Afilias officially announced changes in its corporate structure. Earlier, the company was registered in Ireland, but now it is moving its headquarters to the United States by creating a parent holding, Afilias Inc. Afilias is a large registry administering the general top-level domains .INFO, .MOBI and .PRO. The company is also a technical operator of many national domain zones and new general top-level domains.
Strictly speaking, the transfer is only a formal procedure as the company primarily focused on the US market. Afilias was registered in Ireland due to the country’s liberal tax policy. However, President Donald Trump introduced a plan to relieve the tax burden on US companies. Apparently, he’s succeeded as over the last year, US corporate tax fell from 35% to 21%, according to the data quoted by Domain Incite. This is still higher than in Ireland but, obviously, not so critical for Afilias. Among other reasons for the transfer, the press release states that “more of the company’s shares are now owned by Americans,” and the fact that two key business partners, Public Interest Registry and GoDaddy, are American. The company does not foresee any impact on its operations following the restructuring.
