Nevis Company Formation: LLC and Business Corporation

The company law on this page is Nevis island law, not federal law. Nevis companies are formed under the Nevis Limited Liability Company Ordinance, Cap 7.04(N) (in force 1 January 2018), or the Nevis Business Corporation Ordinance, Cap 7.01(N), and are registered by the Registrar at the Nevis Financial Services Regulatory Commission (FSRC). St Kitts has a separate regime under the federal Companies Act. When people search for a 'St Kitts and Nevis company', the offshore vehicle they mean is the Nevis LLC or the Nevis business corporation, so that is what this page covers.

Both forms are still registrable. The FSRC's own FAQ says there are two types of international company in Nevis, and its LLC and corporation service pages carry live fee tables and forms. You cannot file directly: the FSRC says formation goes through a licensed trust and corporate service provider acting as registered agent. Bearer shares are banned since the 2023 amendment to the Business Corporation Ordinance, and neither Ordinance has a series-LLC or protected-cell provision.

The registry fees are published and short: USD 300 (XCD 810) to file the articles of an LLC or a corporation, USD 300 (XCD 810) every year, USD 50 for a certificate of good standing. They come from the Fees Regulations made in December 2024 (SRO 9 and 10 of 2024), in force from 1 April 2025. The registered agent's own fee is not published by the regulator, so it goes into your quote, itemised apart from the registry fees.

What a Nevis company gives you is specific. Section 96 of the LLC Ordinance and section 136 of the corporation Ordinance exempt a company that does not carry on business in Nevis from Nevis tax. For LLCs, sections 60 to 62 limit what a creditor of a member can do to the member's interest. What comes with it is also specific: an annual return to the tax authority, owner records held by the agent, a tax-residence test that works against a Nevis-based manager, and owner information that the agent holds and tax and law-enforcement authorities can obtain. If you are still choosing a jurisdiction, the company formation hub compares them, and the pages for the BVI, Seychelles, Belize and Cayman Islands cover the nearest alternatives.

Statute references on this page are to the consolidated texts the FSRC publishes, showing the law as at 31 December 2020 (LLC Ordinance, Business Corporation Ordinance), read together with the amendments the FSRC hosts from 2022, 2023 and 2025. We confirm the current text before any filing. For the licences we handle on the island, see our St Kitts and Nevis overview; this page covers company law only.

An LLC that does not carry on business in Saint Christopher and Nevis is not subject to corporate, income, withholding, stamp or asset tax, or exchange controls, based on or measured by assets or income originating outside the Federation, and distributions to members are exempt from Nevis tax and withholding (LLC Ordinance section 96(1)-(2)). Section 136 of the corporation Ordinance is the equivalent. The acts that do not count as carrying on business include holding a Nevis bank account, holding board or member meetings in Nevis, keeping books and records in Nevis, having a registered agent, and investing in Nevis companies.

The exemption has two limits. First, the grandfathering that let pre-2019 entities keep it while doing business in Nevis ended on 30 June 2021 (sections 96(4)-(5) and 136(4)-(5)); the ordinary tax law applies to them now. Second, the exemption is Nevis-side only. The St Kitts and Nevis Inland Revenue Department (SKNIRD) says in its September 2020 guidance that the Federation operates a worldwide system of corporate income tax for residents and taxes non-residents only on income sourced in the Federation. So we do not describe Nevis as a territorial system: the foreign-income result comes from the exemption sections and the source rule, and it depends on the company not being tax resident in Nevis. It says nothing about tax in the country where the owners live or where the company is managed.

Residence is the point to get right. SKNIRD's guidance says a company is resident where its central management and control sits, which in practice is where the board physically meets. Incorporation in Nevis alone does not make a company resident, and delegating secretarial work to a registered agent does not either. A bank account in the Federation and investment in Federation equity do not create a taxable presence. A non-resident that has a business enterprise in the Federation (an office, branch or agent doing business) is taxed on the profit attributable to it. The 25% corporate income tax rate for resident companies appears in Deloitte's 2026 summary; we did not find it on a primary tax-authority page, so treat it as a secondary figure.

The yearly duties are short but they are not zero.

We found no standalone economic substance law for St Kitts and Nevis. None of the two Ordinances, their amendments, or the FSRC pages on LLCs, corporations, supervision and anti-money-laundering mention economic substance, and Deloitte's 2026 highlights say there are no economic substance requirements. This is a finding about the texts we read, not a promise that none will be introduced.

What Nevis has instead is three things that do similar work. The annual CIT-101 return asks where the company's records are kept and whether it is resident. The SKNIRD residence test looks at where the board meets. And the registered agent holds owner records and must identify the beneficial owner before acting. None of them asks you to hire staff or rent premises in Nevis. All of them put a record on file about where the company is really run.

There is a clash in the statutes that you should know about. Section 48(5) of the LLC Ordinance and section 69(3) of the corporation Ordinance presume that management and control is in Nevis if at least one manager or director is resident or registered in Nevis and meetings are regularly convened from Nevis. SKNIRD's residence test treats central management and control as the test for taxation in Nevis. Read together, a Nevis-resident manager and board meetings held in Nevis point towards Nevis tax residence, even though section 96(3) says meetings in Nevis and a registered agent are not themselves carrying on business. We therefore do not recommend a Nevis-resident manager or Nevis-held meetings to a client who wants the company to stay outside Nevis tax residence, and we put the position in writing at engagement.

On the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions, KPMG's summary of the Council's update of 9 October 2026 shows St Kitts and Nevis in neither Annex I nor Annex II (KPMG, EU list update). We state this as reported, because the Council's own page did not open for us. SKNIRD's own guidance records that the Federation was listed in March 2018 and removed in February 2020. We do not state the Federation's FATF listing status on this page, because we could not read the FATF's own publication; we confirm it before any filing. CFATF's October 2025 follow-up report, the regional assessor's own page, says the Federation is compliant or largely compliant with 35 of the 40 FATF Recommendations.

