If you relocate your business, and your home, to the lovely United States Virgin Islands (USVI) for at least 183 days out of each year, the corporate benefits, and the taxes you save could be enormous. Let's take a look at the details of your savings through this USVI Economic Development Council program.

Your business, once relocated to the U.S. Virgin Islands is totally exempt from three United States tax programs. The EDC program exempts your company from any real property taxes when that same real property is used in your USVI business. You're also exempt from any tax on gross revenue, otherwise referred to as gross receipts taxes. Nor does your U.S. Virgin Islands have to pay any excise tax on any of its tools, building materials or other supplies that are to be used in the alteration, construction, redesign, reconstruction or extension of the premises where you conduct your business.

Under this great EDC tax reduction plan your USVI business also gets to take advantage of a 90 percent reduction of income taxes on qualified USVI business income. You also get a low one percent rate on any customs duty on your company's component parts and raw materials that are going to be used for manufacturing or industrial processing.

Nor is this Economic Development Council program designed to only save your company taxes and provide other corporate benefits for an annual period. Once your firm has qualified the terms vary from a lengthy 10-30 years. In general your firm's approval for the EDC program guarantees these savings via an Economic Development Council certificate that is issued to the company for 10 years. There are some geographic or industry-specific exemptions that double or even triple this term. In Christiansted Town, on the island of St. Croix, for instance, the EDC corporate benefits program certificate is issued for 20 years.

If the approved USVI company is in the agriculture or mari-culture (water-related) industry, its certificate for Economic Development Council tax savings is issued for 25 years. A business that is established in Frederiksted Town, on the island of St. Croix, is issued a 30 year EDC certificate once approved.
In every case, the USVI company can petition one time for a renewal of the certificate for the identical time period.

Perhaps the best part of all these wonderful corporate benefits and the opportunity to save on U.S. taxes for these business, is the fact that the relocation required, for at least 183 days of every day, is no hardship at all. What entrepreneur, business partner, or corporate leader would balk at the fate of living half of her or his year in a gorgeous island paradise, basking in warm ocean waves, sunning themselves on white sand beaches, and reveling in all the Caribbean culture and recreation that St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas islands have to offer?

It wouldn't seem that this EDC is such a tough sell for anyone.