Nevis Company Registration
Nevis company registration means incorporating on the island’s international register, as one of three entities: a Business Corporation, an LLC, or an International Exempt Trust. The government charges US$320 in the first year and US$330 to renew. Nevis publishes no official processing time.
Looking for something else? If you want to look up an existing Nevis company, that is the Registrar of Corporations, which keeps the register under s.22 and allows inspection under s.28. A corporation search costs US$20 and a search report costs US$40. Neither shows you who owns the company: shareholder, director and beneficial-ownership details sit with the licensed registered agent under s.102. If you want to register a new company, you are on the right page. And if you arrived looking for a wealth-management software company of the same name, that is an unrelated business in New York.
Fees verified 7 August 2026.
What a Nevis company is, and which register it sits on
A Nevis company is not one thing. It is any of three entities registered on the Nevis international register and administered by a licensed registered agent on the island: a Nevis Business Corporation, a Nevis LLC, or a Nevis International Exempt Trust. Each has its own Ordinance, and two of them sit on two different registers.
That last point is where most published guidance goes wrong. Business corporations are filed with the Registrar of Corporations. LLCs are filed with the Registrar of Companies. These are separate offices, and several formation sites merge them into a single body, occasionally into a “Nevis Financial Services Department” that does not exist.
The regulator above both is the Nevis Financial Services Regulatory Commission. Nevis is part of the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis and legislates its own company law, which is why the statute you need is a Nevis Ordinance rather than a federal Act.
One provision is worth knowing before you go further, because none of the five sites ranking for this search mentions it. A corporation is a legal person distinct from its shareholders (s.12(1)), and s.12(2) goes further: naming a shareholder, director, officer or employee as a party in order to represent the corporation is subject to a motion to dismiss where that person is the only party suing or defending, or a motion for misjoinder where they have been joined alongside a proper party. That is the separation you are buying, written into the Ordinance rather than into a brochure.
Which Nevis entity to register
| Entity | Governing Ordinance | Registrar | Who it suits | Where to go next |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nevis Business Corporation | Cap. 7.01(N) | Registrar of Corporations | Shareholders, bylaws, share capital. Trading and investment holding | This page |
| Nevis LLC | Cap. 7.04(N) | Registrar of Companies | Members rather than shareholders. Asset holding, where the charging order is the creditor remedy | Nevis LLC formation |
| Nevis International Exempt Trust | Cap. 7.03(N) | Registered with the regulator, not a company registrar | Settlor and trustee. Succession planning and asset protection | Page in preparation |
The government charges exactly the same for a corporation and an LLC: US$320 in year one and US$330 to renew. Two separate Orders, made by the same Minister on the same day, set identical figures. Cost therefore tells you nothing about which one to pick. The choice turns on creditor remedies and governance, which is a legal question.
The LLC’s charging-order protection and its creditor-bond rules are covered in full on our Nevis LLC page. Note also that the regulator titles its own corporation page “IBCs”, which is why you will see the term. The live statutory entity is the Nevis Business Corporation.
What Nevis company registration costs
The government half is fixed by Statutory Rules and Orders No. 9 of 2024, made under s.141 of the Ordinance and in force from 1 April 2025. It replaced Schedule 1 in full. The Order sets fees in Eastern Caribbean dollars, converted here at the Registry’s rate of 2.70.
| Government fees only | EC$ | US$ |
|---|---|---|
| Articles of Incorporation | 810.00 | 300.00 |
| Certificate of Incorporation | 54.00 | 20.00 |
| Total, year one | 864.00 | 320.00 |
| Annual renewal fee | 810.00 | 300.00 |
| Certificate of Renewal | 81.00 | 30.00 |
| Total, annual renewal | 891.00 | 330.00 |
| Late filing, first six months | 540.00 | 200.00 |
| Late filing, after six months | 1,080.00 | 400.00 |
| Restoration to the register | 810.00 | 300.00 |
| Certificate of Good Standing | 135.00 | 50.00 |
| Apostille | 135.00 | 50.00 |
| Corporation search | 54.00 | 20.00 |
Your registered agent charges separately, and so do we. Those figures are not published on this page yet, and we would rather show you nothing than an estimate you might budget against. See the full price list for what is published, or get a free consultation for a quote against your facts.
| Entity | Government, year one | Government, renewal | Full ladder |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nevis Business Corporation | US$320 | US$330 | This page |
| Nevis LLC | US$320 | US$330 | /nevis/llc |
| Nevis International Exempt Trust | US$300 | US$300 | Page in preparation |
Worth knowing before you compare quotes. Across the formation sites ranking for this search, the published all-in first-year price for the same statutory product runs from about €950 to $3,650. One site presents the government fee as a range of $250 to $450 when it is a fixed figure in a published Order. Another publishes a minimum government fee of US$235, which appears in no Order at any point. The government fee is US$320, and the Order is linked above so you can check it yourself.
