This tool is built for founders, not for counsel. Every column in the table is explained below in ordinary words: what it is, and what changes for you in practice. No definitions copied out of a statute.
It is the headline rate a normal resident company pays on its profit. It is the number in the law, before anything is applied to your specific case. Free zones, small-business reliefs, participation exemptions and industry regimes can push what you really pay well below it — and withholding taxes on dividends out of the country can push your total well above it.
FATF is the intergovernmental body that sets anti-money-laundering standards. Its "grey list" — formally, jurisdictions under increased monitoring — names countries that have committed to fixing identified weaknesses and are being watched while they do. It is not a sanction and not a ban. What it changes is how banks treat you: opening an account takes longer, compliance asks more questions about your company and your counterparties, and payments get held for review more often.
This flag is set when broad sectoral sanctions programmes (US, EU, UK) target the jurisdiction itself, rather than a list of named people and companies. Your particular counterparty may be entirely unsanctioned and the transaction entirely lawful. The practical effect is de-risking: banks and payment providers decline whole categories of business connected to the country because screening each case costs them more than the relationship is worth. What the flag does not mean: it does not reflect designations of individual persons or entities. No flag does not mean your particular counterparty is clear — that has to be checked separately against the US, EU, UK and UN registers.
It is the statute that governs how you may collect, store and use personal data — customers, employees, users. Two separate questions hide here. First, what the local law requires of you. Second, and usually the harder one: if you handle personal data of people in the EU or UK, you need a lawful mechanism to move that data into this jurisdiction at all, regardless of how good its own law is.
It is the treaty under which member states agree to recognise and enforce arbitration awards made in other member states. Put plainly: you win an arbitration abroad, and the local courts will normally make the loser pay. Over 170 states are parties. If a jurisdiction is not one of them, your award is a piece of paper there — you would have to litigate the whole dispute again in local courts, under local rules, in the local language.
An apostille is a single standard certificate that makes an official document from one member state valid in every other member state. Your certificate of incorporation, a power of attorney, a notarised signature — one stamp and it travels. Where the Convention does not apply, you fall back on consular legalisation: a chain through a notary, the foreign ministry and the destination country's embassy, each step with its own queue and fee.
In many countries a foreigner may own the whole of a local company outright. In others, some or all sectors require a local partner holding a minimum stake, or a specific vehicle — a free-zone entity, a branch, a nominee structure — to get around the restriction. Those workarounds are legal but they cost money, add a person with rights over your company, and often bring their own limits on what the entity may do.
Some jurisdictions require at least one director who is resident there. In practice you rent one from a corporate services provider. That is a recurring annual cost, and more importantly a governance dependency: a person who signs, who can be replaced by their employer, and whose availability sits between you and every filing that needs a director's signature.
KYC — know your customer — is the set of checks a bank must run before it takes you on: who owns the company, where the money comes from, what the business actually does, who it pays and who pays it. The bank is not being difficult; it is liable if it gets this wrong. The time it takes scales with how unusual your structure looks: multiple layers, owners in several countries, a grey-listed jurisdiction anywhere in the chain.
Usually a country, but not always. Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong are not sovereign states, yet each has its own company law, its own courts and its own tax rules — which is exactly what matters when you are deciding where an entity should live. That is why this tool counts jurisdictions rather than countries.
Informational resource curated by the Ignito legal practice and cross-checked against primary sources. This is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. Rules change — verify against the primary source before you sign or file. Terms of Use