ITA seeks prosecution for two noncompliant local companies
Information reaching BVI News is that the International Tax Authority (ITA) has formally requested for the police to lay charges against two BVI-registered companies for reported noncompliance.
Our news centre understands that one of those companies has ties to China while the other is said to be dental facility.
It is reported that the ITA issued a notice requesting both companies to provide them information but neither complied and failed to reasonably explain why.
According to Section 5 of the Virgin Islands Mutual Legal Assistance Tax Matters Act: “The Authority may, for the purposes of complying with a request under the Agreement, by notice in writing, require a person or entity … to provide such information as may be specified in the notice, provided that the person or entity is reasonably believed to be in the possession or control of the information to which the notice relates.”
The law further notes that an person who, without lawful or reasonable excuse, fails to comply with a notice issued to them commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $5,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or both. On conviction on indictment (at the High Court) that offender could be fined up to $100,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or both.
Up to publication time, BVI News been unable to independently verify whether the companies have been charged.
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Does the law not understand that majority of Companies registered in the BVI do not have a physical presence in the BVI? There is no office or personnel of the Company in the BVI.
Imprisonment of individuals that reside overseas is unrealistic.
you do realise that someone in the office that holds the paperwork in the BVI on these companies had to sign to become a director and so they must give the information or go to jail
of BVI companies that are sentenced to imprisonment by a BVI court would:
1) Have to be a human person NOT a corporate person
2) The human person would have be in the jurisdiction of the BVI court.
The punitive sentence for these various corporate crimes is somewhat toothless!
What part of there is not a physical office in the BVI do you not understand and the Directors of most of the BVI Business Companies are not in the BVI?
Understand the law and how BVI BCs work before writing rubbish.
They may not be here but it stall has to be filled