- No tax on international shipping activities undertaken in Canada, including management and financing activities
- No tax on a non-resident company’s foreign sourced income
- No capital gains tax on vessels sold outside of Canada
- Tax-friendly capital access and ship financing
Advantage Vancouver: building a global maritime hub
posted by AJOT | Jan 27 2017 at 09:34 AM | Ports & Terminals
As Canada’s largest port, Vancouver B.C has always been big on shipping. Now they have their sights set on becoming a world-class maritime centre.
“There’s no problem selling Vancouver,” says Kaity Arsoniadis-Stein, Executive Director of the Vancouver International Maritime Centre (VIMC), the organisation heading up the expansion initiative. “We have had tremendous interest in Vancouver as a place to establish and invest, with top-level crowds at our marketing events around the world.”
She points out that despite the current slump in shipping, experts are pegging global growth to resume and gain momentum toward 2030. Many also predict that India and China will quadruple their freight volumes by 2050, and Vancouver is well positioned to take advantage of growing volumes.
“Vancouver is ideally situated geographically as a maritime hub, but there are so many other things going on here as well. There have been huge changes over the last ten years.”
Investment pays off
While the drive to build Vancouver into a leading maritime hub has picked up momentum of late, the work of laying the foundation has been going on for decades. The VIMC was founded in 1991 to head up a movement to modify Canada’s maritime tax regime. Soon after the necessary changes were in place, a portentous payoff followed: Teekay, then a small shipping company out of Long Beach, moved to Vancouver in 1992.
Following that fortuitous move, activity in the VIMC was wound down as the effects of the new regime took hold. But after two decades, the need arose to make further modifications to the Canadian tax regime. Vancouver-based shipping companies played a central role, sitting down with government officials “to modernise the income tax act,” as Arsoniadis-Stein puts it.
Now Canada offers foreign-owned shipping businesses some of the best terms available anywhere, including: