Why Go Offshore?

Introduction - Today we read about a large number of people from a variety of different countries going offshore. By going offshore we mean opening offshore bank accounts, forming offshore companies and offshore foundations in tax haven countries. Some are even opening offshore stock trading accounts. This sort of activity and gets a lot of people wondering why all this sudden excitement over offshore banking and offshore corporations. We’ll try to provide some answers.

Taxes – Most people think the rush to go offshore is to avoid taxation which would in their minds explain why most are going to tax haven countries to form their offshore corporations and open their offshore bank accounts. A tax haven country is a country where offshore derived income is not taxed. The jurisdiction will usually look towards taxation on imported goods to derive their tax base. Generally a tax haven jurisdiction such as Panama will also not have any capital gains tax, no inheritance tax and corporate taxes are generally fixed in the form of a few hundred dollars that is paid each year as the filing fee for the corporation. Some countries allow people to earn money when offshore or out of their country tax free and other countries allow for partial exemptions and others offer no break of any sort. We do feel that people are going offshore for reasons other than tax avoidance or minimization. We often see large corporations are shifting their activities outside of their home country for reasons other than taxation although taxation is probably in there as a determining factor as well. Their operating expenses are so high there is precious few net profit dollars left to be taxed. These companies are trying to stay competitive in their market and are choking on the expenses associated with employee wages, employee benefits, employee medical plan premiums, litigation insurance premiums, discrimination lawsuits, unjust termination lawsuits, retirement benefits, disability insurance premiums, unemployment insurance premiums, and standards for health and safety imposed by their respective governments in the workplace which then brings us to high costs associated with office space. Few if any of these expenses follows the large corporation when they move offshore. Taxes tend to come into play but that is only one small piece of the equation. Today we see a large amount of phone rooms coming to Panama. These are usually not new jobs being created; they are jobs moving to Panama from other countries. These jobs are generally customer service jobs, support jobs and soft sales jobs where the salesperson offers more explanation than sales pressure. The companies tend to save in many ways enabling them to be competitive and offer a competitive level of service to their customers. Of course the effect of companies moving from the large North American and Western European countries is damaging to say the least to those economies they are departing from.

Privacy Concerns – Let us look at some of the reasons why people move their assets to an offshore tax haven that is also a privacy haven like Panama.

1. Tax Haven Status – These people already under the burden of taxation from many of their home countries do not want additional tax burdens. Contrary to popular belief most of the money moving offshore has already been taxed by the various home countries and if there are additional taxes it would be too burdensome. They want to be free of additional taxes.
2. Privacy – People like to be as private as possible in their financial affairs. How many of you would stroll through any major city of the world today openly displaying a solid gold Rolex full of diamonds along with a nice large diamond ring? Not too many! Why? Because you do not want to run the risk of becoming a victim of robbery or assault. So what do you think is different about having expensive real estate in your own name, boats, planes, bank accounts etc? Nothing is different. People with large amounts of assets are a target and they have every right to keep there financial affairs as private as possible and in many countries it is essential to their health.
3. Kidnapping – In many countries kidnapping victims are selected based on real estate holdings. The advantages to putting real estate in the name of an anonymous Panama bearer share corporation are obvious. When people look up the real estate they can not tell who the natural persons are behind the corporation that owns the real estate. In Panama the owners of the stock of a bearer share corporation do not appear in any public registry or database. When it comes time to sell the real estate the corporation that owns the real estate is sold, not the real estate. This prevents would be kidnappers from following real estate sales reports to look for potential victims thus protecting the subsequent owner. The same applies to the ownership of a yacht or an airplane. Another popular method of determining who is a good kidnapping victim is to have a bank employee on the payroll who scours through the files at the bank finding wealthy people for you. If you live in one country and bank say in Panama this doesn’t work very well since the kidnappers would need to cultivate bank employees in Panama who could isolate victims for them in their own country. This narrows the field quite a bit especially when you take into account that in Panama a bank employee is risking a felony to violate bank secrecy which is far from the case in many other countries that routinely complain about bank secrecy and offshore jurisdictions.
4. Identity Theft – Of course the prime identity theft target is one who has wealth and thus is capable of carrying large amounts of credit. With generally non existent bank privacy let alone secrecy in many countries scoundrels are free to roam through credit reports with bank details, credit card details etc and plan a devastating identity theft attack. These crooks even order private detective reports on their victims to really learn as much as they can about them. Of course the public records databases are all too accommodating providing details like drivers license records, who owns the loan on their house, cars, boats etc, what credit cards they have and so forth. Credit bureau secrecy is non-existent as evidenced by the vast amount of identity theft and credit card fraud. Offshore banks in Panama and other offshore privacy jurisdictions due to bank secrecy do not report to any credit bureaus. If you do not need credit why have regular credit cards. Use offshore bank debit cards that just sweep the money directly out of your bank account and thus you stay private with how much you spend and how much credit you have not appearing in any credit reports. The history of your purchases would also be immensely harder for say a private detective to get from an offshore bank; they seem to have no trouble getting this date from regular banks in many countries.
5. Frivolous Litigation – In many countries lawyer can operate on contingency and like to sue those who have deep pockets. The best way to see how deep persons pockets are is to run an asset check on them. If their assets are all private like they bank in bank secrecy jurisdictions like Panama, have real estate owned by anonymous Panama Foundations or anonymous Panama Corporations then the asset check will come back low on assets, probably too low to invest a lot of time and money in frivolous litigation. This also keeps the persons assets free of pre-trial attachment which is a favorite trick of unethical attorneys that is allowed in most of these non-privacy jurisdictions.
6. Privacy – Some people just want to keep their affairs private and they should be able to do just that.