Fees verified 7 August 2026. See the full offshore price list for the same table across every jurisdiction we cover.
Who can register a Nevis company, and what you send
Eligibility, under Cap. 7.01(N):
- One incorporator is enough (s.19).
- One director is the statutory minimum (s.70(1)). Some formation sites still publish a three-director minimum, which the Ordinance does not impose.
- One shareholder, natural person or legal person.
- Any nationality, with no residence requirement (s.69(1)).
- No company secretary is required.
- No annual general meeting is required.
- No minimum capital, beyond issuing at least one share.
- The name must end in Corporation, Incorporated, Limited or another recognised suffix (s.20(1)(a)).
- A name may be written in a non-Latin alphabet with an authenticated translation, and the Registrar issues certificates in both scripts (s.21).
What you send. The Articles of Incorporation carry the corporate name, the purposes, the share structure, the registered office and agent, and the incorporator’s details (s.24). Separately, your registered agent must obtain and maintain beneficial-ownership and due-diligence information on you under Nevis anti-money-laundering rules (s.102), so expect to provide identity and address evidence for every director, shareholder and beneficial owner, along with evidence of the source of funds. The exact certification standard is set by the agent’s own compliance policy rather than by the Ordinance, and we confirm it with them before you send anything.
Only a licensed registered agent may file your Articles (s.14(4)). You cannot deliver them yourself, which is why every route below runs through an agent.
How to register a Nevis company, step by step
Name check
Your agent confirms the name is available and carries a permitted suffix, and reserves it if you want it held.
Documents
You send the know-your-customer pack. Your agent prepares the Articles of Incorporation and the bylaws.
Signature
Each incorporator signs and acknowledges the Articles (s.26).
Filing
Your agent files with the Registrar of Corporations, which is the only route in (s.14(4)).
Certificate
The Registrar issues the Certificate of Incorporation, or an Endorsement Certificate where the filing is an amendment or a continuation (s.27).
The regulator publishes no processing standard for a Business Corporation. Its Incorporation Procedure gives the steps and no turnaround. The six formation sites ranking alongside it claim, respectively, 24 hours, one to two days, one to three days, two to three days, three to five days, and “1 to 2 days with an additional 4 to 6 days for the government”. The width of that spread tells you more than any single number inside it. Those six claims were read off the pages ranking for this search on 7 August 2026, and we do not link them. We commit to filing within one business day of a complete document pack. We do not make a promise about the Registry’s own speed, because nobody is in a position to.
What you get, and who this suits
What you get, limited to what we can point at a statute or an Order for:
- the Certificate of Incorporation issued by the Registrar (s.27);
- the filed Articles of Incorporation and the bylaws;
- the share register kept under s.101(3);
- a registered office and a licensed registered agent in Nevis, which the Ordinance requires you to have at all times (s.14(2));
- an apostille on request, at US$50 under the Order above.
Who this suits. A non-resident forming a holding or trading vehicle, who wants the entity choice explained against the statute rather than against a sales sheet, and who accepts that a filing duty follows them home.
Who this does not suit, said plainly:
- anyone trading locally in Nevis. This is the international register, not the domestic one.
- anyone expecting the structure to end their reporting at home. It does not, and the section below sets out what remains.
- anyone whose dispute is already contested or in litigation. That is a lawyer's work, and moving assets once a claim exists creates its own problems.
- anyone who needs a guaranteed bank account. We make introductions. Banks decide.
What a Nevis company must do every year
| Obligation | When | Owed to | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual renewal fee, paid by your registered agent | Before the anniversary of incorporation, not a calendar date | Registrar of Corporations | s.7; SRO 9/2024 item 12 |
| Annual return or financial statements | Not required | — | s.107 |
| Balance sheet and profit-and-loss statement | Only on written request by a shareholder of six months' standing, or a 5% holder | The requesting shareholder | s.107(1) |
| Books, minutes, register of shareholders | Continuously | Kept by the company and its agent | s.101(1) to (4) |
| Records of name, legal status, office, agent and bylaws | Recorded promptly, new since 13 November 2025 | Kept by the company and its agent | s.101(5) to (6) |
| Bearer share certificates held by a licensed custodian, with the owner's identity recorded | Where bearer shares are issued | Custodian, on penalty of a fine up to $30,000 or loss of licence | s.102(1) to (4) |
| Register of charges, where the corporation has created any | From creation of each charge | Kept at the registered office; tell the Registrar if it is held elsewhere. Failure carries a penalty of EC$5,000, about US$1,850 | s.60(2), s.60(4), s.60(8) |
| Corporate income tax return, even with no transactions | Within three and a half months of fiscal year end | St Kitts and Nevis Inland Revenue Department | CIT-101 |
Three of those rows correct something widely published. No annual return goes to the Registrar, though one of the larger Nevis sites states twice that one must be filed. Bearer shares are permitted but immobilised: the custodian records the owner’s name, address, date of birth and nationality, and hands that to competent authorities on request, so the owner is not on a public register but is not unknown either. And the renewal date tracks your incorporation anniversary, so a company incorporated in March never has a December deadline.
