Offshore Company for an Online Business: Complete Guide

An offshore company for an online business is a vehicle that sells, invoices and collects payment from outside the owner's home market, while being incorporated and supervised in another jurisdiction. In Mauritius, the vehicle built for non-resident owners is the Authorised Company. It suits some internet activities well, others only with care, and a few not at all.

This page is the entry point for anyone weighing an online business offshore structure. It explains the legal frame once, then sends you to the page that deals with your own activity: an online shop, consulting, freelance services, software, intellectual property and so on. Nothing here is advice on your personal situation. Whether the structure works for you depends on where you live, where your customers are and how the business is run day to day.

What an Authorised Company is, in plain terms

The Authorised Company is created under the Companies Act 2001 and then authorised by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) under section 71A of the Financial Services Act 2007. The statute describes the profile it is meant for: a company whose majority of shares or voting rights is held or controlled by a person who is not a Mauritian citizen, which conducts its business mainly outside Mauritius, and whose central management and control sit outside Mauritius.

Three ideas in that definition matter for an internet business:

• Foreign ownership. The owner is not a Mauritian citizen. If you are asking whether this applies to you, read who can own an Authorised Company first; the nationality test is only the start.
• Business conducted mainly outside Mauritius. Your customers, suppliers and platforms are expected to be abroad. A company that trades mostly with the local market is a different case.
• Central management and control abroad. The company is not run from a Mauritian office. Decisions about the business are taken by the owner or directors from wherever they actually live and work.

The same law gives the company a Mauritian registered agent, which must be an FSC-licensed corporate service provider (Management Licence). That provider files the application with the FSC, keeps the registered office and is the company's contact point with the authorities. The provider sits inside a regulated sector: under the anti-money-laundering legislation, company service providers are reporting persons and are supervised, which is why they ask for identity documents and a clear description of your activity before they act.

The Global Business Corporation regime, governed by section 71 of the same Act, is a separate category with different requirements; it is outside the scope of this page.

Why online businesses look at this structure

The appeal is usually practical rather than exotic. An internet business often has no shop, no stock in the owner's country and customers spread across several markets. Owners look for:

• a company that sits in a recognised legal system and not in a secrecy haven;
• a registered agent that is licensed and supervised;
• a clean place to receive payments and issue invoices under a company name rather than a personal one;
• a structure that can hold a brand, a domain and a customer base separately from the owner.

None of these is a tax result. The Income Tax Act treats both a Global Business Licence holder and an Authorised Company as a "global business entity", and certain charges, such as the Alternative Minimum Tax of section 44A, do not apply to that category. That is a feature of the Mauritian rules, not a promise about what you will pay in your home country, where the owner and the company may still face taxation. The taxation of an Authorised Company is covered on its own page, and it is the point where most projects stand or fall.

Which online activities fit: a routing table

The table below is the map of this section of the site. For each type of online activity it says what usually makes the structure attractive, what you should check before going further, and where the detailed treatment lives.

Some activities have their own sector pages that this hub does not reproduce: Amazon sellers, affiliate marketers, online course creators, digital agencies, app developers, content creators and import-export traders. The detail is deliberately kept there, so that this page stays a map and not a second copy.

A quick way to orient yourself

The decision tree below is not a legal test. It sorts the first questions that decide whether the Authorised Company is a plausible fit, and points to what should be examined next.

What the law says an Authorised Company may not do

The Financial Services Act lists activities, in its Fourth Schedule, that an Authorised Company cannot carry out except where the FSC Rules provide otherwise. They fall into five categories: banking; managing or administering a collective investment fund or scheme as a professional; financial services; corporate services such as head-office, nominee, director or secretarial services for companies; and professional trusteeship.

For an online business this has concrete consequences:

• A marketplace that holds customer money on behalf of others, or a platform that provides financial services to its users, is likely to be a regulated activity and not an ordinary online business.
• A company that sells corporate-formation or nominee services online is itself performing a regulated activity.
• A business whose model is investment advice or fund administration is not an ordinary e-commerce case, whatever the website looks like.

