The Cyprus golden visa, precisely

“Cyprus golden visa” is a marketing name, not a legal one. What it refers to is permanent residency under Regulation 6(2): invest at least €300,000 plus VAT in qualifying assets, evidence at least €50,000 a year of secured income from abroad, and receive the right to live in Cyprus permanently. That is a real and useful status. It is not a passport, it does not make you a tax resident, and it does not let you take a Cyprus salary — three things the name implies to almost everyone who searches it.

What you actually get, and what you don’t

The four qualifying investments

The regulation treats them as equivalent, and they are not.

The income test sits on top of whichever you choose: €50,000 a year from outside Cyprus — salary, dividends, pensions, rent — plus €15,000 for a spouse and €10,000 per child. The investment money itself must also be shown to have come from abroad.

How it compares with the alternatives

Most people who arrive at this page have not priced the other routes. Two of them cost four orders of magnitude less.

If your goal is simply to live in Cyprus lawfully while you decide, the pink slip does that for €140 in state fees. If your goal is to run a business from Cyprus, the golden visa is the wrong instrument — you need the company route. The golden visa earns its price in one specific case: you want a permanent status quickly, you have the capital, and you do not need to work locally.

What it means for your taxes

Nothing, by itself — and that surprises people who bought it as a tax plan.

Holding Regulation 6(2) status does not make you a Cyprus tax resident. If you do become one, the 2026 numbers apply: corporate tax at 15%, personal income tax starting at zero up to €22,000, and — the part that matters for most investors — dividends to a non-domiciled resident carry no defence contribution at all, only the health contribution at 2.65% capped on €180,000 of income, so at most €4,770 a year. That is delivered by non-dom status, not by the residence card.

One more 2026 change worth knowing if you are buying commercial property in the share of the deal: the defence contribution on rental income was abolished from 1 January 2026, which improves the arithmetic of holding rented property in Cyprus compared with any guide written before the reform.

Why applications fail

• Source-of-funds gaps. The money is real; the paper trail explaining where it originated is not.
• Income that does not read as foreign. Projections, invoices to future clients and Cyprus-source earnings do not satisfy the €50,000 test.
• The wrong property. A resale apartment in the residential category is the classic self-inflicted refusal — and the money has usually already moved by the time anyone checks.
• Adult children. Ages 18 to 25 qualify only as financially dependent students.
• Compliance drift after approval. Missed annual confirmations quietly turn a permanent status into a revocable one.

How we run it

1. Fit check first: whether the golden visa is even the right instrument for your goal, or whether a cheaper route does the same job.
2. Category choice — property, shares or funds — priced against tax, VAT and exit, not just eligibility.
3. Source-of-funds file built to examination standard before anything is signed.
4. The asset vetted against the scheme’s terms: first-sale status, VAT treatment, the five-employee test where shares are used.
5. Filing, biometrics and follow-through to issue — then the annual-confirmation calendar, diarised from day one.

For the full mechanics of the status itself, see permanent residency under Regulation 6(2). If a passport is what you are really after, read what Cyprus citizenship actually requires before you spend anything.