NEWS

Applications to Australia’s Significant Investor Visa (SIV) program has fallen from an average of 46 a month during the 2015/2016 fiscal year to just 13 a month between July 2017 and January this year. Driving the collapse in demand are tighter regulations and competition from European programs. In its first three years, Australia granted an average of 28 SIVs a month, a figure that peaked in fiscal year 2015/16 with an average of 46 a month. Since then, application volume has been falling steadily, reports the Guardian, and now stands at a mere 91 visas granted in the last seven months. Since launching...

NEWS 2020

The Hurun Research Institute in association with Visas Consulting Group (a leading Chinese immigration company) has released the Immigration and the Chinese HNWI 2018 report which includes the “Chinese Immigration Index”, a ranking based on an investment migration program’s suitability for Chinese applicants, the “Preferred Destinations for Immigration Ranking”, as well as a variety of data detailing trends in the Chinese market for investment migration, which makes up some two-thirds of the global investment migration market. The report contains a wide range of notable and surprising findings, some of which we’ve dissected below. Hurun Research surveys 224 Chinese HNWIs with an average...

NEWS 2020

Fresh figures from Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection show that since its beginning less than four and a half years ago, the Australian Significant Investor visa program has received capital investments amounting to AUD 8.89 billion. Mainland Chinese applicants accounted for 88% of the 1,778 visas granted in the period from November 24th 2012 and March 31st this year, while 2.9% hailed from Hong Kong. Malaysians, South Africans and Vietnamese obtained 1.3%, 1.2% and 1% of visas, respectively. Based on these numbers – and presuming the Chinese invest about the same, on average as, applicants of other origins – we...

NEWS 2020

Hoping to establish itself as a pioneer in the use and development of blockchain technology, the Dubai International Financial Center has announced its Courts are to work towards the creation of the first "Court of the Blockchain," involving work on how blockchain technology can be used to enforce court rulings and separately on the resolution and mitigation of disputes concerning blockchain-enabled contracts. In short, a blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger (also known as distributed ledger technology, or DLT) commonly used to track virtual currency transactions and holdings. It is a continuously growing list of records, or "blocks," which are...

NEWS 2020

Since the start in 2013, 49% of Spanish golden visas have been issued in the province of Catalonia; 44% in Barcelona, the remainder in Girona and Tarragona. The program has so far raised EUR 2.33 billion from a total of 3,140 main applicants, according to Catalan newspaper Ara. The bulk of applicants are Chinese and Russian, nationalities that make up 37 and 27 percent of all visa-recipients, respectively. While the average golden visa applicant in Spain invests some EUR 743,000, Venezuelans invest nearly twice the required minimum of half a million euros. The overwhelming majority of applicants – 94% to be precise...

NEWS 2020

The OECD today announced that Saudi Arabia has signed a multilateral tax treaty designed to allow countries to swiftly add to their existing bilateral tax treaties additional provisions designed to curtail tax avoidance and improve cross-border tax dispute resolution. Saudi Arabia is the 84th country to sign the treaty, called the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, also known as the multilateral instrument or BEPS MLI. 11 nations have ratified the treaty to date. By Courtesy of mnetax.com

NEWS 2020

China first exchanged CRS information on September. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have participated in CRS. The reporter investigates discovery, investment naturalization becomes a means to avoid CRS. The hidden wealth of high-net-worth individuals abroad may be revealed as a number of well-known tax havens fall. Starting in September, the state administration of taxation will exchange tax information related to financial accounts for the first time with tax authorities of several countries and regions, according to the Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Meanwhile, the new tax law, just passed late last month, introduced anti-tax avoidance provisions for the first time....

NEWS 2020

According to a report by Chinanews.com on Monday, from September this year, the State Administration of Taxation of China intends to discover the hidden funds by exchanging information about taxes with foreign (regional) tax authorities. Since it is difficult to clearly prove the existence of funds in overseas financial accounts in the past, the taxation of overseas assets always constitutes a major challenge for China. The official name of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) is the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information with the purpose to address this issue. On July 15, 2014, the Organization for Economic Co-operation...

NEWS 2020