US$750,000 is the published minimum under the Permanent Residence Economic Permit route, for a purchase of Bahamian residential real estate held in your own name. Applications of US$1,500,000 and above are routed for accelerated consideration by the Department of Immigration. The property must be genuine residential real estate — raw land, commercial buildings, or boats do not qualify.

For life. That is the headline advantage of the Bahamas over most zero-tax residencies: no fixed renewal term. The permit endures so long as you retain the qualifying property and continue to meet the good-character requirement. If you later sell the property without replacing it, the permit can be revoked.

No. There is no minimum physical presence for the Permanent Residence permit itself. However, if you want a Bahamas Tax Residency Certificate (TRC) usable for CRS purposes, you need to spend at least ninety days per year in the Bahamas and demonstrate that the country is a genuine base — utility bills, bank activity, local medical records, and the qualifying property actively used.

Not directly. The standard Permanent Residence Economic Permit does not carry general employment rights. If you want to work or run a Bahamian business, you apply separately for a work permit tied to a Bahamian employer or for a business licence if you are establishing your own company. Some Permanent Residence permits are issued with an endorsement permitting the holder to engage in their own trade or business; this is assessed case by case.

Correct. The Bahamas has never levied a personal income tax. There is also no capital-gains tax, no inheritance or estate tax, no wealth tax, and no gift tax. Government revenue is funded through 10% VAT, import duties, stamp duty on real-estate transactions, and business licence fees. There is no annual personal tax return.

Yes. Your spouse and dependent children under 18 (or students up to 26) are included in the same family application and share the lifetime permit. Each dependant needs their own police certificate, medical, and supporting documents. There is no additional real-estate threshold for adding dependants — the US$750,000 applies to the family unit.

Four to eight months from engagement to issuance on the standard track, or two to four months on the accelerated US$1.5M+ track, assuming the real-estate purchase and the source-of-funds file move in parallel. Delays are almost always on the client side — gathering historical bank records, police certificates from multiple countries, and evidence of the source of the purchase funds.

Yes, but realistically most clients will not receive it. Naturalisation requires at least ten years of legal residence (with a qualifying period of continuous residence immediately preceding the application), knowledge of English, and a good-character assessment. The grant is discretionary at the ministerial level and the annual number of naturalisations is small. Plan for lifetime Permanent Residence as the goal and treat citizenship as a bonus.

VAT on conveyance has largely replaced the older stamp-duty regime on residential real-estate sales to foreigners. The headline rate is typically 10% on purchases above US$1 million, with lower tiered rates below that. Bahamian real-estate attorneys provide the definitive calculation on your specific purchase. This is paid in addition to, not included in, the US$750,000 minimum investment.

The Permanent Residence permit itself has no rigid day count, but the Department of Immigration can review your file if you are absent from the Bahamas for an extended period or if there are material changes (sale of the property, change of family status). For CRS and foreign-tax purposes, what matters is demonstrating that the Bahamas is genuinely your centre of life: utility bills, bank activity, local medical records, and a day count of ninety or more.

Yes, the Bahamas has been a participating jurisdiction in the Common Reporting Standard since 2018 — but this is widely misunderstood. CRS is not a general broadcast of your banking information. Under CRS, a Bahamian bank reports account holders to the tax authority of the country where the account holder is tax-resident. If your declared tax residency is the Bahamas and you hold a valid Bahamian Tax Residency Certificate, your Bahamian account is retained within the Bahamas only — there is no onward exchange, because the Bahamas does not levy personal income tax and has no domestic reason to escalate the data. CRS only "sends data abroad" when the account holder's tax residency is elsewhere. Becoming a genuine Bahamian tax resident is precisely how you exit the CRS feed to your former home jurisdiction.

A full police certificate from every country where you have resided in the last ten years, enhanced due diligence on your source of wealth, a medical certificate, evidence of sufficient ongoing means, and two character references. Sanctions screening, politically-exposed-person checks, and adverse-media review are standard. Prior convictions, sanctions exposure, or unverifiable source-of-funds are the main reasons a Bahamian file is declined.