Should you Use a Belize LLC to Protect Your Domestic Assets?

Asset protection is the most pressing topic today among US investors and foreign wealthy individuals. The world has split into two fronts, with one of them advocating disclosure of information and greater transparency with regard to finances, taxes, and beneficiaries, and the other one seeking to strengthen the protection of its assets at all costs without violating any laws.

If you have some assets, you naturally start looking for ways of keeping them safe one day. One of the solutions that international lawyers and economic analysts recommend is the incorporation of a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in the offshore jurisdiction of Belize. This is an option that will give you several advantages at once:

• Zero taxation on international business
• Protection of assets and personal information
• Inaccessibility for foreign courts and creditors
• Highly reliable banking sector

Not All Assets Should Be Transferred to Offshore Jurisdictions

In the same way as Nevis or the Cook Islands, or any other offshore jurisdiction, Belize has flexible legislation that provides the optimal level of personal and corporate rights protection for the shareholder/founder and creates a lot of obstacles for lawyers and judges from a foreign state. Of course, you can transfer all of your assets to an offshore destination, but this is not the most profitable solution in the majority of cases. A much more reasonable strategy is to divide your assets into those that need to be transferred and those that need not. 

Just to illustrate the point, here is a case study which shows that transferring some assets to an offshore jurisdiction may be of little use and will not yield much profit:

• Suppose you have a house located in New Jersey, USA, and it is officially owned by a Belize LLC. You rent out the house, and everything goes well until one of the tenants falls down from stairs and breaks his leg, and uses it as a reason to sue you.
• In this case, the US court will side with the plaintiff and require you to reimburse the costs and pay compensations, explaining its decision by the location of the real estate. And the fact that the house is owned by a Belize LLC is of little importance to the judge in this case: the property is located in New Jersey, so the law will apply at the US state level.
• In this case, an offshore LLC will be of no use, and the same refers to an LLC established in the US states of Wyoming or California. Anyway, the court will consider the case according to the laws of the place where your immovable property is located. 

Which Assets to Choose for Protection in Belize?

As we can see from the case study, real estate is not a good choice. However, liquid financial assets in the form of brokerage accounts, profits from international business, cryptocurrency, accounts in precious metals, etc., can receive quite a strong protection if they are owned by an offshore LLC in Belize that you set up.

If a lawsuit is filed in this case, it will be much more difficult for a judge to simply seize your assets by applying local law and bypassing the legal structure that owns them. And in the case of Belize, the court will also have to incur additional costs, which we will discuss later.

Care should be taken if you want to use Belize to protect assets in the context of US laws as there is a risk of losing finances: American courts may demand to return capital to the homeland. There is a history of procedure application in legal practice, so a straightforward approach is not the way to deal with your assets in this case.

According to lawyers, the problem can be solved by flexible settings of an LLC established in Belize: for example, you can transfer control over your business to a nominee. To do this, you can choose one of the alienation methods and transfer management to a temporary manager or a professional company, including a trust. 

If you transfer control, you will not be able to comply with the ruling of the judge and return your assets under reliable protection back to the United States – even if you really wanted to! And the judge will have to accept this.

Advantages of Domestic Assets Protection Using a Belize LLC

If you want to learn how to open a Belize LLC quickly and efficiently, here is a detailed article. In this post, we will try to explain the main advantages of Belize as an offshore jurisdiction and the benefits of an LLC set up in 2022-2023 for domestic assets protection.

1. The employees of a Belize LLC are not liable for the debts of the company and other shareholders unless a relevant legal agreement has been concluded.
2. Belize offers many advantages to those who wish to protect their assets, including a high level of confidentiality. Despite the enactment of the Companies Act (Belize Companies Act, 2022), the regulations presented do not affect offshore LLCs and no longer apply to IBCs. The offshore LLC owners in Belize are only obliged to disclose the company name and the authorized signatory’s name to the local authorities. As a rule, the latter is a registration agent who keeps the information about other beneficiaries but does not disclose it to third parties.
3. Also, Belize does not recognize foreign court decisions, and foreign creditors are required to file a lawsuit in local courts. At the same time, additional financial obligations have been established for the plaintiff from another state, including the payment of a contribution in the amount of 50% of the claims or in the amount of US $50,000 for small debt obligations. And it is not always profitable, or rather – it is not profitable at all! It means that the majority of lawsuits will never be started even if there are legal grounds for them, which is a significant advantage of the offshore jurisdiction.
4. Separate regulations have been established to protect the assets owned by a Belize LLC at the local level:

• the assets of an offshore LLC cannot be withdrawn to cover the debts of an LLC member
• the lender shall not be entitled to interfere with the Belize LLC management or ownership
• at the same time, the tax rate for a Belize LLC, which receives income from foreign sources, is equal to zero

How to Take Advantage of Domestic Assets Protection in Belize

Belize is not as widely known as other offshore jurisdictions, such as Nevis, the Cook Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and other jurisdictions, but it offers a more up-to-date legislative framework in line with OECD and FATF standards. At the same time, the cost of domestic assets protection using a Belize LLC is lower, and the result will always be stable: a high level of confidentiality and a safe environment for holding your capital.

Establishing an asset protection framework in Belize with the support of our specialists includes just a few simple steps:

• Contact our portal experts and discuss all details before starting the process
• Pay for services according to the list
• Transfer the required documents to us and wait for the transfer of your assets from any country (including the United States with its complex tax policy) to Belize
• Register or re-domicile an LLC or a trust in Belize using a trusted agent without the founder’s personal presence. If desired and necessary, the trust and LLC can be merged
• Open personal and corporate bank accounts, as well as an additional one for profitable capital diversification. This question requires customization and analysis
• Receive a corporate documentation package to start operations through your offshore LLC in Belize and enjoy a high level of domestic assets protection!

Note: Not all banks open accounts for offshore entities remotely, so this step may require the personal presence and identification of the individual with the right to sign on bank accounts and documents.

Domestic Assets Protection – Conclusion

If you:

• have accounts abroad and hold large amounts of money on them
• own foreign real estate or plan to start investing
• are looking for a reliable way to get protection for your assets and sleep peacefully,

you need to start by analyzing the situation and choosing the best way to secure your wealth. 

Points that foreign business founders in Belize who want to protect their assets need to keep in mind:

• If you decide to protect domestic assets in Belize, you can use a trust structure or an LLC, which can be established by any foreign person.
• When you set up an LLC in Belize, remember that it is better to be an unofficial beneficiary and transfer the management of your business to a trustee or trust to protect assets from foreign courts. Thus, it will be impossible to return all property to the motherland even if a foreign court (for example, in the United States) orders to do so.
• Belize has a register of companies, but it does not contain any information about the founder. This is an additional bonus for foreign founders whose data remains confidential and is transferred to authorized bodies abroad in exceptional cases.
• Assets that can be better protected using a Belize LLC include any type of account (brokerage, investment, precious metals, cryptocurrency, etc.). Immovable property is covered by the laws of the country where it is located rather than the laws of the country where its owner is based, so an LLC in Belize will not offer any protection in this case.
• When you move your money and other assets to Belize, you are primarily making them inaccessible to the government, creditors, and even relatives.