Cook Islands Company Formation & Registration Offshore

What if you could set up a company that foreign courts struggle to touch? The Cook Islands has been doing exactly that since 1982. You get an international company built for asset protection, one shareholder and one director, no minimum capital, and a registry that keeps your name off the public file. Formation takes days, not months. But the tax rules changed in 2019, and most pages online still have not caught up. Here is what a Cook Islands company formation actually involves in 2026.

What Is a Cook Islands International Company?

It is the South Pacific's answer to the IBC — with sharper teeth.

A Cook Islands International Company (IC) is an offshore entity formed under the International Companies Act 1981-82. Other places call it an international business company. The Cook Islands calls it an IC. Same idea, different label.

You can set up an international company as a company limited by shares, or as a company limited by guarantee, with or without share capital. Most clients choose shares.

Here is what makes it different from other offshore companies in Belize or the Seychelles:

• It sits inside the world's strongest asset protection framework. The Cook Islands wrote the first modern asset protection statute — the International Trusts Act 1984 — and the IC is the corporate layer that operates underneath it.
• No public register of owners. Shareholder and director details are not on a public file.
• Only one of each required. One shareholder. One director. Either can be a person or a company. Neither has to live anywhere near the Cook Islands.
• Speed. Registration is typically approved in around three business days once your agent files a clean application.

The Cook Islands is an archipelago of fifteen islands between Hawaii and New Zealand. The islands are self-governing in free association with New Zealand. New Zealand handles some external affairs, but only in consultation with the Cook Islands. Tourism is the biggest earner. The offshore industry is second.

That second point explains a lot. The Cook Islands government has backed its offshore financial centre for over forty years. When financial services are your second-largest industry, you defend them — and the jurisdiction has consistently chosen to modernise its rules rather than lose the sector.

Should You Incorporate in the Cook Islands?

Ask yourself one question: are you protecting assets, or chasing a zero tax bill?

If it is asset protection, the Cook Islands is hard to beat. If it is tax, you need to read the tax section below carefully, because the old story is out of date.

What you actually get when you incorporate in the Cook Islands:

Clients choose an offshore company in the Cook Islands for a short list of reasons:

• Strong asset protection statutes — among the most tested anywhere in the world
• Political and economic stability, and English common law
• English as the official working language
• Minimal disclosure and reporting obligations
• No minimum paid-up capital, and shares in any currency
• Directors and shareholders of any nationality, resident anywhere
• Meetings held anywhere in the world, including by phone or video
• Redomiciliation in and out of the jurisdiction is permitted
• A mature regulator with a fully electronic international registry

Cook Islands Companies: Which One Do You Actually Need?

Most pages get this wrong, so read this bit twice.

The Cook Islands runs two separate company registers. They sit under different laws, are run by different bodies, and charge in different currencies. Picking the wrong one costs you time and money.

On the domestic register you can incorporate a new company or register an overseas company yourself. You set up a client account, then file online with the Registrar. To incorporate a new company or register a branch, the fee is NZD 75 and NZD 500 respectively.

The international register does not work that way. You cannot register a Cook Islands company on it yourself. A licensed Cook Islands trustee company has to file for you.

Note the residency trap. Under the Companies Act 2017, a domestic company must have at least one director living in the Cook Islands or New Zealand — and if in New Zealand, that person must also be a director of a New Zealand company, per the Ministry of Justice's own reform highlights. That rule does not apply to an International Company. Many pages copy it across. It does not belong there.

Your three options on the international register

The Cook Islands offers three structures here, and they are not interchangeable:

1. International Company (IC). The classic structure. Company limited by shares or by guarantee. Governed by the International Companies Act 1981-82.
2. Cook Islands Limited Liability Company (LLC). Introduced in 2008 and modelled on US state law. Members and managers, governed by an operating agreement rather than articles. Cook Islands LLCs are the fastest-growing product here and are commonly used as the asset-holding layer inside a Cook Islands Trust. See our full guide to Cook Islands LLC formation.
3. International Trust. Not a company, but often the reason clients come here at all. See Cook Islands Trust.

