Not yet sent invoices for the yearly contribution to the Business Register will soon be sent by the Bonaire Chamber of Commerce
In the week of August 1, the Bonaire Chamber of Commerce (CoC) will email the invoices for the annual fee for the year 2022 to those companies, associations and foundations that have not yet received an invoice. On July 14th, some of the registered entities have already received the invoice for the 2022 annual fee. Due to an unforeseen technical error, on that day a group of recipients received the same invoice several times and another group of registered entities did not receive an email at all. As soon as this was noticed, the CoC stopped the invoicing process and did an appeal in the media to pay the received invoice only once.
This technical error has since been corrected. The CoC regrets this course of affairs and is confident that a similar situation will not occur in the future. The invoices of the 2022 annual fee that have not yet been sent will be sent in the week of August 1st.
The invoices will also be resent to the email addresses that, according to the online Business Register system, were not reached on July 14. There may have been several reasons for this: the addressee’s mailbox may have been (temporarily) full, the message was not delivered at that time for some other reason (undeliverable), or delivery was delayed (deferred mail). It is possible that these persons are under the impression that they have received the same invoice again because, despite the notification to the online Business Register, they eventually have received the mail of July 14th in their mailbox. To this group of customers, the Chamber of Commerce repeats its request to pay the received invoice only once.
The CoC points out that the email with the invoice is sent to the entity’s email address registered in the Business Register. Entrepreneurs who have not yet submitted an email address to the Business Register will receive the invoice by post.
The Chamber of Commerce explains that individuals who are registered as directors for multiple entities will receive a separate email with the invoice for each entity. If they have received multiple invoices for one or more entities in the first round of mailing, it is extra important for them to check that they have received an invoice for each registered entity. Directors who use the same email address for multiple registered entities run the risk of receiving an invoice again that they already received on July 14, since the system cannot trace which invoice was already sent earlier. The CoC hereby again offers its sincere apologies for this inconvenience.
Of course, we will do everything possible to ensure that registered entities will not receive an invoice a second time. This applies to registrations who already received an email with the invoice on July 14th as well as entities who have approached the Chamber of Commerce on their own initiative to pay the 2022 annual fee. If payment of this invoice has already taken place in the meantime, please consider this invoice as not sent.
The Chamber of Commerce normally invoices the annual contribution at the beginning of the calendar year. This contribution is required by law for every company or organization that is registered in the Business Register of Bonaire. The invoicing process has been delayed in 2022 due to the introduction of the new rates. The new rates are no longer based on the capital invested, but on the legal form of the organization, and led to an increase for a large number of entities. After intervention by the Chamber of Commerce, the Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate slightly reduced these rates in April 2022. As a result, the invoices for 2022 could only recently be generated by the online Business Register system.
For questions regarding the invoices, as well as the new rates, the Chamber of Commerce can be contacted at administratie@kvkbonaire.com. Extensive information on this subject is also available on the Chamber’s website www.bonairechamber.com.