Bahamas Bahamas Our Bahamas IBC formation service starts with advice and stays with you to the end. Specialists help you settle the structure, prepare what is needed, and manage the whole incorporation on your behalf, so you are never left working it out alone.
Expanship is a privately owned company. We are not a government agency, department, registry or regulator, and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for the Government of The Bahamas, the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, or the Registrar General’s Department. We advise you, prepare and coordinate your paperwork, and handle the incorporation on your behalf; whether a company is approved, and when, is decided by those authorities alone.
Requirements
Nine things go into a Bahamas IBC. We include two of them in every package, one is optional, and the remaining six are choices your specialist walks you through.
One director is enough and the Articles set the number. Directors may live anywhere and a company may serve as one. Two things are particular to The Bahamas: the Register of Directors and Officers can be read by anyone on a paid company search, and since January 2026 nobody may sit as a director on another person’s instructions.
The people who ultimately own or control the company are identified before it is formed, looked through every holding company until a person is reached. In The Bahamas the record sits with your registered agent and is reachable only through a secure search run for the authorities, so it never touches a company search.
A Bahamas IBC is not asked for a company secretary or for any other officer. The directors may appoint a president, a treasurer or a managing director by resolution when a counterparty expects a title, and a director may hold the office as well. Anyone appointed joins the directors on the register that the public can read.
The Bahamas sets no minimum capital and nothing has to be paid up. Companies are almost always authorised at US$50,000, the usual band, because the yearly government fee is drawn on the authorised amount rather than on what was issued. Any currency, one class or several.
Every Bahamas IBC must have a registered agent in the country at all times, and only a Bahamian financial and corporate services provider may act as one. The agent is the company’s channel to the authorities from the day it is formed. It comes with every package.
The company needs an address in The Bahamas from the day it is formed. It comes with the agent, so you lease nothing and staff nothing. The statutory books live at that address, and a move has to reach the authorities inside a fortnight.
A company with limited liability must end its name in one of the endings the law lists, in English, French, Spanish or German. It cannot match, or come close enough to be confused with, a name already on the Bahamian file. We check availability and reserve the name before anything is drafted.
The Memorandum and Articles are the company’s constitution: what it may do, the shares it may issue, how many directors it has, and how the members decide. The law asks for two subscribers to sign the Memorandum, not one, and both are arranged as part of the package. We draft, they sign, and the company comes into being.
KYC
You send, we sort. Your specialist tells you what is needed, puts it in order as it arrives and checks every item, so the formation moves ahead without delays.
See the full checklistEntity Subtypes
Nearly everyone forming a Bahamas IBC takes the first stop, and it is usually the right one. The others answer specific situations, such as separating assets into accounts or setting an end date from the start. Select a form to read about it, or draw on our expertise and we will tell you which one fits.
Liability limited
The form all but a handful of Bahamas IBCs take. Members hold shares, the company answers for its own debts, and a member risks only what is still unpaid on the shares held.
Liability limited
There is no share capital to hold or hand back. Each member promises in the Memorandum a fixed sum payable if the company is wound up, and that promise is the whole of what can be asked of them.
Liability limited
Two kinds of member in one company, expressly allowed by Bahamas law. Guarantee members promise a sum, shareholders put in capital, and each is answerable only for their own side of it.
Liability unlimited
No ceiling is placed on what the members can be called on for. It is the one Bahamian form that needs no ending on its name, because the endings the law lists are asked only of a company with limited liability. Some home tax systems read a company like this as transparent, which is usually why it is chosen.
Added on top of a company limited by shares
A company limited by shares that writes its own end date into the Memorandum. The term cannot run past thirty years, at least two members are needed, and the name has to carry the form on its face.
Added on top of a company limited by shares
One company carrying several ring-fenced accounts. The assets and liabilities of each account are held apart from every other account and from the company's own, so a loss in one does not reach across.
Not sure which of the six fits? Tell us what the company is for and we will name the kind before a line of the Memorandum is drafted.
Activities and Usage
Holding, trading, services, yachts: a Bahamas IBC covers a lot of ground. Choose the activity nearest to yours below to see how it works, and let our experts handle everything else.
Open the day the company exists, so long as the work is carried on outside The Bahamas.
