Companies (Jersey) Law 1991
Company formation
A Jersey company is incorporated with the Jersey Financial Services Commission's registry under the Companies (Jersey) Law 1991. Formation is fast, inexpensive and well served locally. It confers a legal entity. It does not confer permission to trade in Jersey, and it does not by itself create substance.
The easy part
Jersey company formation is a mature, efficient market. A local corporate services provider will incorporate a private company limited by shares in a matter of days, with a registered office, a company secretary and the statutory records in place.
Incorporation does come early. In gov.je’s starting-a-business sequence the company is incorporated before the business licence application, and on Locate Jersey’s relocation route the formation documents go in together with the licence application.
The mistake is not the order. It is treating formation as the hard part, and assuming that a company which exists is a business which may trade. The licence and the staffing permissions decide whether the move works.
What incorporation gives you
A legal entity, registered under the Companies (Jersey) Law 1991, with a registered office in Jersey and the corporate governance obligations that come with it. Jersey also offers structures beyond the ordinary private company — cell companies, LLPs, foundations — which matter for particular purposes and are worth a conversation with a Jersey advocate rather than a web page.
What it does not give you
Permission to trade. That is the business licence, administered by the Business Hub, and it is assessed against Jersey’s population policy rather than against your incorporation documents.
Status for the people running it. Resident business licences are issued to people holding Permanent Entitled, Entitled or Entitled for Work status, with other statuses considered case by case. Owning a Jersey company does not create any of them.
Substance. A registered office is an address. Economic substance requirements, where they apply, ask whether the company is genuinely managed and directed from Jersey with people and premises to match. That is a real test, and it has real consequences elsewhere.
The question the other tax authority will ask
Wherever you are currently resident, that jurisdiction has a view on where a company is centrally managed and controlled, and it will apply that view to your Jersey company regardless of what the registry says.
If the directors sit elsewhere, the decisions are taken elsewhere and the work happens elsewhere, a Jersey registration is not going to carry the argument. This is not a Jersey problem — it is the problem you brought with you, and the person to solve it is a regulated tax adviser in your current jurisdiction, before you incorporate.
We coordinate that advice. We do not give it, and anyone offering you a structure without asking about your existing tax position is selling something rather than advising you. Our regulatory position.
The order we would run it in
Test the licence and the principals’ status before money is committed. Then incorporate and apply — company first and licence second in gov.je’s sequence, or both together on Locate Jersey’s relocation route. Premises and people after. The full sequence, and where the JFSC becomes involved if the activity is regulated.