It been almost 2 and a half months since the Government of Belize took over the IBC and IMMARBE registries – taking possession from the Ashcroft-allied Belize International Services Limited. This week the first legal challenge from BISL went to the Supreme Court.
It took the form of an injunction to stop the Government of Belize from collecting 30 million dollars in back taxes which Government claims were not paid by BISL.
BISL's position is that they want to challenge Government on these taxes, but the company doesn't have 30 million dollars to just pay upfront before they can do that.
Eamon Courtenay, who represents BISL told us how Monday's hearing played out in an undertaking instead of an injunction, which still serves his client's intended outcome:
Eamon Courtenay - Attorney for BISL
"That has to do with a tax case; the government has assessed Belize International Services Limited to thirty million dollars in tax, and it is clearly an unlawful and arbitrary assessment and we have challenged it. What the income and business tax act says is that if the commissioner assesses you to tax, in this case Belize International Services Limited, and you are assessed to thirty million and you want to dispute it, you have to pay the thirty million before you can dispute it, in other words, you have to pay to play and we are saying that is unconstitutional because the effect of that is to bar a party who does not have thirty million dollars or someone who doesn't have ten thousand dollars. You cannot then dispute an assessment and you are obliged to pay. Under the income and business tax, once an assessment is raised by the commissioner, the commissioner is obliged to collect it and therefore, you have a situation where you can't pay to have your matter challenged but at the same time he is obliged to collect it from you and the income and business tax has very coersive powers that are available to the commissioner to deploy against Belize International Services. They have taken an objection to the matter and what has happened is that the judge has said, listen, give and an undertaking or which they offered and the court accepted the undertaking, that they would not do anything and we are proudly going to have the issue relevant to their objection and the injunction dealt with on the same date, so that one is put off for a while."
A final date for the court hearing on BISL's Tax challenge has not been scheduled as yet.
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