Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) Order, 2013

Summary

This Order brings into domestic legal effect Part 1 of the Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) Act, 2003, applying it to specific bilateral tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) that the BVI has concluded with treaty partners, including Guernsey and Canada (the full schedule may include others not fully captured in the extracted text). The Order itself is short (two operative sections); the bulk of the document consists of the scheduled Agreements setting out how the BVI's competent authority (the Financial Secretary or delegate) must exchange tax information with its foreign counterpart.

• Scope: The Agreements require exchange of information foreseeably relevant to the assessment, enforcement, investigation or prosecution of tax matters, including criminal tax matters, covering income tax, payroll tax and property tax in the BVI.
• Information that can be compelled: BVI's competent authority must be able to obtain and provide information held by banks, other financial institutions, nominees, trustees, and beneficial ownership information on companies, partnerships, trusts (settlors, trustees, beneficiaries, protectors) and collective investment schemes.
• Process for requests: Requests must meet specified content requirements (identity of person under examination, period covered, nature of information sought, tax purpose, etc.) and the Requested Party's competent authority must acknowledge and respond within set timeframes.
• Confidentiality: Information exchanged must be kept confidential, used only for the purposes stated in the Agreement, and not passed on to any third jurisdiction.
• Grounds to decline a request: A request may be declined if it does not conform to the Agreement, if the Requesting Party has not exhausted domestic means, if disclosure would be contrary to public policy, or if it would require disclosure of privileged or trade-secret information.

The Order does not itself create ongoing compliance obligations for regulated entities in the way a regulatory rule would; rather it gives the BVI competent authority the legal basis to compel banks, financial institutions, trustees, nominees and corporate/trust service providers to produce information when a valid request is received from a treaty partner under one of the scheduled Agreements.

Key obligations

• Banks, other financial institutions, and persons acting as nominees or trustees may be required to produce information held by them in response to a valid information request from the competent authority of a treaty partner (e.g. Guernsey, Canada).
• Persons holding beneficial ownership information on companies, partnerships, trusts and collective investment schemes may be compelled to disclose that information, including settlor, trustee, beneficiary and protector details for trusts, when properly requested under a scheduled Agreement.
• The BVI competent authority must keep exchanged information confidential and use or disclose it only for the purposes specified in Article 1 of the relevant Agreement, and must not pass it to any other jurisdiction.

Applies to

banks, other financial institutions, nominees and trustees, companies, partnerships, trusts, collective investment schemes or funds

Related documents

• This document is made under Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) Act, 2003 (No. 18 of 2003)
• Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) (Amendment of Schedule 1) Order, 2016 amends this document
• Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) (Amendment of Schedule 1) Order, 2015 (SI 2015 No. 63) amends this document