Open, but with extra steps before the work begins. Our experts will tell you what they are for your plan.
Off limits for this kind of company, whatever it goes on to do.
Holding
A group with a company in three countries keeps three cap tables aligned, consults three sets of minority holders, and runs three separate transfers on the day it sells. One company above all of them reduces that to a single point of ownership. What it does not reduce is what was taken at source: The Bahamas has no double tax treaty network, so the layer this saves is the second one, not the first.
Each operating company below records the Bahamas company in its own register as the holder of its shares.
Dividends come up from every country to the parent, and The Bahamas puts no tax layer of its own on them.
The buyer takes the parent's shares, so every subsidiary underneath changes hands in the same signature.
Private wealth
A family that has settled a trust, or established a foundation, does not want the trustee's own name written across every title, account and holding it owns, and does not want a change of trustee to reopen each one. A company goes in between the settlement and the assets.
Investments, property abroad and interests in other businesses are registered to the company, not the trustee.
The trust or the foundation is the shareholder, and the family's terms sit in that instrument, not the articles.
The shares change hands once. Every title, account and holding underneath stays where it is, in the same name.
Joint venture
Two partners have agreed on the project and not on where to put it. Each has reasons to want its own company law over the venture, and neither will accept the other's. A third country settles the argument without either side conceding it.
Each side takes shares in the same Bahamas company instead of joining a vehicle formed under the other's law.
Board seats, reserved matters and deadlock are written into the constitution rather than left to a side letter.
The venture runs on Bahamian company law, which is English common law, and the last word on it sits in London.
Trading
A trader standing between a supplier in one country and a customer in another does not want the two reading each other's terms, and does not want either country's rules following the whole chain. The contracts move to a company that sits outside both. Where the company itself is run from is a second question, and The Bahamas is one of the places that asks it.
Purchase contracts are signed by the Bahamas company, and it owns the goods from the moment they leave the supplier.
The customer is invoiced by the Bahamas company and pays into that company's own account, on its own terms.
Nothing is shipped through the islands. What the company handles is the contract, the invoice and the settlement.
Intellectual property
When every operating company owns the marks it trades under, the group's rights end up spread across whichever countries it happened to sell in, and one closure can carry a few of them off. Ownership moves to a single place. In The Bahamas that place has to be able to show the work behind it, because holding rights is the one activity the substance rules test hardest.
Marks, patents and copyright are assigned to the company and recorded in its name country by country.
Each operating company pays a royalty for the right, under an agreement priced on arm's length terms.
A closure or a sale downstream leaves the portfolio where it is, under the same owner as before.
Vessel ownership
A yacht arrives with a flag, a crew, an insurance tower and a management contract attached to it, and selling the hull on its own unpicks every one of them. The Bahamian flag is one owners reach for first, and a company holds the whole of it together.
The yacht is owned by the company alone and sails under the Bahamian flag in that company's name.
The company signs for the crew, the cover, the berth and the manager, so no individual appears on any of them.
The buyer takes the company itself, so the flag, the crew and the insurance tower carry on unbroken.
All-in-one pricing for a Bahamas IBC: the government fee, the first year and our specialists' time are inside the figure you see. What is listed is what you pay, with nothing added on afterwards.
Every package above includes the government fees. Those fees are set by the Bahamas authorities, not by Expanship, and are passed on at cost; the rest of the price is our fee for advising you, preparing and coordinating your paperwork, and handling the incorporation on your behalf. Expanship is a private company, not a government agency. Whether a company is approved, and when, is decided by the authorities alone.
Enterprise
For complex structures and ad-hoc requirements. We design and implement sophisticated ownership arrangements and coordinate across jurisdictions, handled by a dedicated project manager.
After Year 1
Your first year is covered by the package above. From year two, one fee a year carries the government fee, your registered agent and office, that year's accounting records declaration and economic substance report, custody of your records, and reminders before each date.
Pros and cons
We would rather you saw both columns before you chose. On one side, what a Bahamas IBC does well. On the other, what it asks of you every year. Our experts will say frankly which one weighs more in your case.
In its favour
The Bahamas levies no tax on income, profits, capital gains or dividends. A yearly government fee stands in for a tax return.
Either may be a person or a company, resident in any country. No local director, no company secretary, no staffed office.
