When analysing the issue of a company's share capital, one should note that this concept is interpreted differently by civil-law jurisdictions (in particular - Switzerland, Denmark, Poland etc.) on the one hand and common-law jurisdictions (in particular - the United Kingdom, the USA, and the majority of offshore jurisdictions) on the other.

Civil-law jurisdictions interpret the term "share capital" to mean the sum of money subscribed by the members of the company at the beginning of its activities. In most cases, this sum must be transferred to the company's bank account at the moment of its incorporation, or at a later date.

In common-law jurisdictions, however, the authorised capital, as indicated in the documents of incorporation (the company's constitution) simply denotes the amount that is equal to the value of shares that the company is authorised to issue. In many common-law jurisdictions, the fixed franchise tax (at the date of incorporation and annually thereafter) depends on the amount of the authorised capital, indicated in the documents of incorporation - i.e. the greater the authorised share capital, the greater the fixed franchise tax payable. In such cases the company is incorporated with that amount of share capital, which results in the minimum amount of franchise tax. The fact that an amount of authorised capital is stipulated does not mean that the entire amount has to be transferred to the company's bank account. Before the start of its activities, members can subscribe for some shares, usually for only a few dollars. The sum subscribed for the shares is referred to as "paid-up capital".

Distribution of the share capital of the company between its members (shareholders) is reinforced by the issue of the relevant share certificates, the relevant records in the Register of Shareholders, which, depending on the specific jurisdiction, can be either kept by the company itself or by the governmental Register.

The names of the shareholders in some jurisdictions are closed (i.e. bearer shares may be issued); in some other jurisdictions information about the shareholders is kept by the registration agent, and in yet other jurisdictions, the names of the shareholders are entered in the Register of Enterprises and are available to the general public.

In these last two cases, the services of nominee shareholders are being used most frequently at the moment of incorporation of a non-resident company, so as to preserve the confidentiality of the beneficial owner.