If you are partnering up with overseas baba and you are concerned about legalities and your protection, here are a few points for you to consider.
1. Both of you can prepare a contract of partnership
on stamp paper and sign it together.
Now this is considered a legally binding/contract between both partners.
If there is a dispute, you can always reach out to your lawyers in Pakistan and overseas Baba can even
get into Immigration ECL (Exit Control List) if the court gives judgment in your favor.
However, you must understand the legal process may take a few years and lawyers from both ends
will be putting up the argument and assuming the case has gone to trial if not settled before trial. But yes, this stamp paper is your protection and your legal contract.
2. If you are a BC student and your partner
is also a BC member then yes, EC can become an arbiter between both partners and EC’s decision is going to be a final decision as per law because even if you
take this matter to court, the court will only ask you to refer to your Arbiter since
Arbiter is a legal entity and Arbiter’s decision is considered final decision already.
However EC does this only for BC members and not for outside members as we cannot
afford the headache of managing disputes all the time, we have limited resources so we just keep it for BC students only. BC students will get in touch with the EC team to guide them on the process.
3. You can also get yourself added as a director
in a UK, US, or Canadian business entity, wherever is the ID from. The only complication we get here is that you will need a tax ID in that country. In the case of the US, you can always get an ITIN number.
In the case of Canada and the UK, you can always get yourself added to the business based on your passport as a shareholder/legal owner.
However, you won’t have control over your bank account because in order to
get added as a signatory in your bank account, your physical presence is needed in the country.
This means, if your partner decided to ditch you one day, they can but now you have 2 legal avenues, one in Pakistan and the other in Uk/US/Canada, etc since you are a shareholder of the business too.
The other complication is related to salaries.
If you withdraw your salary officially from this business, usually there is a withholding tax applied on whatever amount you withdraw, usually, it could be around 30% depending on the country you dealing with.
So dividends, salary, or whatever you withdrawing in your name will require you to have withholding tax applied on your withdrawals.
Some people also make arrangements such as becoming a service provider in Pakistan providing services and getting remuneration for provided services. You will have to discuss this with your accountant as I am not the accountant.
4. In case of dispute, you now have 2 legal avenues in 2 countries.
However, within EC BC students, it is easier to resolve since I am personally handling both sides myself. So far I have seen 5% – 10% disputes out of 100% partnerships. These disputes are not too difficult to handle. The nasty ones are usually under 2-3% max which is difficult to handle.
However those with EC contracts with EC being arbiters are easier for me to handle as my say is the final say, whether you like it or not.
However still sometimes the abusive party does take an advance. I dealt with horrible abusive Billi in the past who victimized the other student, however, we had to negotiate and go through it.
5. Once you both are partners, you both
need to inject capital into this business.
Capital must be legally transferred from Pakistan through a bank wire to your partner’s
UK LTD (for example) so you are acquiring the shares legally and there is a
document prepared by your accountant called “Share transfer agreement” or “Share buy/sell agreement” which indicates that you have taken over 30% or 50% of this business entity against this amount. Now in case you are unable to transfer this amount by bank wire due to state bank limitations then you may want to declare this amount as a loan in the accounting system. So the company accountant will create paperwork and show that you owe this much money to the business.
Now let’s say you make payment
to a supplier in Faisalabad already against inventory purchase.
Now your UK accountant may create a ledger entry in the accounting system declaring
that you made this payment to a supplier in Pakistan and here is the invoice attached.
So basically you lend the money to the company and he will now adjust that money against the loan you owed to company.
Let the accountant take care of this part.
In case you can’t do this also then you may owe this loan for a long time and may adjust against some other future expense or adjust against your wage.
People do a lot of things but I won’t encourage you to do what people do usually as we want super straight and clean accounts at our end because we don’t want any trouble with IRS, HMRC, Revenue Canada, or FBR later because we are naik log after all.