A word of warning that matters more than any other line on this page: the Cook Islands limited liability company and the IC are taxed differently. The IC lost its statutory exemption in 2019. The LLC's exclusion under section 76 of the Limited Liability Companies Act 2008 was not touched. Most sites treat them as interchangeable. On tax they are not.

What Does the International Companies Act 1981-82 Require?

Less than you would expect from a jurisdiction this well regulated.

The Act provides the statutory basis for incorporating international business entities. Governance comes from the Act itself plus your memorandum and articles of association. Those two documents define what the company does and how the people inside it relate to each other.

The requirements in plain terms:

• Shareholders. One or more. Individuals or corporate bodies. Non-residents are fine. Details are not on a public file, and nominee shareholders are permitted.
• Directors. At least one director. Natural person or body corporate. No nationality or residency restriction. The same person can be sole director and sole shareholder.
• Secretary. A local qualified secretary must be appointed — in practice an officer of your licensed trustee company. The FSC maintains a secretaries filing (form ICA/4) for exactly this purpose.
• Registered agent. An IC must appoint a Cook Islands trustee company as registered agent. This is not optional.
• Share capital. No minimum. At least one share must be issued. Preference shares, redeemable shares, shares with or without voting rights, and shares of no par value are all permitted. Bearer shares are not.
• Meetings. Anywhere in the world, by telephone or electronic means, or by proxy. Shareholders can agree to waive the annual general meeting.
• Records. The company must keep accounting records accurate enough to show its position, held by the resident agent within the Cook Islands.
• Filing. An annual return to the Registrar giving the company name and the registered agent's address. Shareholders can resolve to waive filing accounts and appointing an auditor.
• Redomiciliation. A foreign entity can continue into the Cook Islands, and a Cook Islands IC can continue out. Both routes carry published FSC fees.

One restriction worth knowing: residents of the Cook Islands cannot hold a beneficial interest in an International Company. The structure is built for non-residents only.

A material correction on bearer shares. Older pages — including earlier versions of this one — list bearer shares as available. They are not. The Financial Supervisory Commission board resolved on 15 November 2017 to phase out bearer instruments issued under the International Companies Act, requiring existing bearer shares, warrants and debentures to be converted, redeemed or surrendered by 1 July 2018 and discouraging any new issuance. If you are reading a page that still offers them, that page is at least eight years out of date.

How Much Does It Cost to Form a Company in Cook Islands?

Two numbers matter when you form a Cook Islands company, and providers rarely separate them.

Government fees

These are published by the Financial Supervisory Commission's prescribed forms and fees schedule and set by the International Companies (Prescribed Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2014:

• International Company (form ICA/1) — US$310 to register, US$310 each year to renew on form ICA/2
• Limited Liability Company (form LLC/3) — US$210 to register, US$210 each year to renew
• Name reservation (form ICA/11) — US$25
• Late lodgement penalty — US$20
• Transfer of domicile into the Cook Islands (form ICA/23) — US$310

Service fees

On top of the government fee sits your registered agent, registered office, company secretary and document preparation. This is the real cost driver, and it is not optional: an International Company cannot exist without a licensed Cook Islands trustee company standing behind it. Published market rates vary by a factor of five depending on whether you go direct to a trustee company, through an online agent, or through a US attorney.

We do not publish a fixed list price for Cook Islands formations, because the right structure depends on whether the IC stands alone or sits underneath a trust. Contact us for a quote on your situation.

Key Corporate Features of a Cook Islands International Company

How Do You Set Up a Company in the Cook Islands?

Five steps, and your agent does most of the work.

