Many offshore jurisdictions have made efforts to make sure that their company law provides features such as minimal or optional statutory filing obligations, availability of bearer shares, non-disclosure of beneficial ownership, minimum number of directors, minimum information on public file, ability to hold directors meetings anywhere in the world, lack of requirement to file audited records, flexibility in regards the amount and paying-up of the authorised capital, and similar. It is for you to decide if any of those unique features (which will usually be widely advertised by the agents in the respective country) are of any particular interest for you.
Apart from that, an offshore company is an offshore company – generally they are quite similar to each other. Virtually all entities that are known as “offshore companies” in the narrow tax benefit sense will have the same distinct feature. Such company is essentially unburdened of any substantial tax obligation and all the reporting that usually comes with it, insofar as it stays out and away from the country where it has been registered. Thus, they will also be free from the requirement to prepare and file the financial declarations for income tax reporting. At the same time there are particular types of entities, subject to what is called “designer taxation”, which pay minimum rate of tax. An example of that is a Seychelles Special License Company, which pays between 1.5% and 5% of tax, and, consequently, is also supposed to file tax returns.