Miss the fee for a year, or go 60 days without a registered agent, and the Registrar removes the company from the register (s.119(1) to (2)). You can apply to restore it within three years, and the restoration is retroactive to the date of removal (s.119(4), s.119(9)).
Tax in Nevis: what changed on 30 June 2021
The tax exemption a Nevis company once carried no longer exists. It was not withdrawn quietly by policy. It was ended by the express words of the governing Ordinances themselves. NBCO s.136(5) and NLLCO s.96(5) each provide that the tax exemptions granted to all corporations “shall cease to take effect on the earlier of” two dates, the first of which is 30 June 2021. Four of the five formation sites ranking for this search still sell the exemption as a current feature.
What replaced it is ordinary corporate tax. Corporate income tax is 25% from 1 January 2024. The return is a CIT-101, due within three and a half months of your fiscal year end, and the Inland Revenue Department states it is due “even if the corporation did not have any business transactions during the year”. A dormant company still files.
There is no economic-substance regime in St Kitts and Nevis. That is not a gap in the rules. The Federation rolled its exemption regime back rather than building a substance test around it, recorded by the EU Council as commitment code KN001.
So, is Nevis the kind of place people mean when they ask whether it is a low-tax jurisdiction with loose rules? The honest answer is that it dismantled its offshore exemption regime under international pressure, now sits inside a real tax net, and imposes a filing duty whether or not you owe anything. What it offers is a statutory framework with strong creditor protections, not an escape from tax.
We do not publish a position on whether a non-resident company pays tax on foreign-source income. The residence test that would settle it could not be verified against a primary source, and on a question of this size we would rather cite the statute and stop.
Where Nevis sits on the FATF and EU lists
St Kitts and Nevis is on none of the three lists that matter here. It is not on the FATF list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, as revised at the 19 June 2026 plenary. It is not on EU Annex I, the list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes revised on 17 February 2026. And it is not on EU Annex II, the state-of-play list for jurisdictions with commitments still outstanding.
The reason is the section above. The Council lists Panama on Annex I for, in its words, “a harmful foreign-source income exemption regime” that “has not been resolved”. Nevis had such a regime and abolished it. It is clean because the exemption its own vendors still advertise no longer exists.
For context when you compare, the British Virgin Islands and Belize are both on Annex II. None of the five formation sites ranking for this search publishes either status.
List status verified against the EU Council document linked above and the FATF increased-monitoring list on 7 August 2026. Both are re-checked whenever either body publishes a revision.
What you still owe at home
St Kitts and Nevis has exchanged financial-account information automatically since 2018. Registering a Nevis company is a reporting event at home, not an exit from one. One site in this search states that Nevis “does not participate in automatic information exchange agreements”. That is wrong.
| If you are resident in | What reaches you |
|---|---|
| United States | You remain a US taxpayer on worldwide income. Expect Form 5471, an FBAR where your foreign accounts pass the aggregate threshold, and Form 8938 at its own thresholds. Which form an LLC produces depends on a classification election, covered on the Nevis LLC page. |
| United Kingdom | Which rule reaches you depends on how you hold it. The controlled foreign company rules in Part 9A TIOPA 2010 attribute profits to a UK-resident chargeable company holding 25% or more, and never to an individual. An individual who has moved assets into the structure is reached by the transfer of assets abroad rules in ITA 2007 ss.714 to 751 instead. |
| India | Buying shares in a foreign entity means remitting under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme and the overseas direct investment rules. Both carry reporting to the Reserve Bank of India through an authorised dealer bank. In practice we rarely place Indian buyers in Nevis; Dubai and Seychelles fit that market better. |
| United Arab Emirates | Check whether the company falls inside the 9% federal corporate tax net through its place of effective management. Nevis has its own presumption about where a company is managed, which answers a Nevis question and not a UAE one. |
Registering yourself, using an agent, or hiring a lawyer
Start with the part that removes one option entirely. You cannot register a Nevis company yourself. s.14(4) provides that no person may be, or agree to be, the registered agent of a corporation without a licence issued by the Nevis Island Administration, and the regulator states the incorporation must be carried out by a licensed agent. That requirement sits in the Ordinance rather than in anyone’s sales copy.