To incorporate an international company, a licensed trustee company files on your behalf. You cannot file directly. Here is the sequence:

1. Reserve the company name. It must be unique and not confusingly similar to an existing name. The company name may be in any language, but an English translation must accompany it. An IC must end in "Limited" or "Ltd" to denote limited liability. Reservation is form ICA/11 at US$25.
2. Appoint your registered agent. A Cook Islands trustee company licensed by the FSC. They also provide your registered office.
3. Complete due diligence. Certified passport copies for every director, shareholder and beneficial owner, plus proof of address dated within three months. Your agent completes KYC and AML checks before filing, not after. Weak paperwork here causes more delay than the registry ever does.
4. Prepare and file the documents. Memorandum and articles of association go to the Registrar with form ICA/1. For an LLC it is articles of organisation on form LLC/3 instead.
5. Receive your corporate pack. The certificate of incorporation, entity extract, first board resolution, share certificates, registers of members and directors, and a certificate of incumbency.

Approval usually lands within about three business days once the file is clean. Published turnarounds across the market range from two days to two weeks — and in every case the variable is KYC clearance, not the Registrar.

How Is Cook Islands Tax Applied to International Companies?

This is the section most sites still get wrong, so here is the current position.

On 17 December 2019 the Cook Islands passed the International Companies (Removal of Tax Exemption) Amendment Act (2019 No. 12), listed on the FSC legislation register. It repealed the exemption that had applied since 1982. International companies incorporated from 18 December 2019 fell into the domestic tax regime immediately. Companies that already existed were given until 2022 to comply, under transitional regulations made in 2021.

What that means for a new company today:

• Company income tax. A flat 20% for a resident company and 28% for a non-resident company, under the Income Tax Act 1997 as administered by the Revenue Management Division.
• Residency test. Under section 82(2) of the Income Tax Act 1997, as set out in the Cook Islands' own OECD tax residency filing, a company is resident if it is incorporated in the Cook Islands and its directors exercise control there. Most ICs are structured to fall outside this.
• Non-resident ICs are taxed only on Cook Islands-sourced income. That source rule is broad, and it can catch things like trustee fees earned by a private trust company.
• Withholding tax on dividends paid to non-resident shareholders is 15%, in line with the domestic regime the 2019 reform folded ICs into. Note that Cook Islands withholding applies to income derived in the Cook Islands, so whether it bites on a given distribution turns on source — a question for a Cook Islands adviser on your facts.
• No capital gains tax, inheritance tax, estate duty, gift tax or wealth tax.
• VAT is 15% per the Cook Islands Statistics Office, but only on supplies made inside the Cook Islands.
• A corporate tax return must be filed annually.

Important: a new Cook Islands IC should be assessed as a taxable vehicle from day one, not as a legacy tax-free IBC. Anyone still selling it as a zero-tax structure is quoting a rule that was repealed six years ago. The Cook Islands LLC is the structure whose exclusion survived, which is a large part of why LLC volumes are climbing.

And whatever the Cook Islands charges, you still owe reporting in your home country. Talk to your own tax adviser.

How Private Is a Cook Islands Company?

Private from the public. Not invisible to tax authorities. There is a difference, and it matters.

What stays private:

• Shareholder and director details are not published on any public register
• Accounts are not publicly accessible
• Nominee shareholder and nominee director services are permitted
• Disclosure generally requires a Cook Islands court order

What does not:

A material correction. Older versions of this page stated that the Cook Islands does not participate in automatic exchange of information. That is wrong, and it has been wrong since 2016. The Cook Islands implemented the OECD Common Reporting Standard through the Income Tax (Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2016, in force from 26 September 2016, with the Income Tax (Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information) Regulations 2017 following. The Revenue Management Division operates a live CRS reporting portal, and the Cook Islands is a member of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.

There are no double taxation treaties. There is instead a network of Tax Information Exchange Agreements — the government confirmed its nineteenth on signing with the Czech Republic, and MFEM publishes the current list.

