Upcoming Changes to Land Ownership Disclosure Requirements in British Columbia

Background

In June 2018, the British Columbia provincial government (the "Government") published a white paper describing its proposed Land Ownership Transparency Act (the "Act"). The purpose of the Act is to end anonymous land ownership through the use of entities such as numbered companies, offshore and domestic trusts, and corporations. The Act proposes doing this by creating a new, publicly accessible, beneficial ownership registry[1]. The Government's reason for doing so is to give tax auditors, law enforcement agencies and federal and provincial regulators the information they need to conduct investigations relating to tax evasion, fraud and money laundering.[2]

New Disclosure Obligations