> 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.

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.

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

And to think Disney throws only this very tiny morsel our way after they read recent posts to this website like the one below.

"Why no mention by The Tribune reporter of the current total Bahamian head-count at Lookout Cay, at Lighthouse Point?

Why no disclosure of the total cost of purchases from Bahamian owned suppliers and businesses domiciled in The Bahamas during the last fiscal year?

Also, how much in taxes and fees did our Inland Revenue Service collect from Disney during the last fiscal year?

Why didn't The Tribune staff reporter put these questions to our PM (who happens to also be our minister of finance) or the Secretary of Inland Revenue, namely Always Angry Simple Simon, before publishing this promotional article for Disney?

Has The Tribune thrown aside professional journalism and become a publicity agent for the cruise line industry because it fears losing the advertising revenue it pockets from members of the cruise line industry? Most of us know by now that The Tribune's Business Editor, Neil Hartnell, has effectively become a publicity or promotional agent for the seedy likes of Snake and certain of the numbers bosses for fear of loosing the advertising revenue they bring to The Tribune's owners."

The tax per passenger head they pay us is a mere tuppence of what they should be paying for the privilege of spewing highly toxic pollutants into the air we breathe and our territorial seas while at the same time annually pocketing for themselves mega millions of dollars of profits.

A mere tuppence compared to the mega millions in profits they derive from our small nation each and every year while polluting our territorial air and seas.

We really need to get all of these ChiComs, who are all too quick to grease and bribe to get whatever they want, out of our country at the earliest possible time.

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.

Pilots who are unable to pass this most basic qualifying examination should have their pilot's license suspended or downgraded so that they are no longer allowed to pilot an aircraft carrying passengers, especially fare paying passengers, until such time that they are able to pass the exam within a maximum of three attempts. Not everyone has the intellect, health, and instinctive aviation skills, needed to be a pilot. We have too many Bahamian pilots today who fly by the seat of their pants, lacking the aptitude, training and frame of mind necessary to help ensure aviation safety.

Corrupt PM, corrupt AG, corrupt court judges, corrupt lawyers, criminal numbers bosses......yup, this is the morally and financially bankrupt Bahamas rightfully regarded by President Trump, Governor DeSantis, and now Secretary of State Rubio, as an unacceptable shiit-hole nation on the door step of the Southwestern USA that presents an existential threat to vital U.S. national security interests.