U.S. District Court for the NMI designated Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood wants a full briefing on the CNMI Settlement Fund trustee Joyce C.H. Tang\u2019s position that the Settlement Fund is a non-profit, tax exempt entity under CNMI law.<\/p>\n
Tang asked the court last week to confirm the non-profit tax exempt status of the Fund, since this issue has delayed the completion of the Fund\u2019s fiscal year 2014 audit.<\/p>\n
In her order, Tydingco-Gatewood ordered Tang and the counsel for Betty Johnson\u2019s class action to file a joint motion on this issue no later than Dec. 29, 2015.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood gave the CNMI government until Jan. 5, 2016, to file its response.<\/p>\n
The judge will hear the case on Jan. 21, 2016.<\/p>\n
Tydingco-Gatewood said she and Tang shall participate in the hearing by video teleconference, and counsel for Johnson\u2019s class action may participate in the hearing by telephone.<\/p>\n
Tang recently sought a legal opinion from CNMI Attorney General Edward Manibusan to affirm her interpretation and understanding of the Settlement Fund\u2019s status as a non-profit, tax exempt entity.<\/p>\n
Tang said Manibusan declined to render a legal opinion stating that the Settlement Fund \u201cdoes not fall within the scope of representation\u201d\u2014presumably because it is not a CNMI government agency.<\/p>\n
According to Tang, the audit for the Settlement Fund fiscal year 2014 by Ernst & Young began in January 2015 and has been completed.<\/p>\n
However, Tang said, because of a disagreement between the NMI government and the Settlement Fund on the issue of whether the Settlement Fund is a non-profit tax exempt entity, the completion of the audit has been delayed.<\/p>\n
Tang said the Settlement Fund\u2019s purpose is not to make a profit.<\/p>\n
Tang said as Settlement Fund acting administrator Lillian Pangelinan points out, the Retirement Fund does invest much of its capital and consult with third-party experts in order to accumulate a larger reserve of funds.<\/p>\n
However, Tang said that, according to Pangelinan the Retirement Fund\u2019s main objective is not to make a profit for those who contribute to the Fund, and thus have an ownership interest in it.<\/p>\n
Tang said the tax exemption should equally apply to the Settlement Fund because it is a \u201ccreature\u201d of the U.S. District Court for the NMI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Court for the NMI designated Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood wants a full briefing on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[26,93,134,733],"class_list":["post-217308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-cnmi","tag-district-court","tag-retirement-fund","tag-settlement-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}