The Bahamas

The Economic Certificate of Permanent Residence now requires a minimum of BSD 1,000,000 in Bahamian real estate or Central Bank zero-coupon bonds. That is up from BSD 750,000, effective 1 January 2025, and it now comes with a 10-year holding condition. The Immigration Board can revoke residency if you sell the investment early. In practice, this turns residency into a decade-long illiquid position. Sell in year six, and your status may go with it. The Bahamian dollar is pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. The risk of the threshold rising again is not theoretical. It has already moved from BSD 500,000 to BSD 750,000 to BSD 1,000,000, so plan on the assumption that it moves again.

For income, yes. There is no personal income tax, capital gains tax, wealth tax or inheritance tax, and the jurisdiction taxes only on a territorial basis. But the real cost of entry on the property route is the 10% conveyance VAT, charged on the full purchase price and customarily split 50/50 between buyer and seller. On a BSD 1m purchase, that is BSD 100,000 of VAT, with roughly BSD 50,000 falling on the buyer. It is a cost nobody advertises. A proposed real property tax on foreign owner-occupied homes, at a flat 0.625% and capped at BSD 200,000/yr, appears in the 2026–27 Budget and would target exactly this client profile, though it remains a proposal rather than law. In December 2025, the IMF renewed its call for a personal income tax, a step the Davis administration has repeatedly refused to take.

There is no statutory minimum to hold the permanent-residence certificate. But an intention to reside is required, and roughly 90 days a year is the practical expectation. A tax residency certificate is stricter still. It specifically requires 90-plus days in the Bahamas and no more than 183 days in any other single country. Here is the catch. The tax residency certificate is a CRS tripwire, not a shield. It was introduced in response to OECD criticism, and obtaining it makes your accounts reportable as Bahamian. That is its purpose.

In practice, no. The endpoint here is permanent foreigner status. Naturalisation requires 10 years of legal permanent residence, including the 12 months immediately preceding application, plus at least 6 years' residence in the preceding period. So realistically, it takes 11–13 years from arrival. More decisively, the Bahamas does not permit dual citizenship after age 21. That closes the naturalisation endgame for essentially every UHNW client who wants to keep an existing passport. This is a residency and tax play, not a citizenship route.

Not automatically. The official fee scale prices the certificate at BSD 20,000 without the right to engage in gainful occupation, and BSD 25,000 with it. So the right to work is purchasable for a BSD 5,000 delta, which is remarkably cheap and badly under-advertised. Working in your own Bahamian company additionally requires prior approval-in-principle from the National Economic Council, a political rather than clerical body. The cheaper Annual Residence Permit (BSD 3,000/yr) carries no work rights at all.

Yes. There is a gender defect in the statute. Certificates are endorsed to the wife or any dependent child, and practitioners report that female certificate holders cannot currently endorse a spouse. That means a male spouse may need his own separate basis of stay. Bahamian constitutional referenda on gender equality failed in 2002 and 2016, so do not assume this has been fixed. For a female principal applicant, this is a live structural problem to plan around.

It is a cheap, discretionary way to establish lawful residence in a zero-tax jurisdiction without deploying BSD 1m. The cost is BSD 3,000 per year for the head of household plus BSD 300 per dependant, renewable annually at the Director of Immigration's discretion. It suits families trialling the Bahamas, or those whose only goal is to break tax residency elsewhere and spend real time on island. But it runs year to year with no security of tenure, it is not a work permit, and many circulating guides still quote an outdated 2018 figure of BSD 1,000. Use the current BSD 3,000.

No, and clients routinely conflate the two. The Homeowner's Residence Card, issued under the International Persons Landholding Act, Ch. 140, is a facilitated-entry card for second-home owners. It is explicitly not resident status and not a work permit. It requires a habitable Bahamian residence and a primary residence outside the Bahamas, so by design it presumes you live somewhere else. That makes it useless for breaking tax residency. The commonly cited BSD 250,000 property threshold does not appear on the official Immigration page and should be treated as unverified.