The FSC may also refuse a Global Business Licence application when the proposed activity is unlawful or contrary to the public interest, or when it could damage Mauritius's reputation as a financial services centre. The same logic of reputation and legitimacy runs through the approach to Authorised Company applications. A business that depends on a model regulators treat as sensitive should expect more questions, not fewer. The limits of an Authorised Company page gives the full picture.

An Authorised Company that operates without the required authorisation commits an offence under the Act, punishable by a fine of up to MUR 1,000,000. That is a reason to check that the structure is properly authorised before it trades, not a point to treat lightly.

The structure in practice

Once the company exists, an online business typically runs as follows. The owner holds the shares; a director, who does not have to be a Mauritian resident, takes decisions; the registered agent provides the Mauritian address and handles regulatory filings; the company contracts with platforms, processors and customers in its own name.

Two points deserve emphasis. First, the registered agent is not the manager of your business; it keeps the company in good standing. Second, your own role as the person controlling the company is not neutral. Where you live, where you work from and where you take decisions all affect the tax analysis in your country and may affect the company's own position. The permanent establishment risk deserves a read before you rely on any assumption about residence.

Authorised Company or local company?

If you are not a Mauritian citizen but plan to sell mainly to Mauritian customers, the Authorised Company is probably not what you want. The comparison below shows why the two regimes are built for different people.

The Authorised Company is, in a sense, the opposite of a local company: its design assumes the business and the decision-making take place elsewhere. If your online business is based in Mauritius, serves local customers and is run by someone living on the island, the structure fits poorly. The page on offshore versus local company develops the decision.

From idea to a company ready to trade

The sequence is the same whatever the activity. The registered agent submits the application to the FSC; the FSC decides; then the company is incorporated and set up. Since 1 October 2024, the FSC must grant an application within 10 working days of the date the application is deemed complete, including applications for an Authorised Company authorisation, except for applications filed before that date. The clock starts when the file is complete, which depends on the quality of your documents and your answers.

The Registrar of Companies' official guide indicates that a company is registered in half a day, while the Customer Charter refers to half an hour after properly completed forms are filed. These are the registry's own targets for the incorporation step; they do not include the preparation of your file, the checks run by the provider or the opening of a bank account.

The details of each step are in how to open an offshore company in Mauritius, and it is worth working through a checklist before you commit any money. For a first contact, the contact form on this site passes your request to an FSC-licensed corporate service provider (Management Licence).

Costs, fees and what the official figures say

The Registrar of Companies' guide of 4 April 2025 gives registration fees for several company types. For an Authorised Company, the incorporation fee shown is USD 100. For comparison, the same guide shows MUR 3,000 for a private Global Business Company and MUR 13,500 for a public one. These are the registry's fees, not the whole cost of a project: provider fees, the FSC's own fees and ongoing charges come on top.

On the FSC side, the Financial Services (Consolidated Licensing and Fees) (Amendment) Rules 2026, Government Notice No. 119 of 2026, were made on 29 June 2026 and came into force on 1 July 2026. They replace the earlier fee schedule, including for Authorised Companies. For the 2026-27 renewal cycle, the FSC moved the deadline for annual fees to 30 September 2026, with payment through its FSC One platform, which can be made by direct debit or from the deposit account of an FSC-licensed corporate service provider (Management Licence). Check the current schedule with your provider rather than relying on a figure you have read elsewhere.

Changing provider later also has a cost: since 1 August 2024, an application to change the registered agent of an Authorised Company must be accompanied by the fee set in the FSC Rules. The page on annual fees explains how these charges recur, and changing provider covers the switch itself.

Beneficial ownership: the part that never disappears

An online business owner often assumes that a company abroad means anonymity. In Mauritius that is not how it works. Every Mauritian company must identify its beneficial owner and any nominee at all times and record them in a separate register: full name and residential address, national identity or passport number, nationality, and the holding structure that identifies the ultimate beneficial owner (Companies Act 2001, section 91(3A), as updated on 15 May 2026).

