Taxes and Accounting for Foreign-Owned Companies in Serbia

Foreign ownership does not change the tax rates

A company or a sole trader registered in Serbia is taxed under the same rules whoever owns it. Owning 100% of a Serbian d.o.o. from abroad does not add a tax, and it does not remove one either. The choice that actually moves your tax bill is the legal form, which is why the comparison of a sole trader and a d.o.o. matters more to your numbers than your passport does.

What foreign ownership changes sits downstream of the Serbian tax: how profit gets out of the country, what is withheld on the way, and how the state where you are tax resident treats the money when it arrives. The last of those is not a Serbian question at all, and no Serbian accountant can answer it for you.

Corporate income tax: 15% of taxable profit

A company pays corporate income tax at a single rate of 15%. It is charged on taxable profit determined in the tax balance, not on the accounting profit shown in your income statement. The accounting result is adjusted under the rules of the law for non-deductible or limited expenses, tax depreciation and capital gains, so the tax due is frequently not the figure you see in the books.

During the year the tax is paid in monthly advances, by the 15th of the month for the previous month. The annual return, accompanied by the tax balance, is filed within 180 days of the end of the tax period, which for a company on the calendar year falls at the end of June the following year.

A sole trader who keeps books does not pay this tax at all. They pay self-employment income tax at 10% on taxable profit, with their own annual return and the same monthly advance pattern.

VAT starts at 8,000,000 dinars, not at the calendar year

Registration becomes mandatory once total turnover over any 12 consecutive months passes 8,000,000 dinars, and the registration form, EPPDV, is filed within 5 days. It is 12 consecutive months rather than the calendar year, which is the detail founders most often get wrong. Entering the VAT system then changes your invoicing: you add output VAT at 20% or 10%, and in return you may deduct the VAT your suppliers charge you.

New payers file the PP PDV return monthly for the entry year and the whole of the following year, and both the return and the payment are due 15 days after the period ends. On entry there is also a one-time right to deduct VAT on stock and equipment you already hold. Voluntary registration is possible before you reach the threshold, but it commits you to at least 2 years in the system.

The flat-rate limit is a different number for a different regime, and confusing the two is expensive. Flat-rate tax is available only to sole traders and only up to 6,000,000 dinars of turnover a year, so a d.o.o. cannot use it. A proposal to lift that limit to 8 million was floated in June 2026 and has not been adopted, so 6 million still applies. You can estimate a flat-rate liability before committing to a form.

Paying yourself: salary, director, dividends

Salary carries a 10% tax on gross 1 above the non-taxable amount of 34,221 dinars in 2026, plus contributions calculated on the full gross 1: 19.90% from the employee and 15.15% from the employer. For a net salary of 100,000 dinars that is a total company cost of 158,644 dinars a month. Work out your own figure before you set a director's pay, because the distance between net and total cost is what surprises foreign owners most.

The PPP-PD return is filed electronically, and the tax and contributions paid, no later than the day the salary is paid out, with the employee registered through CROSO beforehand. Enrolling the founder or director in social insurance through CROSO is one of the first obligations after registration. How that works for a director who is not employed by the company depends on the arrangement and has to be checked against your actual documents rather than assumed. Our payroll service covers the calculation and the filings.

Profit taken out as a dividend is taxed again at 15%, which works out at roughly 27.75% on distributed profit once the 15% corporate tax is counted in. That combined figure, not the headline 15%, is the number to compare against a sole trader's 10% when you choose a form.

If the reason for the salary is that you intend to work in your own company, that is an immigration question as well as a payroll one, and work permits for company owners deals with it separately.

Money leaving Serbia, and the treaty question we will not answer for you

When a Serbian company pays profit or certain fees abroad, a withholding tax applies, as a rule at 20%. It is deducted in Serbia before the money leaves, so it belongs in your cash planning rather than in a year-end reconciliation.

Serbia has double-taxation treaties that can reduce that rate, and the country where you are tax resident may tax the same income again. We do not publish a treaty conclusion here, and you should be wary of any site that gives you one from a country name alone. The outcome depends on your residence, the type of payment, the wording of the specific treaty and the evidence you can produce at the time of payment, so it needs individual review before the first distribution rather than after it. Tax and VAT work is where we look at that against your actual contracts, and where a case needs a lawyer or a tax adviser in your own country we will say so.

Books, annual accounts and e-invoices

A d.o.o. keeps double-entry books all year, and two separate annual filings follow. The financial statement goes to APR by 31 March, exclusively online and signed with a qualified electronic signature. The tax balance and the tax return go to the Tax Administration through the ePorezi portal within 180 days of the year end. Different authorities, different deadlines.

For an owner abroad the electronic signature is the practical bottleneck, so arrange it early: qualified electronic signatures for foreign directors covers how it is obtained and who can sign with it.

E-invoicing through SEF is mandatory if you are a VAT payer or you invoice the public sector, and between private companies it has been mandatory since 1 January 2023. The platform itself is free, and the unavoidable cost is the qualified electronic certificate you log in with, roughly 3,000 to 5,000 dinars a year. The deadlines are where money is actually lost: a received invoice must be accepted or rejected within 15 days, an invoice nobody answers is automatically rejected on day 20, and a rejected invoice gives no right to deduct input VAT. Electronic VAT recording also runs through SEF, within 10 days of the end of the tax period.

What it costs to run, and the account it runs through

Bookkeeping with us starts at 6,900 RSD a month for a flat-rate sole trader and 18,500 RSD a month for a company, as a fixed monthly fee rather than a charge per phone call. The final figure depends on volume, on the number of documents, and on whether you are in VAT and running payroll, and we confirm it after a short consultation before you commit to anything. Our prices are published in full.

Set-up costs are separate and small next to the running costs. The APR fee is 2,500 dinars to register a sole trader and 8,000 dinars to register a d.o.o., and the minimum capital of a d.o.o. is 100 dinars. What registration really costs breaks down the rest, including translation and legalisation of your documents.

Tax, contributions and VAT are all paid from the company's business account, so nothing on this page runs without one. We prepare the company documentation and coordinate the appointment, but the bank decides. Serbia's official guidance on bank accounts for non-residents states, about accounts for individuals, that a bank freely chooses its clients and independently decides whether to enter into a business relationship, acting under its own business policy and internal acts. The official page on company accounts does not address that discretion either way. Opening a business account as a foreign owner covers that step on its own, including what varies from bank to bank.