An offshore company is often registered in a tax efficient country where the beneficial owner of such company does not reside or do business in the country of registration of the company.
In general there are two categories of offshore companies. There are companies which were statutorily exempt from taxation in their jurisdiction of registration provided that they did not undertake business with persons resident in that jurisdiction. Such companies were usually called International Business Companies, or IBCs. Such companies were largely popularized by the British Virgin Islands, but the model was copied widely. However, in the early 2000’s the OECD launched a global initiative to prevent “ring fencing” of taxation in this manner, and many leading jurisdictions (including the British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar) repealed their International Business Companies legislation. But IBCs are still incorporated in a number of jurisdictions today.
Separately from IBCs, there are countries which operate tax regimes which broadly achieve the same effect: so long as the company’s activities are carried on overseas, and none of the profits are repatriated, the company is not subject to taxation in its home jurisdiction. Where the home jurisdiction is regarded as an offshore jurisdiction, such companies are commonly regarded as offshore companies.
Separately there are offshore jurisdictions which simply do not impose any form of taxation on companies, and so their companies are de facto tax exempt.
Offshore companies are used for a variety of commercial and private purposes, some legitimate and economically beneficial, whilst others may be harmful or even criminal. Allegations are frequently made in the press about offshore companies being used for money laundering, tax evasion, fraud, and other forms of white collar crime. Offshore companies are also used in a wide variety of commercial transactions from generic holding companies, to joint ventures and listing vehicles. Offshore companies are also used widely in connection with private wealth for tax mitigation and privacy. The use of offshore companies, particularly in tax planning, has become controversial in recent years, and a number of high-profile companies have ceased using offshore entities in their group structure as a result of public campaigns for such companies to pay their “fair share” of Government taxes.
Detailed information in relation to the use of offshore companies is notoriously difficult to come by because of the opaque nature of much of the business (and because, in many cases, the companies are used specifically to preserve the confidentiality of a transaction or individual). It is a commonly held view that most uses of offshore companies are driven by tax mitigation and/or regulatory arbitrage, although there are some suggestions that the amount of tax structuring may be less than commonly thought. Other commonly cited legitimate uses of offshore companies include uses as joint ventures, financing SPV’s, stock market listing vehicles, holding companies and asset holding structures, and trading vehicles.
Intermediate uses of offshore companies (i.e. uses which might be considered legitimate or illegitimate depending upon a particular person’s view of legitimacy of globalisation and tax planning) include uses as investment funds and private wealth holding vehicles.