Cook Islands Limited Liability Companies
A Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a hybrid type entity which is treated as a separate legal entity for legal purposes but as a pass-through entity for taxation purposes in the United States. A Cook Islands LLC can be effectively substituted for a US domestic LLC to combine offshore asset protection and estate planning goals.
An LLC can be incorporated under the Limited Liability Companies Act 2008 - the features of this legislation include:
- Single member LLC's are permitted.
- Management may be by a Member or a Manager. The Manager may be a corporate entity and does not have to be a member of the LLC.
- The LLC is not subject to any Cook Islands tax.
- Members and Managers cannot be held liable for the debts of the LLC.
- A creditor of a Member cannot alienate the Member's LLC interest - the only remedy available to a creditor of a Member is a charging order over the member's interest. The right of the creditor is therefore limited to the distributions (if any) of income made by the LLC pursuant to the relevant Operating Agreement.
- A simple annual return is lodged annually with the Registrar of LLCs setting out the name of the LLC and address of the Registered Agent
- There is no requirement to prepare annual accounts or appoint an auditor or to disclose the names of the Manager/Members to any Cook Islands authority.
- Existing LLC's may be re-domiciled into the Cook Islands
Please follow the links below for more information on Cook Islands companies:
Cook Islands International Trusts
Cook Islands International Companies