An offshore corporation refers to a corporation that is registered and managed in a country other than the country in which it does all of its business. In recent years, companies have made the conscious decision to become offshore companies in order to avoid the laws in the county that they do business in.
Currently, the biggest incentive corporations have to become offshore corporations is to avoid the taxes in the country they currently are registered in. For example, many corporations in the United States will do what is necessary to unregister their company from the United States and then register the company in places such as the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda. What these places have in common is that they do not charge taxes against the corporations that are registered there. As a result, many corporations wish to become offshore corporations in these locations.