Monday, May 23, 2011  Why do so many Chinese companies use the
BVI?  From the Treasure Islands site:  Naomi Rovnick of the
South China Morning Post has an excellent article looking at the
use by Chinese of British Virgin Islands (BVI) vehicles. It is
de rigeur to be in the BVI, it seems, as one British tax lawyer
says:  Our [Chinese] clients say that you haven't really arrived
if you don't have at least one BVI company to your name.  Ten
percent of all "foreign" investment into China comes from the
BVI, in fact - and growing explosively, as this document (see
table 4) shows. Why so? Well, the reporter met quite a lot of
obfuscation. The lawyers didn't want to tell her; one Scottish
corporate lawyer merely said 'ask the Chinese clients'. But then
she extracts this telling quote from U.S. lawyer Steve
Dickinson, which says it all:  "The reason for this strong link
between China and the BVI is a very simple form of tax
avoidance. If you take the money straight back into China you
pay capital gains [or income] ta