At the risk of thread drift......
Quote:
Originally Posted by goboatingnow
DOJ, Channel island company law and tax etc, is a specialized area unto itself. for ordinary EU people you can break the law just by having a bank account there
|
ordinary EU people can break the law by having a bank account at home, let alone elsewhere in the EU. having a bank account in the Channel Islands (or any other "offshore" jurisdiction) is exactly the same. The problems arise simply from not declaring what you have (where required to by the law in your home country). If it wasn't like that more folks here would be picking spuds!
Quote:
In most jurisdictions companies must trade. ( i.e. you cannot be loss making for ever).
|
But the benefit of a Jersey /
Offshore Company that is aso resident
offshore is that it is not in another jurisdiction so it can do WTF it wants (including being loss making forever. or simply owning a
boat or a goldfish
).....for the owner of the company there may well be tax reporting requirements in home country (and the Jersey Company may well be "looked through" by the home tax authorities (as if it did not exist and the assets /
income were owned personally) but that is a seperate matter to being legally allowed to do pretty much WTF it wants). The Jersey Company pays tax - but at the rate of 0% (as does my company
). If the Owner is not resident in Jersey he is not subject to Jersey
Income Tax (just whatever is due elsewhere), unlike me who has to pay nearly 20%
.
Really the big benefit of a Jersey company is simplicity (in annual paperwork) being tax neutral (within Jersey) with the Jersey tax side also requiring minimal paperwork or reporting - the complications come from other jurisdictions and there laws / tax laws. Of course nothing comes for free - and there is a cost to having a company based over here as need to put hand in pocket to have set up and run. Nowadays you do need a good reason to justify the cost - as likely looking at a couple of Łk a year for even the most basic holding company.
Quote:
Usually trusts are used to hold just assets.
|
Yeah, usually. Lots of benefits to those, some downsides (everything has).
Quote:
IN the EU you do not have the benefit of corporate anonimity ( in general ) this is one of the peculiarities of the channel islands
|
I am not terribly sure if that is true, certainly the info for a Jersey Company on
ownership and the specifics on what a company owns / does is not available to the public. But then again, could say exactly the same as your (or my) bank account. But overall the info to trace
ownership and activity (if legally required) is held at least to the equivalent (if not better!) than other Jurisdictions - just not for casual (nosey?) enquirers. Privacy vs Secrecy?
Quote:
Most of boats registered into corporate entities are or were dodging tax, many were caught and the clamp down continues. IN particular sailing around as a EU resident in a Channel island registered boat is like a red rag to a bull. ( the french LOVE inspecting them)
|
But if you have your paperwork in order, then not a great problem, and sometimes that paperwork even includes that the VAT has been paid (just as an aside, nowadays over here if a boat was to be based in the EU by an EU resident (and a regulated services provider was used) then 99% of the time it would be the case that if no VAT was paid on the boat that written
advice would be required from a tax proffessional (and not a cut and paste from the Internet! - someone with PII insurance!). As you suggest, "the good old days" are long gone.
FWIW, if someone was after to do something "naughty" on boat VAT then better places to do that than using Jersey. From what I can tell the good VAT frauds always seem to involve the UK........