Across the internet you will find, or all ready have found claims of how international investment in real estate can be structured in a way to provide you with a benefit that includes zero tax at home and almost complete asset protection. Several years ago, we investigated these claims and the structures underlying these claims.
During our investigation, what we discovered is that these strategies depend almost entirely upon the “secrecy” (as opposed to privacy) a foreign jurisdiction provides an investor from the home nations courts and taxing authorities.
Aside from ethical concerns with these strategies, there are increasing practical realities that home taxing nations have made it their highest priority to pierce the privacy of tax havens and begin assessing penalties and even criminal penalties upon those whose off-shore investment strategy has been one that included avoiding all tax at home.
Home nations give their taxing authorities the power to completely ignore and look through structures and arrangements which purport to separate a beneficial owner from the income generated by investments related to that individual for tax purposes.
However, home nations have commonly not been involved in ignoring foreign structures that assist an individual in protecting their assets from civil suits and other civil seizures.
We believe that in the current environment, adopting an off-shore investment strategy that includes techniques and structures to completely avoid at-home tax involves risking personal disaster. However, we believe that asset protection and tax minimization strategies remain strong options for the off-shore investor.
Therefore, we have aligned ourselves with professionals in off-shore nations and in the USA that take a conservative position on tax and yet are open to facilitating asset protection with the assistance of off-shore entities.
We are happy to share our perspectives and findings on this topic with you.