tax dodging coming to an end slowly and painfully?

… actually it’s a disconnect as IR may not be aware that the Bahamian registered office and agents of these 250,000 IBCs are not the business offices of these companies which are spread out across the globe and that they actually don’t have the data nor the manpower or the fees to complete this requirement.

… time to move to TCI, BVI, Delaware, Cayman

If you think TCI, BVI, Cayman and - with a now Trump president - Delaware is a solution, you have absolutely no idea about financial services.

Wow, I’ve used BVI registrations for the last 30 years

Let me assure you it’s far more efficient and the regulators actually understands the role of its agents

Also Delaware and Wyoming now offer “tax see through” LLCs with far less cost, greater efficiency, transparency and zero regulatory nonsense.

This is truth. Especially in the weird urgent manner they keep adding more requirements. Such as when they required Large Tax payers to have audited financials. Some of which are large in gross revenue but have little profit margins, now had 5 months to start their frist audit, by firms ill equipped to understand 15-30 years of unaudited business and DIR being woefully understaffed.

They had real opportunities to publish forthwith a book or document on all the new requirements to come in the 3-5 years. But, I don't believe they even know what's happening in the next few months. They expect these entities to expend immediate resources at the looming threat of their "Tax Compliance Certificate" and other penalties.

Dexter Fernander's comments clearly show that he hadn't done any research regarding what role a Registered Agent plays in company administration.

Sad that we have uniformed and lazy people in charge of major agencies.

Your last sentance had me immediately cast my mind to our really dumb arse AG Ryan Pinder who has already crippled our nation's ease of conducting financial services business with the onerous annual economic substance reporting he allowed to be imposed on bonafide Bahamian owned and controlled companies by CESRA, 2023. Time and time again, doofus Pinder has displayed his great eagerness to genuflect to the taxation masters of the "big government" globalist bureaucrats within the OECD and the EU Council who believe they are entitled to stomp all over the sovereign interests of smaller nations like the Bahamas.

Now we have doofus AG Pinder, at the behest of corrupt PM Davis (who is also minister of finance), collaborating with our Inland Revenue agency to weaponize CESRA, 2023, against Bahamians and Bahamian businesses by imposing even more onerous annual reporting requirements on them if they are a fee-paying client of a local financial and corporate services provider.

What's being done here is fundamentally wrong for the following main reason:

Registered agents are paid an annual fee by their corporate clients and are expected to represent the interests of their clients as opposed to the interests of the Inland Revenue agency. Corporate clients should not be paying their registered agents to gather information that should already be readily available to Inland Revenue from other departments or agencies within the government, which are funded by taxes and/or fees collected from the public.

Registered agents were never intended to be primarily used for, nor should they be primarily used for, gathering information at the fee paying expense of their corporate clients, especially in instances where another department or agency of government is already responsible for gathering the information in question. Registered agents must avoid becoming an arm of the Inland Revenue agency simply because this agency finds it convenient and less costly for itself to simply deputize registered agents as tax information gatherers rather than gather only the information truly needed from another government agency or department that should already have it.

The advocacy role a corporate client pays for and has every right to expect from its corporate and financial services provider should not be wrongfully diminished by an Inland Revenue agency that wants to deputize employees of law firms and accounting firms as its own tax compliance agents. This is a slippery slope that registered agents should be anxious to avoid.

Unfortunately it seems to be the MO of our government financial agencies to do just that: “…an arm of the Inland Revenue agency…”. Not sure what prevents one government agency from digitally sharing relevant information/documents with another government agency requiring similar information?! Laziness perhaps? The bane of our Bahamian, especially government workforce. Young people, do your best not to be infected by this laziness virus when you join our workforce…🤞🏽

I was going to reply to this bloviated nonsense, because I thought you had an understanding of financial services. However, after your first paragraph, it is clear that you have no understanding of either CESRA or the reason that it was adopted. And, based on your comments on this and other boards, you don't have the self-reflection to admit that you may be ignorant.
So, I'll let you merrily roll along.

You sound like many I know who work in either the AG's office or an agency that falls under the ministry of finance.

ExposedU2C is one of the least informed commenters on this board.

LOL. Such small statements without any reasoning are usually indicative of one's rather small mind.

They have already turned the banks into foreign tax agencies...

Dexter from my own experience is being shoved into the role of key person on every new issue over the last 3-7 years at DIR. Almost every client matter I've submitted with DIR results in being referred to Dexter or needs his' response. The only issue that he didn't have to make the decision on was a client's Large Tax Payer audit deadline, that Dexter further referred us to the final overarching authority within DIR. It's also not a plainly available the organizational chart of DIR.

The problem is Mr. Fernander is barely available for any complex questions since he's the key person for most of the new issues with DIR. The department is also carelessly understaffed by "authorized" personnel who can make these guidance or decisions. Filers are stuck with the chance of making errors and being penalized in various ways.