A company trading outside The Bahamas files no accounts anywhere. You keep the records and declare each year that you hold them.
The Share Register stays at the registered office, and beneficial owners are reachable only through a secure search.
No minimum to subscribe, nothing paid up, any currency you like, several classes, and shares with or without par value.
To weigh against
Directors and officers sit on a paid company search, and since January 2026 no one may serve on another's instructions.
Income from abroad arrives with withholding tax already taken at source, and The Bahamas has no treaty to reduce it.
The report is filed by every commercial entity, including one that carried on no relevant activity at all that year.
The government fee, the agent, the office, the records declaration and the substance report all fall due in a quiet year.
Controlled foreign company rules at home can tax its profits as yours, and accounts are exchanged under CRS and FATCA.
The same company under other flags
Compliance
Thirteen duties, sorted by what triggers them. Our team runs twelve of them for your Bahamas IBC as part of the yearly engagement, and tells you in good time about the one that needs you.
Registered agent
A registered agent in The Bahamas, from the day of formation to the day the company ends.
Registered office
An address in The Bahamas, provided by the agent rather than leased and staffed by you.
Statutory registers
Directors and officers, members, charges and beneficial ownership, written up the week the event happens.
Accounting records
Every sum received and spent, held five years from the transaction, with the agent told where they sit.
Annual government fee
One fee a year, drawn on the authorised capital rather than on anything the company earned.
Accounting records declaration
A signed statement that reliable records exist, where they are held, and that we can call for them.
Economic substance report
Filed by every commercial entity, including one that carried on no relevant activity at all that year.
Beneficial ownership
A change in who ultimately owns or controls the company, including one reached through a holding company above it.
Nominee shareholdings
Shares held for someone else are named as such, and the declaration of trust behind them is lodged with us.
Registered office and agent changes
A move of address or a change of agent takes effect when the company file is updated, not when it was resolved.
Register of Directors and Officers
Appointments and resignations, resolved and then refiled. We do it in the week, not at the far end of the window.
Share Register
Transfers, allotments and cancellations, written up with the instrument behind each movement.
Amendments to the constitution
A change to the Memorandum or Articles, including the company name, is resolved and then lodged.
How it runs
Not one of these dates is yours to remember
We open a calendar for the company on the day it is formed, prepare each filing against it, and come to you in good time for the one or two things only you can sign. One team in The Bahamas, and one place to write when something changes.
We hold twelve of them, from the day the company is formed to the day you close it. The only thing we need from you is an answer when we ask for one: a signature on the yearly records declaration, or a confirmation when something about the company changes.
3 to 5
Business days
From the day your checks clear to the day the company exists.
1 + 1
Shareholder and director
Any nationality, resident anywhere, and they may be the same person.
US$1,375
Packages from
One figure, quoted upfront, government fee included.
You do not have a company yet
The vehicle described on this page, formed from wherever you are. We run the checks, reserve the name, prepare the Memorandum and Articles and hand you the register pack.
You already have a Bahamas company
Change the registered agent on a company you already own. It keeps its name, its number and its history, and nothing about the entity itself changes.
Neither of those yet?
Your own tax position, your banking, or whether one of the other five kinds of Bahamas IBC suits you better. Answered in writing within one business day, at no charge.
Talk to a specialistFAQ
What working with us on a Bahamas IBC looks like, and how the company behaves once it is formed, in plain terms. Anything else, put it to our specialists.
Yes, from start to finish. A Bahamas IBC puts no residency or nationality test on its owners or directors, and nothing has to be signed on the islands. The Memorandum needs two subscribers, and both are arranged as part of the package, so your name goes on the company without a trip. Your identity checks are done remotely, the corporate kit is couriered to you wherever you are, and the company can hold its meetings and keep its records in any country afterwards.
It is the whole cost of formation and the first year. Basic, at US$1,375, carries the government fee for authorised capital up to US$50,000, name checks, the Memorandum and Articles with both subscribers, the registered agent and office for year one, the statutory registers, the digital Certificate of Incorporation and courier delivery. Premium, at US$2,499, adds the company seal, the original incorporation paper, incumbency and good standing confirmations, and authentication of the full set. Nothing essential is sold separately, and from year two the renewal is US$1,099.