Anyone who pays the fee may inspect and copy the documents filed with the Registrar (LLC section 24, corporation section 28). What is filed is the articles. For an LLC that means the name, registered agent and office, management style, purposes, and the names and addresses of the organisers. For a corporation it means the name, agent, share authority, the initial directors if named, and the incorporator. The registers of members, managers, shareholders and directors are kept by the company, optionally copied at the agent, and not filed at the registry. Whether the online registry search shows organiser or director names today we have not verified, and we check it by hand.

There is no central public register of beneficial owners in Nevis that we found. The mechanism, as CFATF describes it, is that the company keeps its records and the registered agent holds beneficial-ownership information and gives it to competent authorities, such as the financial intelligence unit, law enforcement, courts and the tax authority. The FSRC FAQ says regulated entities must identify the beneficial owner before establishing a business relationship with a legal person. A registered agent will therefore ask for a certified passport, two reference letters (one from a bank, one from a lawyer or accountant), proof of address, and a source of funds and wealth declaration. The public does not see those documents, and the authorities can.

The company has its own duties. A corporation must keep a register of beneficial owners with the name and address of each (section 101, amended 2023). An LLC must keep a register of members and a register of managers (section 67A, added in 2023). Changes to registers copied at the agent must be notified to the agent within 15 days, records are kept for six years after dissolution, and a default carries a penalty of up to $10,000 (the amendments print a dollar sign, and we have not confirmed whether that is XCD or USD). The 2025 amendments also require both kinds of entity to keep accurate records of their name, legal status, registered office and agent, and their basic regulating powers.

Bearer shares are prohibited. Section 102 of the corporation Ordinance was replaced in 2023: no new bearer shares, no conversion to bearer, and existing bearer shares were converted automatically after a six-month window. The FSRC FAQ confirms it. CFATF's October 2025 report text still says IBCs can issue bearer shares; it appears to predate the 2023 change, and the Ordinance, being later, governs.

Opening an account is a separate application from forming the company, and formation carries no promise of one. We found no primary source that describes how a non-resident Nevis company opens an account, and no published statistics, so we state no approval rate, no timeline and no list of banks that accept Nevis entities. Anything of that kind would be our own experience, and we give it to you in the quote, not on this page.

Two facts help. Holding a bank account in Nevis does not by itself make the company carry on business in Nevis for tax purposes (LLC section 96(3)(a), corporation section 136(3)(a)), and SKNIRD repeats that an account in the Federation does not create a taxable presence. And what a bank outside Nevis will ask for is close to what the registered agent already collects: identity of the owners, source of funds and wealth, references and proof of address, plus a clear account of what the company does and where it is managed.

For gaming and crypto groups our working position is an account with an electronic money institution or neobank, not a traditional bank, and we do not promise one. Our pages on high-risk merchant accounts, gaming company bank accounts and crypto-friendly banking explain what providers ask for and why applications fail.

This is the reason many owners choose a Nevis LLC over a corporation, so it is worth reading in the statute rather than in marketing. Older guides cite section 43 of the LLC Ordinance. In the current consolidated text the rule is section 60, with the creditor package in sections 60 to 62, unchanged by the 2022, 2023 and 2025 amendments we read.

A judgment creditor of a member, including a trustee in bankruptcy, can apply for a charging order. It entitles the creditor only to distributions as and when the LLC makes them (section 60(1)-(2)). It is the sole remedy, whether the LLC has one member or several (section 60(5)). The creditor gets no foreclosure, seizure, levy, attachment or order for an accounting (section 60(6)), no remedy against the LLC's own property (section 60(9)), and no power to interfere in management, force distributions, dissolve the LLC or admit members (section 60(11)). A charging order expires three years after it is entered and cannot be renewed (section 60(15)). Fines, penalties and punitive or multiplied damages are excluded from the sum recoverable (section 60(3)).

The procedure is tilted the same way. The Nevis High Court does not enforce foreign judgments against a member's interest (section 60(7)), and no interlocutory order against the LLC in relation to a creditor's claim will be issued or recognised in Nevis (section 60(14)). A creditor must deposit a bond with the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, in an amount the High Court determines, before suing (section 62). Some commentary quotes a fixed dollar figure for that bond. The statute text we read gives none, so we quote none. Section 61 deals with fraudulent disposition: the creditor must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the LLC was formed, or property transferred into it, with the principal intent to defraud and that the member was left insolvent. The claim must be brought within two years of the creditor's cause of action accruing and, if the transfer was earlier, within one year of the transfer. The remedy is limited to the transferred property, and transfers made before the creditor's cause of action arose are not caught.

Now the limits, because this is where marketing runs ahead of the law. These sections are creditor-remedy rules for a member's interest in a Nevis LLC. They do not touch tax, they do not hide ownership from any authority, and they do not protect against claims against the LLC itself. They bind the Nevis High Court, not a foreign court with jurisdiction over the owner. In Wells Fargo Bank v. Barber (M.D. Florida, decided 4 February 2015), as the National Law Review reports it, a court treated a single-member Nevis LLC interest as personal property located where the owner lives and allowed foreclosure on it despite the charging-order-only rule. We rely on a secondary summary of that case and would read the opinion before quoting it. We have not verified any Nevis court decision applying section 60. A Nevis corporation has no equivalent of section 60. If creditor protection is the main reason you want the structure, speak to counsel in the country where you live before you commit.

A Nevis company is a company with an exemption, a records regime and one useful creditor rule. It is not a way to leave tax, ownership or liability behind. Several claims in marketing for Nevis companies do not survive a reading of the Ordinances, and we list them here.