Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) Act, 2003 (No. 18 of 2003)

Summary

This Act gives domestic legal effect in the British Virgin Islands to the Tax Information Exchange Agreement between the USA, the UK and the BVI, and to any similar future agreements. It creates the legal machinery allowing the BVI Authority (the Financial Secretary or a designated person) to gather and produce information in response to a foreign tax information request, including compulsory information notices, search warrants, and consensual interviews.

Information notices: The Authority may issue a written notice requiring any person believed to hold relevant information to provide it, including bank or financial institution records, information held by persons acting in a fiduciary or agency capacity (including nominees and trustees), and beneficial ownership information about companies, partnerships or other persons. Items subject to legal privilege are excluded.
Search warrants: If a person fails to comply with a notice, or the Authority believes a notice would not be complied with or that information may be destroyed, the Authority may apply to a Magistrate for a search warrant authorising entry, search, seizure and copying of information.
Interviews and tax examinations: With the person's written consent, a foreign competent authority's representative may interview and examine a person's records in the BVI, subject to safeguards (no compulsion, right to legal advice, statements not usable in evidence against the person).
Confidentiality and protection from liability: Persons who disclose information for the purposes of a request are protected from criminal or civil liability for breach of confidentiality. Conversely, details of a request itself must be kept confidential by anyone notified of or involved in responding to it.
Offences: Failure to comply with an information notice without lawful excuse is an offence (fine up to five thousand dollars or imprisonment up to two years, or both). Unlawful disclosure of the fact or particulars of a request is an offence (fine up to ten thousand dollars or imprisonment up to two years, or both).

The Schedule sets out the full text of the USA Agreement and annexed Competent Authority Agreements, which define scope, jurisdiction, taxes covered, and the information the requesting party must supply to justify a request. The Act came into force on 1 January 2004.

Key obligations

A person issued a notice under section 5 must provide the specified information within the time, form and verification manner required by the Authority, unless the information is subject to legal privilege.
Persons notified of, or required to act on or supply information in relation to, a request must keep the fact of the request and its particulars confidential except as permitted by the Agreement.
A person occupying premises subject to a search warrant must permit entry, search and seizure of information as authorised by the warrant within one month of its date.

Applies to

banks, other financial institutions, persons acting in an agency or fiduciary capacity (including nominees and trustees), companies, partnerships, other persons holding beneficial ownership information

Deadlines

1st day of January, 2004: Commencement date of the Act
within one month from the date of the warrant: Period during which a search warrant issued under section 6 may be executed
within such time as is specified in the notice: Deadline for providing information under an Authority notice issued under section 5

Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) Act, 2003 (No. 18 of 2003)

Summary

Key obligations

Applies to

Deadlines

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