EB-5 Advisory Services
MarcumAsia provides comprehensive support to Chinese citizens participating in the EB-5 investor program, including source of funds verification, tax planning and filing services, financial due diligence, and business and succession advisory services.
The EB-5 Program provides foreign citizens the opportunity to secure a green card, or lawful permanent residency status, to individuals who make an investment of $500,000 or more in a business in the United States that generates at least ten jobs for U.S. workers. In recent years, about 80% of EB-5 green cards have gone to Chinese citizens, who have driven a surge in applications for this program.
For Chinese investors, the EB-5 program offers the opportunity to secure permanent residency for themselves and/or family members so as to take advantage of the educational, environmental, and professional benefits and opportunities in the United States, while diversifying their wealth in a country with strong rule of law and property rights.
EB-5 programs have been embraced by a wide range of industries, including real estate, hospitality, and manufacturing, in the United States as a convenient source of growth capital. However, a minority of EB-5 projects have been plagued by misrepresentations or mismanagement that have been costly to the participating EB-5 investors.
As part of their EB-5 application, investors must demonstrate that the funds used for the investment have been obtained through legal means, which includes providing a clearly documented “path of funds” from the original source to the commercial enterprise’s bank account. Lawful sources of funds include personal savings, an inheritance, a personal loan, a gift, sale of an asset, or business profits.
MarcumAsia helps our Chinese clients to compile a Source of Funds Report that meets the standards of the US Immigration Citizenship and Immigration Services as well as documenting the investors income for the past five years. EB-5 investors’ past income is also a factor used by the USCIS in its evaluation of the EB-5 investor’s conditional residency petition. Income tax records should be submitted for a minimum of five years. MarcumAsia will then review this data prior to submission in order to ascertain its completeness and accuracy and coordinates with the immigration attorney to make sure that the immigration process proceeds as seamlessly as possible.
Our comprehensive EB-5 services for Chinese investors include:
- Documenting Source of Funds and validating income and tax records for Chinese citizens.
- Tax planning and filing services in the U.S.
- Financial due diligence of EB-5 investment projects.
- Business transition and succession planning.
- Support for ancillary real estate and business investment transactions.
- Monitoring green card process and tax effects on U.S. transactions to investors and EB5 project.