LinkedInJuly 13, 2026
Monaco's corporate tax is 25 percent, exactly France's rate, with no permanent reduced band for small profits.
And it is the internationally facing trading business, the one a founder brings, that pays it.
Sovereign Ordinance 3.152 of 19 March 1964 runs the opposite way round from every offshore assumption. A business carrying on an industrial or commercial activity in Monaco, whatever its legal form, sole traders included, is taxed once 25 percent or more of its turnover comes from operations made outside the territory. Stay below that line and no profits tax is due. Reach it and you are in.
Two carve-outs worth knowing. Foreign turnover is not about where the client sits, Article 3 tests where the goods are destined and where a service is used or exploited. And a company whose activity is receiving patent, trademark or copyright income is taxed whatever the split.
Take a company over that line, 200,000 euros of taxable profit, distributed in full.
• France. A qualifying SAS pays 15 percent on the first 42,500 euros, then 25 percent. Corporate bill, 45,750 euros.
• Monaco. No such band. For an established company, corporate bill, 50,000 euros. Higher.
• The distribution. France applies the 31.4 percent flat tax on the dividend by default in 2026. Monaco applies no withholding and no personal income tax.
• Net to the founder, about 105,800 euros in France. And 150,000 in Monaco.
That 150,000 assumes what most coverage leaves out. A genuinely resident shareholder with no personal tax elsewhere. French nationals who moved to Monaco after 13 October 1957 are generally taxed in France under the 1963 convention, and a US citizen still files with the IRS.
Every euro of the advantage is created the moment the money leaves the company. None of it inside.
On the index I maintain, Monaco scores 9.61 out of 10 on tax freedom. That score is earned on the personal layer. The internationally facing business pays 25 percent.
So for a founder still running the company, the question is timing more than geography.
Would you move before the exit, or only after it?
Want to see where your own profile actually fits, the free 6 minute diagnostic is in the first comment.
Sourced from GeoCompass, the jurisdiction intelligence layer behind Lucky Nomads.
#internationaltax #monaco #corporatetax
France
Monaco
United States