The Registrar of Companies keeps a Beneficial Ownership Register that is open to the competent authorities and to other prescribed public authorities. The Companies Act does not describe it as a public register. That is a narrower statement than "the owner is hidden": your name is known to your provider, the registry and the authorities, and it may be shared with your bank and your payment processor. The question of owner privacy is therefore a matter of who can see the information, not whether it exists.

The older definition in section 91 used a threshold of 25% of voting rights; the current wording refers to a prescribed percentage. The Registrar has also published guidance on identifying beneficial owners on its Guidelines page, dated 5 October 2026, which this site has not reviewed in detail. If you hold shares through another company or a trust, ask your provider how the identification will be done.

Tax points an online business should not skip

The Mauritian rules are only half of the picture. Three themes recur on the pages of this site, and they apply to nearly every online business:

1. Mauritian tax treatment. The Income Tax Act contains partial exemptions for certain categories of income, such as foreign-source dividends and interest, under conditions of substance. Other charges, such as the Corporate Climate Responsibility Levy and the Corporate Social Responsibility fund, apply to companies generally under the Act. Whether and how they apply to a given Authorised Company is a point to confirm with a qualified adviser. See the tax page.
2. Taxation in your home country. Many countries tax their residents on worldwide income or have controlled foreign company rules. A company in Mauritius does not switch these off. Read about controlled foreign company rules and about how the owner is taxed at home.
3. Indirect taxes and customer location. Selling to consumers in the European Union or elsewhere can trigger VAT or sales tax registration even if the company is in Mauritius. See VAT on EU sales.

Trading in goods is a special case. Since the Finance Act 2026, with effect from 13 August 2026, the definition of "export of goods" includes the international purchase and sale of goods shipped directly from the exporting country to the importing country without a physical stop in Mauritius. This matters for dropshippers and import-export traders, but its practical effect depends on the facts of each transaction, so take advice before relying on it. The trading use case is where this is treated in more detail.

Banking and payments: the real bottleneck

For most online businesses the question that decides the project is not the incorporation, it is the bank account and the payment processor. A company that exists on paper but cannot collect payments cannot sell. Banks and payment providers carry out their own checks and they decide for themselves: the FSC authorisation does not oblige any institution to open an account.

Expect questions about the product, the customer base, the source of funds and the owner's background. Applications that describe a vague "online business" tend to meet more resistance than those that explain a defined product, a defined customer and a real flow of money. The banking page sets out the options, why banks refuse explains the common reasons, and online payments deals with processors.

Questions to settle before you start

Before you spend money on a structure, a short list of honest answers will save a lot of time:

• Where will I live and work while the company operates?
• Who are my customers and in which countries?
• Does my activity fall under a regulated category?
• Is the income active (my own work) or passive (royalties, licences)?
• What do the tax rules of my home country say about foreign companies that I control?
• Can I describe my business model to a bank in a few clear sentences?
• Who will keep the books, and in which tool?
• Which FSC-licensed corporate service provider (Management Licence) will I use, and have I verified its licence?

The checklist before creating an offshore company goes further, and verifying a provider's licence takes only a few minutes.

Common mistakes with online businesses

Several patterns come up repeatedly in enquiries from online sellers and service providers:

• Treating the company as a tax switch. The company is a legal vehicle. It does not erase the owner's obligations at home.
• Running the business from Mauritius while claiming the foreign-managed profile. The structure assumes central management and control abroad. A mismatch between the paperwork and the reality is a problem for the owner.
• Selling regulated services under a trading label. Anything that looks like a payment service, a fund or a nominee service needs separate analysis.
• Ignoring the paperwork after incorporation. Annual filings, including a financial summary due within six months of the end of the financial year, are part of the deal. See the annual obligations page.
• Choosing a provider on price alone. The provider is your gateway to the regulator. See scams and red flags.