Offshore Jurisdiction of Belize: Advantages
Belize is a preferred tax haven for North Americans because of the following advantages:
- Independency
- English as the main language
- Legislation based on British Common Law
- Absence of currency exchange control
- Strict privacy laws; violation may be punished by imprisonment and heavy fines
- Absence of double taxation treaties between Belize and Canada or the U.S.
- Belize has not signed the U.S. Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (Belize and the BVI are the only recommended havens that have not)
- Excellent communications (2 hours south of Cancun, on the Caribbean coast).
The challenge to Belize sovereignty came in 1995 when the Supreme Court of Belize successfully kept the country's privacy laws from being breached by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
On 2002 Belize has made a commitment to improve the transparency of its tax and regulatory systems and establish effective exchange of information for tax matters with OECD countries.
