I just moved to Switzerland (Basel) and would like to set up a company to provide consulting services to clients from the USA (none of them located in Switzerland). I will be working from home and travel here and there outside Switzerland. I was trying to explore the creation of a BVI (british virgin island) entity vs one in Basel. BVI will be more interesting taxwise but I am trying to figure out if anyone in this forum has any experience and want to know if possible to comply with the substance test from the swiss tax authorities. Thanks in advance
Hello all,
Hello all,
wondering if someone would have any experience or could point me to an existing post as I could not find any. thanks a lot
If you can't afford the blood hounds to pay for the consultation you don't need the offshore tax schemes. Putting these things in place and locking them down in such a manner as to not leave yourself exposed requires professional advice.
I have not yet understood offsore accounts quite well. Materials and further resources will be appreciated.
I have several years of experience in the offshore company field. (It's what our company does as a day job).
Expect to pay about 10k USD a year in running costs for your BVI company, just to keep it ticking over. (Govt fees, accounting, registered agent, directors, annual filing, FATCA, AEOI, ESA...)
Expect a load of hassle and KYC/due diligence pain just to open a bank account for the company, plus annual bank charges.
Expect to discover that, unless you turn over multi millions per year, tax savings are actually not the main reason why people open a BVI company... and governments are cracking down on the remaining tax advantages anyway. So you have to fight hard to make it worthwhile.
As Jim 2007 said, unfortunately this is a specialist subject. The substance tests and other command and control rules are there to stop the Swiss and other tax authorities from missing out on their fair slice of your earnings. You can easily end up with all of the costs and not much tax saving to show for it.
Kind regards
Ian