Scrutiny on offshore transactions and their participants is at an all-time high. Through an ever growing number of regulations and laws, parties to transactions and third party providers from banks to corporate service providers are required to gather and, in some circumstances, share information with governments and regulatory authorities.     For the underlying officers and […]

The Seychelles BTAA has updated the Business Tax Act to comply with the European Union’s Economic Substance requirements. Previously, Seychelles operated under a territorial tax regime, meaning only income sourced within the country was subject to taxation. Foreign-sourced income was exempt from Seychelles taxation. However, pursuant to the BTAA updates, exemptions for foreign sourced income have been specified.

The Seychelles BO regime has since been further enhanced through the related Seychelles Beneficial Ownership (Amendment) Regulations enacted on 28 April 2023.

We summarise the key amendments to the BO Regulations in our updater here.

The Beneficial Ownership (Amendment) Act, 2022 has been enacted with effect from 30 December 2022. The relevant amendments are introduced to ensure ongoing compliance with international standards set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which require jurisdictions to maintain beneficial ownership information that shall be accessible and made available upon request to competent authorities.

We have detailed 5 significant updates that affect Seychelles International Business Companies in our summary.

Seychelles entities are reminded of the requirement to submit their bi-annual accounting records to their registered agent (by July and January) each year.  The official deadline for submitting accounting records for the second half of the year 2022 (July to December) is 31 January 2023. Furthermore, large entities (with an annual turnover of more than SCR 50 million), […]

To ensure that international regulatory standards of tax transparency are met, the Seychelles Government enacted a suite of new legislation over the last two years, including the International Business Companies (Amendment) Act 2021 (the Amendment Act) and the International Business Companies Act and Other Related Laws (Amendment) Act 2021. The legislation imposes a number of […]

The Seychelles Government has introduced new legislation that significantly increases the accounting records keeping requirements for International Business Companies (IBCs).

The Seychelles Beneficial Ownership Act 2020 and the Seychelles Beneficial Ownership Regulations were introduced on 28 August 2020, extending the requirements for Seychelles entities to keep registers of beneficial owners at the company’s registered address. The new legislation also mandates beneficial ownership information to be submitted to a centrally managed government database by registered agents.

All Seychelles legal persons and legal arrangements, including International Business Companies must provide their resident agent in Seychelles with the details of their beneficial owners.