International structuring

A Global Business Company holds a licence issued by the Financial Services Commission under the Financial Services Act 2007. It is tax resident in Mauritius and can therefore look to the Mauritian treaty network, provided it satisfies the substance conditions set by the regulator: core income generating activities actually carried out from Mauritius, a sufficient number of resident directors, real expenditure, and management and control exercised locally.

An Authorised Company works on the opposite logic. Its effective management and control sit outside Mauritius, it is not tax resident here, and it has no access to the tax treaties. It is a useful instrument, but it is not a treaty vehicle. Presenting it as one is the most common mistake in this field, and the hardest to repair once the structure is built and the flows have started.

Treaty treatment of Indian capital gains depends on the asset, the acquisition and disposal dates, the grandfathering and transitional rules, and any applicable anti-avoidance provisions. The 2016 Protocol changed the allocation of taxing rights for shares acquired on or after 1 April 2017. Current advice must therefore begin with the dates and the treaty text, not a general statement about the jurisdiction.

The regime continues to move. The CCR levy, Corporate Climate Responsibility, applies from 1 July 2024. QDMTT applies from 1 July 2025. Fair Share Contribution rules now apply to qualifying companies and individuals for income years beginning on 1 July 2025, under different conditions. This page is stated as at 14 July 2026 and deliberately quotes no rate: both the rule and the numbers must be verified on the day the decision is taken.

That leaves the question that now dominates all the others. Mauritius left the FATF grey list in October 2021 and the EU list of high risk third countries in January 2022. What a correspondent bank, an institutional investor or a foreign revenue authority now probes is no longer the reputation of the jurisdiction. It is the actual substance of the vehicle. A structure that cannot demonstrate it, with minutes, contracts and records to support it, will not hold. Structuring therefore begins with a plain question, asked before the vehicle is chosen: what is genuinely going to happen in Mauritius.