Incorporation of an offshore company in Belize

I am proud to pay taxes in the United States. True, I would be proud of at least half the amount. (c) Arthur Godfrey

A couple of months ago I wrote on Habré about the registration of 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 application of such a company.

a brief description of

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

The taxation of offshore companies in Belize is zero.

APDATE:

There are no requirements for filing financial statements and conducting an audit of the company.

Formally, the requirement to maintain financial records takes place in Belize. This is a requirement imposed by the OECD.
As in most other offshore companies.
When registering, the agent will ask you to fill out such a document where you can specify the address where you store the documents:

Resolution of Directors / Beneficial Owner / Members in writing

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

REQUIREMENT TO KEEP ACCOUNTING RECORDS

1. It was hereby RESOLVED that the Company shall keep or cause to be kept proper accounting records (as prescribed under Section 3 (1) and (2) of the Accounting Records (Maintenance) Act, No. 18 of 2013 of the Laws of Belize:

(a) That are sufficient to show and correctly explain the Company's transactions;

(b) To enable the financial position of the Company to be determined with reasonable accuracy at any time; and

© To enable for accounts of the Company to be prepared.

2. It was hereby resolved that the accounting records of the company shall be
kept at the following address:

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

Dated this day of 2014.

………………………………………
DIRECTOR
COMPANY

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

In general, there were no precedents regarding the fine, and the requirement remains only formal, as the “deoffshorization” procedure conducted by OECD, in my humble My opinion is "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 Belizean legislation.

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

Annual fees

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

Fees are paid the following year, after the year in which the company was registered, until July 31 .
If you are late in paying the annual fee, its size increases by 10% and a new deadline is given - until October 31.
If you did not pay the fee before October 31, its size increases by 50%.

What needs to be done to register a company?

Send a letter to the 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 (filling out it is not very difficult if you are not the first day in business) and will offer to conclude a contract with him for registering the company. After all the documents are ready, invoice.

How much does a company registration in Belize cost?

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

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

Nominee 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 registered 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 section "annual fees" I wrote down the details on the amount of payment.

What documents are issued during 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 nominee services, then they will sign with you:

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

Bank account

You can open an account both in Belize and abroad. 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 at several popular banks.

Such an account costs 225 euros, if everything is OK with the documents, it opens very quickly.

The main areas of application for offshore companies registered in Belize

Belizean companies use 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.

I’ll write right away that offshore is not suitable for every business, but the current topic is not about that.

Such a company is created as a parent company, and with its help 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 various IT projects (I have already encountered more than one such case in practice), or they buy real estate.

Advice

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

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

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

Thanks for attention!

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