Jersey economic substance and withdrawal of COVID concession

Under Jersey's economic substance regime, one of the important requirements to demonstrate is that the board of directors of a relevant company meets in Jersey at an adequate frequency.

With the difficulties faced during the COVID pandemic, the Jersey Comptroller of Revenue issued a helpful concession in March 2020. Under this concession, a company would not fail the economic substance test if board meetings were held virtually to avoid travel or because individuals were self-isolating.

Now that travel restrictions have been removed and isolation requirements have been relaxed, the Jersey Comptroller has withdrawn this concession. The withdrawal does not have retrospective effect. It will only cease to apply for any accounting period starting after 1 November 2022.  

This is a link to the updated concession: https://www.gov.je/TaxesMoney/IncomeTax/Companies/Guidelines/Pages/CovidEconomicSubstance.aspx

Therefore, companies who fall within the economic substance regime can no longer point to the COVID concession and will need to conduct physical board meetings in Jersey.