So: your financial account information is reportable to your country of tax residence. Any page telling you otherwise is out of date. The Cook Islands sells asset protection and confidentiality from private creditors — not secrecy from revenue authorities.

Worth noting on reputation: the Cook Islands appears on neither the FATF grey list nor its blacklist following the 19 June 2026 FATF plenary, and it appears on neither Annex I nor Annex II of the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions as at the February 2026 update.

What Can You Use a Cook Islands International Company For?

Almost anything, as long as you do it somewhere else.

There are no restrictions on doing business in the Cook Islands' name overseas, unless the activity is illegal or needs a licence. The limits are on trading locally, and on banking, insurance and real estate, which all require the appropriate licence.

Common uses for a company registered in the Cook Islands:

• Holding investments and savings
• International trading, trade and distribution
• E-commerce and professional services
• Forex and securities trading
• Intellectual property holding
• Financial management and treasury
• Asset protection and financial privacy from private creditors

The Cook Islands also offers foundations under the Foundations Act 2012, and the international trust, which remains the flagship product here. Many clients run an LLC underneath a structure administered by a Cook Islands trustee company. That pairing is the classic combination.

How Is Cook Islands Company Formation Changing in 2026?

Quietly, and in a direction that surprises most people.

The stat

The Cook Islands financial services sector recorded 1,023 registrations and renewals in the January to March 2026 quarter — the highest quarterly figure in the dataset available since 2019, and a 13.2% increase on the same quarter in 2025. LLC registrations and renewals rose 23.4% year on year. Source: Cook Islands Finance, the government's financial services development authority.

What 25 years of formation work tells us about that number

Here is the counter-intuitive part. The Cook Islands removed its headline tax exemption in 2019 — and volumes went up, not down.

That tells you who is actually buying. Clients who wanted a zero-tax shell left years ago for cheaper jurisdictions. The clients who stayed were never here for the tax rate. They were here because the Cook Islands asset protection statutes have been tested in real litigation for four decades, and because the jurisdiction has stayed off every major blacklist while doing it. Losing the tax exemption filtered out the price shoppers and left the asset protection buyers, who in our experience are the more compliant half of the market and the easier half to bank.

The LLC's 23.4% growth is the same story in miniature: advisers are routing clients to the structure whose protection is strongest and whose tax position is cleanest, rather than the one with the best marketing.

A hedged prediction

If current trends hold, expect the LLC to keep taking share from the IC over the next two to three years, and expect the IC to settle into a narrower role as a trading and holding vehicle where the tax filing is a feature rather than a cost. We would also expect continued pressure on beneficial ownership transparency across all Pacific centres. This is a projection based on registration trends and current international standards, not a forecast of any announced legislation.

Cook Islands Company Registration with Offshore Protection

Your package includes:

1. Government registration fee (first year)
2. Registered office address (first year)
3. Registered agent services (first year)
4. Company secretarial maintenance
5. Certificate of incorporation
6. Memorandum and articles of association
7. Appointment of first directors
8. Consent actions of the board
9. Share certificates
10. Register of directors
11. Register of officers
12. Register of shareholders
13. Free phone and email consultations

Join thousands of clients who have used Offshore Protection for more than 25 years. Every formation includes free support from our lawyers on day-to-day management of your overseas company.

Start your Cook Islands incorporation today — with or without a bank account.

Cook Islands Company Formation FAQs

• Can a foreigner start a business in the Cook Islands?

  Yes. An International Company is designed specifically for non-residents. There is no nationality or residency requirement for directors or shareholders, and one person can hold both roles. The reverse is also true: residents of the Cook Islands cannot hold a beneficial interest in an International Company. If you want to trade locally in Rarotonga instead, you use the domestic register and will need approval from the Business Trade and Investment Board.

• How much does it cost to form and renew a Cook Islands company?

