🏢 Tourism, Offshore Banking & the AVV
Aruba runs a genuinely two-track economy: an onshore side built almost entirely on tourism (roughly 80% of GDP, remarkable even by Caribbean standards) and offshore banking, and a separate, deliberately distinct offshore financial-services regime built around the AVV (Aruba Vrijgestelde Vennootschap, or Aruba Exempt Company). An AVV pays no local tax on foreign-source income, provided its activities stay within specific lanes — holding companies, financial/treasury operations, intellectual property licensing (though not IP development), and captive insurance. Step outside those lanes and you're taxed at Aruba's standard 25% corporate rate instead.
The more common vehicles for regular business — an N.V. (public limited company) or V.B.A. (limited liability company, Aruba's version of an LLC) — go through a Dutch-law notarial process: a civil-law notary drafts the deed of incorporation, it's registered with the Aruba Chamber of Commerce, and the business separately applies for an operating license under the Business Establishment Ordinance. Foreigners can own 100% of the shares in either structure.
🛂 The Director's-License Rule Most Guides Miss
The genuine friction point most guides skip: being a director of an Aruban company isn't automatic for a foreigner, even a Dutch passport holder who wasn't born on the island. A director's license is required, and while it's granted relatively easily to applicants with deep local ties, a "completely non-local" foreign director typically needs to show a substantial investment (roughly AWG 500,000, around $280,000) or bring specialized expertise the local market genuinely lacks — a real gatekeeping mechanism that surprises a lot of first-time offshore-company shoppers expecting a purely paperwork exercise.
Aruba has no stock exchange of its own — there's no local equity market to speak of, and Aruban companies seeking public capital look to Amsterdam or US markets instead. The Aruban florin (AWG) has been pegged to the US dollar for decades, which removes currency risk from the equation entirely for American businesses and travelers alike, a genuinely underrated practical advantage over most of the wider Caribbean.
