:

1. Initial consultation and engagement — 2. Settlement of the invoice — 3. For remote setups, notarisation of the power of attorney on your side — 4. We prepare the registration documents — 5. Signing before the notary — 6. The company is valid on the register immediately.

Worth knowing: the most recognised structures here are the limited liability company and the individual enterprise — and there is no minimum share capital for either.

Fully remote, no travel: we draft the power of attorney for your chosen services, you certify it before a notary (apostilled where your country demands full legalisation), we verify, and you courier us the physical original. As a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Aruba sits inside the Hague Apostille Convention — one stamp, recognised worldwide.

Three things get the file moving: three name options for the company plus a contact email; the names, addresses and emails of all shareholders and board members; and a short description of the activity. That's the whole intake form.

Passport scans of all shareholders and board members, plus the beneficial owner where applicable; the power of attorney for remote registration; and certified corporate documents where a shareholder is itself a foreign company.

The Aruba exempt company — the AVV — pays no tax, provided its activities stay inside the fence: holding (where the held entities are tax-liable at a rate of at least 12.5%), finance (hedge funds, financial leasing, treasury and cash management — credit institutions excepted), investment, licensing of intellectual and industrial property rights (licensing only — developing the rights inside the exempt company is explicitly off-limits), and captive insurance.

Step outside those lines and the standard corporate rate applies — 22% since 2023. The AVV is a scalpel, not a hammer: brilliant for the activities it was built for, wrong for everything else — and we'll tell you which side of that line you're on in the first call.

As part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Aruba plugs into the Kingdom's double-taxation and information-exchange arrangements — a network spanning nearly a hundred states: the US, the UK, Germany, France, China, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland — and Romania among them.

The AVV travels light: it is exempt from several standard obligations, and annual financial statements are not required. Keep your internal records in order — the register asks for nothing.

Aruba flips the usual rule: an individual director may not be a resident of Aruba, and a corporate director may only be an Aruban company whose purpose clause covers AVV administration. The structure rests on one anchor: permanent representation by at least one Aruban company — typically a trust office — acting as local registered agent, which we arrange. The trade-off that keeps the regime clean: the AVV cannot participate in Aruba's own economy — no transactions with onshore companies or residents.