Some posting above sound like persons I know who work in either the AG's office or a department or agency that exists within or falls directly under the ministry of finance. The worthless international alphabet soup agencies like the OECD have perfected their blacklisting craft by unilaterally moving their goal posts whenever it suits them in order to force smaller nations like The Bahamas to act as financial information gatherers and tax compliance agents for European countries with severely bloated government bureaucracies, including an added layer of bloated EU government based in Brussels.

The government structure of the OECD countries and EU became so large over the last four or five decades that draconian levels of taxation had to be imposed on their citizenry. The unfairness here forced ever increasing numbers of Europeans to become tax cheats. Rather than introducing policies to reduce the size of their costly over bloated governments and in turn reduce the draconian levels of taxation unfairly imposed on their citizenry, the governments of the OECD countries (and the EU Council itself) wrongfully decided to bully and 'beat up' on the sovereignty of smaller nations like The Bahamas in order to coerce them into becoming financial information gathering and taxation compliance agents for their own outrageously costly governments, at great expense and harm to the oppressed smaller nations. Just look at the great harm caused to the financial services sector and overall economy of The Bahamas over the last 40+ years. Now our own grossly over bloated and costly government wants to take a page out of the OECD and EU's playbook and weaponize CESRA, 2023, to go after over burdened and aggrieved Bahamian taxpayers.

All of this must be changed because the taxpaying citizenry of a country should never be expected to support corrupt socialist (or progressive) politicians who are either hellbent on creating a costly welfare state or are just too incompetent (incapable) of controlling the size and cost of the public sector that should exist to serve the citizenry and not bankrupt them through outrageous levels of taxation and fees of every kind imaginable.

> Amid complaints that the declaration, a 16-page form that registered offices must fill out for every one of their corporate clients, is “crippling” and “onerous” to the ease and cost of doing business in The Bahamas, he challenged why the required information would not be readily available given that it was required for annual Companies Registry filings and maintaining an entity in good standing.

Here Dexter Fernander readily admits most of the information the Department of Inland Revenue is seeking should already be available in other government departments and agencies. So why should he expect corporate clients to pay additional fees to their registered agents to gather this information! Either Inland Revenue is unwilling to incur the cost of gathering this information from the other government departments and agencies or the records kept by those other departments and agencies are in a complete state of disarray to the point where the loads of information already in their possession has been incompletely and/or inaccurately processed, and is therefore unreliable.

Take the Registrar of Companies for example. This department should be readily able to confirm that a company is in good standing. Yet financial and corporate services providers are constantly having to tell their corporate clients that getting a Certificate of Good Standing is typically a much longer and costly process than one should reasonably expect. This frankly is absurd, and our doofus AG Pinder does not seem to be the least bit concerned about it. Instead, he has registered agents now collecting loads of info for another department, Inland Revenue.

I can just imagine how difficult it's going to be to obtain a Certificate of Tax Compliance!
Doofus AG Pinder and his cabinet colleagues need to focus on fixing what's already broken within many government departments and agencies and avoid transforming registered agents in the private sector into government agents at the fee paying cost of their corporate clients.

Doofus Pinder also needs to keep in mind that the more information government collects, the more costly government gets, and its the taxpayers who ultimately bear the cost of all the duplicative and/ useless information gathered that government departments and agencies seem incapable of processing or utilizing for the betterment of public services and the financial well-being of our country.

TAXES, TAXES, TAXES....more money for the politicians to steal. Is this gov ever audited and posted in the newspapers. Why do we have to pay the gov taxes on what we worked hard to buy????

Another form to be filled out that says items which the Government should already know. But i assume they have no idea where to get this information. All this will do is sit in an office as it appears Government is unable to understand what they already know.

It's not just the recent ridiculous amendment to the VAT Act, but also the fact that Bahamians and their businesses were not carved out of and made exempt from the onerous economic substance form filling that their registered agents must do annually under CESRA, 2023, even though most of these companies only do business in the Bahamas, and in many instances only hold real property in The Bahamas for their Bahamian owner(s).

Our doofus AG and the other incompetent douchebags who hold leadership positions with departments and agencies that fall under the Ministry of Finance, like Inland Revenue, have little if any common sense, and they behave as if they have a mandate to make life as difficult as possible for honest and hard working Bahamians.

These imbeciles wrongfully assume we are all crooks and tax dodgers in order to justify their own laziness in adopting a draconian "one-size-fits-all" policy to everything because of their immature power crazed mentality that drives their insatiable appetite for more and more form filling and paperwork, no matter how outrageously costly and unfair the burden may be for Bahamians, their businesses, and their service providers. The cost of doing any kind of business in the Bahamas is literally putting legitimate and hard working Bahamians out of business and denying young entrepreneurs the opportunity to establish new "start-up" businesses.