| Route | What it gets you | What it does not |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | Nothing. The filing route is closed by statute | Not an option at any price (s.14(4)) |
| A licensed agent, direct | The filing, the registered office, the statutory records, and payment of the annual fee, which s.7 makes the agent's job rather than yours | A view on which of the three entities fits you, or on your position at home. You track the anniversary and the CIT-101 |
| A lawyer | Advice on your facts, bylaws drafted for them, litigation readiness, and privilege. The right call where a matter is contested | Quoted on adjacent Nevis searches at $3,000 to $5,000 in legal fees, and higher all-in |
| WeOpenOffshore | The entity choice explained against the statute, an introduction to a licensed agent, a price with the government fee split out and linked to the Order, and a clear account of what you still owe at home | We are not a law firm, a bank, or a tax adviser |
How Nevis compares
| Nevis | BVI | Seychelles | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Government fee, year one | US$320 | $550 up to 50,000 authorised shares | US$130 |
| Annual renewal | US$330 | $550 at the same band | US$140 |
| Public register of owners | No | No | No |
| Where financial records go | Kept by the company and its agent. Nothing is filed with the Registrar (s.107) | An annual financial return, filed with your registered agent | Records and a six-month financial summary, kept in Seychelles with your agent |
| EU and FATF list status | Clean on both EU annexes and the FATF list | On EU Annex II and the FATF grey list | Clean on both EU annexes and the FATF list |
Nevis is not the cheapest of the three, and Seychelles is materially cheaper on the government half. What Nevis has is the LLC’s charging-order framework and a clean listing position. If you want the options ranked rather than compared, that belongs on our comparison pages rather than here.
Frequently asked questions
- How much does it cost to register a company in Nevis?
- The government charges US$300 to file the Articles of Incorporation and US$20 for the Certificate of Incorporation, so US$320 in year one, and US$330 to renew. Those figures are fixed by Statutory Rules and Orders No. 9 of 2024, in force 1 April 2025. Your registered agent's fee and ours are separate. See the cost table for the full ladder.
- Is Nevis a tax haven?
- Not in the sense the question usually means. Nevis ended its statutory offshore exemption on 30 June 2021, by the express terms of its own Ordinances at NBCO s.136(5) and NLLCO s.96(5). Corporate income tax has been 25% since 1 January 2024, a return is due even with no transactions, and St Kitts and Nevis is on neither the FATF list nor either EU annex.
- What is a Nevis company?
- It is one of three things: a Business Corporation under Cap. 7.01(N), an LLC under Cap. 7.04(N), or an International Exempt Trust under Cap. 7.03(N). Corporations and LLCs sit on two different registers, with the Registrar of Corporations and the Registrar of Companies respectively.
- Can I register a Nevis company myself?
- No. s.14(4) permits only a licensed registered agent to file, and the regulator states the incorporation must be carried out by one. There is no self-filing route at any price.
- Does a Nevis company have to file an annual return?
- No annual return and no financial statements go to the Registrar. s.107 requires a balance sheet only on the written request of a shareholder of six months' standing or a 5% holder. The annual fee is still due on your incorporation anniversary, and a CIT-101 is still due to the Inland Revenue Department.
- What is the difference between a Nevis LLC and a Nevis IBC?
- A Business Corporation, which the regulator calls an IBC, has shareholders, bylaws and share capital, and suits trading and investment holding. An LLC has members, and the charging order is the creditor's remedy against a member's interest, which is why it is used for asset holding. The government fee is identical, so the choice is legal rather than financial. Full detail on the Nevis LLC page.
- How long does it take to register a Nevis company?
- The regulator publishes no processing standard. Formation sites ranking for this search claim anything from 24 hours to about ten days. We commit to filing within one business day of a complete document pack, and we do not make a promise about the Registry's own speed.
Start your Nevis company registration
Government fees on this page come from Statutory Rules and Orders No. 9 of 2024, in force 1 April 2025. Statutory references are to the Nevis Business Corporation Ordinance, Cap. 7.01(N), as amended to Ordinance No. 5 of 2025. List status was checked against the EU Council’s 17 February 2026 revision and the FATF’s 19 June 2026 plenary.
WeOpenOffshore is an offshore formation advisory and introduction service. We are not a licensed registered agent, so we do not file your Articles ourselves. We introduce you to a licensed agent in Nevis, who does. Where an introduction is a paid referral, we say so at the point it appears.
WeOpenOffshore is not a law firm, a bank, or a tax adviser. This page is general information, not legal or tax advice.
You remain responsible for reporting your interest in any foreign company, trust, or account to the tax authority where you are resident.
Fees verified 7 August 2026. Next review 5 November 2026.