Having chosen the jurisdiction in which to register your yacht you now need to contemplate the issue of crew. With crew based on a yacht where the ownership, registration and homeport may all be different, as well as the fact that the yacht also moves, the issue of crew employment is complicated.
In addition to this the personal circumstances of crew members are also likely to be very different, they may well be domiciled or resident in an onshore location different to the yacht’s registration and may have an onshore liability to tax in their own right.
Given the constant movement of the yacht between jurisdictions it means that the owner has a myriad of complexities to deal with in term of not only employment law, but also tax and national insurance in respect of all crew members.
With a view to addressing this issue, Osiris has run a crew employment vehicle based in the British Virgin Islands to take care of these jurisdictional issues and the tax and national insurance issues on behalf of yacht owners.
International Crew Resources Ltd has been formed to provide employment and payroll services for yacht owners and operates within the requirement of the Marine Labour Convention of 2006 and ICR Ltd will be certified and audited to MLC standards.
ICR Ltd will either employ the crew directly on the yacht owner’s behalf or manage the employment and payroll on behalf of the yacht owning company directly.
In our experience this modus operandi offers numerous benefits to the yacht owner but also to the crew member. Examples of this include:
The yacht owner is removed from the employment relationship with its attendant liabilities as well as any reporting requirements.
ICR Ltd is owned and operated out of the BVI by BVI residents.
All crew are properly employed in recognised formats (Seafarers Employment Agreement) from a jurisdiction more favourable than where the yacht owner might be based.
The fees in our experience are more than covered by the cost of doing this yourself.