Registration of offshore company in Belize

I am proud to pay taxes in the United States. True, I would be proud of not less than half the amount. (c) Arthur Godfrey

A couple of months ago I wrote on Habré about registering a company in Estonia.

Today I want to share the experience of registering a company in Belize, tell a couple of legal subtleties and say a few words about the use of such a company.
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a brief description of

Belize is an offshore jurisdiction and is on the list of offshore zones in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Taxation of offshore companies in Belize is zero.

APDATE:

There are no requirements for filing financial statements and auditing the company.

Formally, the requirement to maintain financial records takes place in Belize. This is an OECD imposed requirement.
As with most other offshore companies.
When registering, the agent will ask you to fill in the following document, where you can indicate the address where the documents are stored:

Resolution of Directors / Beneficial Owner / Members in writing

The undersigned company declare as being the directors of the abovenamed company
follows:

REQUIREMENT TO KEEP ACCOUNTING RECORDS

1. It was hereby that it was a law. Belize:

(a) That made your transactions;

(b) It will be determined at any time; and

© to enable the company to be prepared.

2. It was hereby resolved
kept at the following address:

……………………………………… .. ……………………………
……………………………………………………………………………

Dated this day of 2014.

………………………………………
DIRECTOR
COMPANY

What do businessmen do to not keep records:
1) do not open a bank account in Belize (to reduce the impact on the activities of the “local” company)
2) are ready to withdraw money from the account at the first request to provide documentation (in order to avoid a fine for non-compliance with the requirements)
3) indicate the storage address is not in Belize (so that they could not check)

In general, there was no precedent for a fine, and the requirement remains merely formal, since the “deoffshorization” procedure conducted by the OECD is, in my humble opinion, “an even greater formality”.

To store or not to store is the decision of every entrepreneur. In any case, it is not so difficult.

A shareholder or director of a company can be both a legal entity and an individual, regardless of the place of registration or citizenship.
There are no requirements for the number of shareholders or directors in Belize law.

In Belize, a closed (non-public) shareholder register of the company.

Annual fees

$ 100 - if the share capital does not exceed $ 50,000 and all shares of the company have a nominal value. (i.e., if capital is declared and not contributed);
$ 1,000 - if the share capital exceeds $ 50,000;
$ 350 - if the share capital does not exceed $ 50,000 and some or all of the company's shares do not have a nominal value; and if there is no share capital and all shares do not have a nominal value;
$ 4,000 - if the company has the status of "public investment company".

Fees are paid in the next year, after the year in which the company was registered, until July 31 .
If you have delayed the payment of the annual fee, its size increases by 10% and a new term is given - until October 31st.
If you did not pay the fee before October 31, its size will increase by 50%.

What you need to do to register a company?

Send an official registrar, who has the right to register companies in Belize, with a request to register a company. He will ask you for a copy of your passport. In return, he will provide you with an Application form for filling out (it is not very difficult to fill it in if you are not the first day in business) and will offer to sign a company registration contract with him. After all the documents are ready, will invoice.

How much is the registration of a company in Belize?

The value of a company with a standard share capital (declared but not contributed, with shares that have a nominal value) with the registered agent with which we registered the company, is formed as follows:

$ 100 - registration fee;
$ 175 - payment for providing the Registred Office + Fee of the registrar itself;
$ 75 - delivery of documents;
$ 75 - Apostille (if needed).

Nominal services (for one year):

$ 300 - legal entity, nominee shareholder or director;
$ 400 - individual, nominee shareholder or director;
$ 75 - Power of Attorney from a nominee director or shareholder.

If you want a company with a special form of authorized capital, then paragraph 1) the registration fee will change upwards. The cost of the annual fee is always equal to the cost of the registration fee. In the “annual fees” section I wrote down the details on the amount of payment.

What documents are issued at registration?

- Certificate of Incorporation;
- Memorandum & Articles of Association;
- Appointment of the First Director by the Subscriber;
- Resolution of the First Director;
- Share Certificates.

If you use nominal services, they will sign with you:

The contract for the provision of nominal services, Declaration of Trust, as well as
they will issue a letter (Director resignation letter or Share transfer agreement) with an open date and a nominal signature, where the nominal abandons its place as director or shareholder in the company, respectively.

Bank account

You can open an account both in Belize and beyond. It all depends on your needs, speed, etc.

According to my statistics, the majority of entrepreneurs who own such an offshore, open accounts in Latvia in several popular banks.

There is such a bill of 225 euros, if everything is OK with documents, then they open it very quickly.

The main areas of application of offshore companies registered in Belize

Belize companies use in their operations some outsourcing companies, startups, call centers, owners of various services that accept small amounts of money from a large number of users, owners of games and applications, companies associated with PPC, CPA and others.

Like it or not, offshore remains a convenient tool for doing business and tax planning.

Immediately I will note that offshore is not suitable for every business, but this is not the current topic.

Such a company is created as a parent company, and with the help of it, subsidiaries are established in countries with open shareholder registers. Thus, it is in some way a holding company.

With the help of such companies, they invest in different IT projects (I have already encountered one such case in practice), or they buy real estate.

Tips

The quality of services for registration is not the highest level in Belize. For 2 weeks, you can register a company without any problems. But if you follow the following advice - “after sending a letter to the registrar by e-mail” - always call back to him (for this you need to know English). They respond to e-mails for a very long time.

Before you send the original documents to the company, ask the registrar to make a scan copy and read them carefully; check the names, dates and of course the text itself. There were errors and inconsistencies in the dates.

In the case of a “purchase” of nominal services, ask to send you Utility Bill of face value, or offer to chat on Skype with your face value, where he can show his documents to the camera to make sure that this is a real and live person.

Thanks for attention!

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