Jurisdiction
Sri Lanka
The one place on this list you would use to operate rather than to hold. Standard corporate tax is 30 per cent, and the structuring question is almost always whether an activity belongs inside Colombo Port City or outside it.
- Law
- Companies Act No. 7 of 2007; Colombo Port City Economic Commission Act No. 11 of 2021
- Common vehicle
- Private limited company
- Corporate income tax
- 30% standard
- Investment regime
- Board of Investment, except inside Port City
- Port City
- Own commission; BOI Act does not apply; no exchange controls; full foreign ownership and repatriation
- Outside Port City
- Sector foreign-shareholding limits; reduce below 50% within six months (unlisted) or twelve (listed)
- Use case
- Operating presence rather than holding
Where it fits
Sri Lanka is not an offshore centre and should not be presented as one. A private limited company there is a taxpayer in a 30 per cent jurisdiction, and the reasons to use it are operational: people, cost, a domestic market, or a business that is genuinely carried on in the country.
It appears in structures for that reason rather than for tax, and it usually appears as the operating end of a pair whose holding end is somewhere else on this list.
Colombo Port City, and why it is a different question
The Colombo Port City Economic Commission Act No. 11 of 2021 created a zone with its own commission and its own rules, and the Board of Investment regime that governs the rest of the country does not apply inside it.
Inside the zone: transactions in a range of international currencies, no exchange controls, full foreign ownership, full repatriation of capital and profit, and fiscal incentives granted over long horizons.
Outside it, the ordinary position applies, including foreign shareholding restrictions in some sectors. Where a foreign holding exceeds a permitted threshold it has to be brought below half within six months for an unlisted company and twelve for a listed one. Whether an activity is inside or outside the Area of Authority is therefore not an administrative detail; it decides which body of law the company lives under.
What we would check first
Whether the activity is one the zone will admit, because the answer changes the entire analysis. Then whether the commercial reason for being in Sri Lanka survives the 30 per cent rate outside the zone, and whether the people who need to be there can be.