LAUSR

We contribute to the rare evidence of driving motives of establishing new onshore and offshore companies by analysing the situation in the Slovak Republic in 2014. We analyse financial and ownership data for the Slovak enterprises already included in onshore and offshore business, providing data by corporate service providers on the driving motives and their combination for the Slovak customers in 2014 and the available external data assessing the quality of the Slovak business environment. We present the empirical evidence that the motive of tax benefits is ranked as the most important, followed by the anonymity of the UBO, flexible arrangement of ownership relations, asset protection, asset management and trusteeship and special cases. In the second part of our research we provide empirical evidence on significant areas of the business environment affecting the number of newly established onshore and offshore companies by the Slovak enterprises between 2005 and 2014. The indicators assessing the quality of the Slovak business environment are divided into two groups - paying taxes plus doing business and the quality of the legal system in Slovakia. Our research shows that from the first group is insignificant only the indicator of time to comply with taxes. On the other side, the perception of corruption and the functionality of the state institutions are evaluated as significant from the second group.