A Story of Amnesty

The Limited Company with 23 years of late Annual returns

In the 1980’s someone gave advice that if you had land you should have create a limited liability company to protect the land. A lot of people followed that advice.

A lot changed since then…

1. Government paper does not yield like it used to.

2. Lack of innovation in Jamaica does not drive revenue for people to come live here like they do in other places

3. Ponzi Schemes ruined peoples expectations of any kind of investment.

So land doesn’t appreciate like it used to and there are costs associated with Owning a Company that does nothing but hold assets. Latest of which is the Minimum Business Tax.

One such family lost their patriarch in the 90’s and had no idea what the details were on the land he owned.

So in 2015 the idea came up to sell the land. The family was excited. They had a good offer and the sale from the land would be quite the windfall.

Their excitement soon turned to confusion. They found out from the titles office they could not sell the land. The company that was registered almost 30 years ago was deregistered and the government of Jamaica now owned the land.

But how could this be?

Apparently if your business is behind on too many years of Annual Returns the government can deregister the company and seize the land. Funny, because they don’t seem to do it if you don’t have assets and automatic deregistration would have been a welcome convenience.

In the end the family paid several thousand dollars in court and went through 23 years of annual returns to bring the company up-to-date and get it reinstated. It cost them a lot but it could have been a lot worse.

Amnesties help make the best of a bad situation. They come up a couple times every decade, but there are many times you and your company’s assets are at risk in between those opportunities.

Visit StartupRobot today and we can help you get your business legitimate so you can keep your options open even if it means getting your business closed.