  The government fee is US$310 to register an International Company and US$310 each year to renew it. An LLC is US$210 either way. A name reservation is US$25 and the late lodgement penalty is US$20. On top of the government fee sit registered agent, registered office and secretarial fees, which vary widely across the market. Contact us for pricing on your situation.

• How long does incorporation take?

  Usually around three business days from the point your registered agent files, once the name is reserved and due diligence is complete. Published turnarounds across the market run from two days to two weeks. The registry is rarely the bottleneck. Incomplete KYC documents are.

• Is a Cook Islands international company still tax free?

  No. The statutory exemption was removed on 17 December 2019 and took effect the following day. New International Companies fall under the domestic regime: a flat 20% for a resident company and 28% for a non-resident company, with an annual corporate tax return required. Non-resident ICs are taxed only on Cook Islands-sourced income. The Cook Islands LLC kept its separate exclusion under section 76 of the Limited Liability Companies Act 2008.

• Do Cook Islands companies report under CRS?

  Yes. The Cook Islands brought the OECD Common Reporting Standard into domestic law through a 2016 amendment to the Income Tax Act, in force from 26 September 2016, with implementing regulations in 2017. The Revenue Management Division runs a live CRS reporting portal and the jurisdiction is a member of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes. Your account information is reportable to your country of tax residence, and you remain responsible for your own home-country filings.

• Can I file the incorporation myself?

  Not on the international register. An International Company must appoint a licensed Cook Islands trustee company as registered agent, and that agent files the application. On the domestic register, run by the Ministry of Justice, you can create a client account and file online yourself for NZD 75.

• Do I need a local director or shareholder?

  No. One shareholder and one director are enough, and either can be an individual or a corporate body of any nationality, resident anywhere. You do need a local qualified company secretary and a Cook Islands registered agent. The residency rule you may have read elsewhere, requiring one director in the Cook Islands or New Zealand, applies to domestic companies under the Companies Act 2017, not to International Companies.

• Can a Cook Islands international company still issue bearer shares?

  No. The Financial Supervisory Commission resolved in November 2017 to phase out bearer instruments issued under the International Companies Act, and required existing bearer shares, warrants and debentures to be converted, redeemed or surrendered by 1 July 2018. Any page still listing bearer shares as available for a Cook Islands IC is out of date. Registered shares, preference shares, redeemable shares, non-voting shares and shares of no par value all remain permitted.

• Do I have to hold an annual general meeting?

  Shareholders can agree to waive it. Where meetings are held, they can take place anywhere in the world, by telephone or other electronic means, or by proxy. They can also resolve to waive filing accounts and appointing an auditor.

• What does a Cook Islands international company have to file each year?

  Two things. An annual renewal with the Registrar on form ICA/2, carrying the US$310 government fee, and a corporate tax return with the Revenue Management Division. The company must also keep accounting records sufficient to show its financial position, held by the resident agent in the Cook Islands. Those records are not publicly accessible, and shareholders can resolve to waive both the audit and the filing of accounts.

• Should I choose an IC or a Cook Islands LLC?

  The IC suits share-based ownership, multiple investor classes, and businesses that want a conventional corporate structure. The LLC suits asset holding, single owners, and anyone sitting a company underneath a Cook Islands trust — and its tax position is cleaner, because its statutory exclusion survived the 2019 reform. LLC registrations and renewals grew 23.4% year on year to March 2026. We will walk you through both on a consultation.

• Can I move an existing company to the Cook Islands?

  Yes. A foreign entity can continue as a Cook Islands International Company on form ICA/23 for a US$310 government fee, and a Cook Islands IC can continue out to another jurisdiction. Redomiciliation is permitted in both directions.

Ready to Register a Cook Islands Company?

Establishing a Cook Islands International Company gives you one of the most tested asset protection frameworks anywhere, real privacy from private creditors, one shareholder and one director, and formation in days. The tax picture changed in 2019, so the structure needs planning rather than a template. That is what we do. Book a consultation and we will map the right structure for your situation.