Yes. Help opening a multi-currency business account with Airwallex is included in every package. For a conventional bank or a payment institution, we advise on which ones take a Bahamas IBC with your activity and ownership, assemble the company papers and the incumbency confirmation banks tend to ask for, and stay with the application until the bank answers. The decision rests with the bank, and we say that plainly at the start rather than promise an account.
Your Bahamas IBC carries thirteen duties for life and we run twelve of them under the yearly engagement, from US$1,099 a year. There is no annual return and, for a company trading outside The Bahamas, no accounts to file. The year has three dates: the government fee on 1 January, the accounting records declaration by 30 September, and the substance report nine months after year end. Keeping the accounting records themselves, for five years, stays with you. We come to you for a signature on the declaration and little else.
Yes to both. Taking it on means changing the registered agent: the company keeps its name, its number and its history, the transfer costs US$350, and the yearly engagement from then on is from US$1,099. Nothing about the entity itself changes. Closing it deserves the same care, because a Bahamas IBC that is simply abandoned collects surcharges before it is struck off. We advise on the cleanest route, prepare the resolutions and the paperwork, and manage the process with the authorities on your behalf.
No. Bahamas law allows only a Bahamian financial and corporate services provider to serve as registered agent, and only that agent may present the company for incorporation, so an owner cannot do it alone. Our work is everything around that rule: advice on whether an IBC and which of its six forms suits your plan, preparation of the Memorandum and Articles, management of the process on your behalf, and a team that stays with the company each year. We are an independent corporate services provider, not a government body.
No. Expanship is a privately owned company. We are not a government agency, department, registry or regulator, and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for the Government of The Bahamas, the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, or the Registrar General’s Department. We advise you, prepare and coordinate your paperwork, and handle the incorporation on your behalf. Whether a company is approved, and when, is decided by those authorities alone.
Our own work: advice on the right structure, due diligence on every member, preparing and coordinating the incorporation paperwork, handling the incorporation on your behalf, and the first year of registered agent and registered office. The government fees are set by the Bahamas authorities, not by us, and are passed on at cost inside the package price.
One director and one shareholder, who may be the same person, based in any country. The Articles fix the number of directors. Two things are particular to The Bahamas: the Memorandum must be signed by two subscribers, which we arrange, and the Register of Directors and Officers can be read by anyone on a paid company search. Since January 2026 nobody may sit as a director on another person's instructions. Beneficial owners at 10% or more are recorded with the registered agent, off any public search.
Yes to both. A company from any country may hold the shares of a Bahamas IBC, and a corporate director is accepted in practice, so a parent or a management entity can take either seat. Every holding company is still traced until a natural person is reached, and anyone at 10% or more is recorded as a beneficial owner. Shares held for somebody else must be declared in the Memorandum and on the Share Register, with the declaration of trust held at the registered office.
Very. The Bahamas sets no minimum capital and nothing has to be paid up, the shares may be in any currency, and they may carry a par value or none. One class or several can be created, with different voting and dividend rights. Nearly every Bahamas IBC is authorised at US$50,000, because the yearly government fee is drawn on the authorised amount rather than on what was issued. A larger authorised capital carries a higher fee, which we quote before you order. Bearer shares are ruled out.
No secretary and no office of your own. Bahamas law asks an IBC for no company secretary and no other officer. The directors may appoint a president, a treasurer or a managing director by resolution when a counterparty expects a title, and anyone appointed joins the directors on the public register. What the company must have is a registered agent and a registered office in The Bahamas at all times, and both are included in every package. Your own premises and staff are not required.
Every commercial entity in The Bahamas files a substance report, including one that carried on none of the nine relevant activities, which files a statement saying so. The report is due nine months after the company's financial year end, and we prepare it and manage the filing under your annual engagement. Where the company carries on a relevant activity, it must show the direction, staff and spending behind it in The Bahamas. A company that holds equity alone meets a reduced test, while holding intellectual property is tested hardest.
Contact Us
Tell us about your plan and our Bahamas specialists will tell you frankly whether an IBC suits it, what the price is and how the process runs. There is no charge for asking.
Expanship is a private company, not a government agency. Submitting this form requests a consultation with our advisors; it does not place an order, start an incorporation, or create a professional relationship, and nothing we reply with is legal, tax, or financial advice.
