Need Some Help With Offshore Investing?
Most of us have no clue about anything having to do with investment funds. But if you want to get into something like this and make some money it’s essential that you don’t just leap before looking. Don’t get me wrong some things have to do with faith and others have to be with being SMART. You could turn a loss and I don’t know about you but, if I could get into something like this, the very last thing I would want to do would be to lose a whole bunch of money before I even got out of the starting gate!
Well if you are the same way and you are concerned about something such as offshore accounts or offshore investing but have no idea what is expected of you or what to do you should see some of the websites online. It was really surprising to me how simple all of this was to interpret. Of course there are some people that don’t explicate things really well but, I did find a few websites online that explained everything very clearly and very plainly and it even made somebody like me (that knows nothing about offshore) comprehend what they were talking about.
Chances are these people educated themselves the same way you are educating yourself! These internet sites and blogs are extraordinary to learn from by studying some of these blogs filled with suggestions, tips, tricks, books to study, internet sites to read. It really is a lot of different data to get your paws on. You can even learn the most simplistic things like what is offshore, how offshore works, etc. Some blogs I found on this website were titles:
Avoid Most Forex Trading Robots
Finance Online Personal – What’s Wrong With Indexed Annuities?
Forex For the People – A Tale About the Forex Autopilot System
Are All Forex Trading Systems Created Equal?
Forex Autopilot System – Why Do We Have To Use Forex Autopilot
Discover Why You Must Attend a Forex Training Seminar As Soon As Possible
As you can see from the posts preceding, these individuals make it their personal job to teach you as much as they possibly can. Want to learn about offshore software programs? Want to make the sweetest investments? Want to find a company or a firm to work with? Want to take a course on offshore? You got it all here in one simplified place. Bookmark it and come back tomorrow and the day after that. You could learn all kinds of stuff, if you are a little patient and you want to learn how to make some money!
This author is a HUGE fan of offshore blog
Article Source: articlestreet
Use Offshore Investing To Grow Your Assets
When we talk about offshore financial companies, the term conjures up an image of huge, shadowy financial monoliths investing funds without any transparency. These types of companies also exist. e.g. many mutual funds and hedge funds whose investors prefer ‘foreign country’ investments.
But ordinary investors like us too can form offshore investing companies of relatively smaller size to fulfill our more mundane everyday needs. Or we can invest, via our offshore banker, into offshore investing companies who operate investment funds.
There are various uses:
*Professional Services Companies
*Trading Companies
*Investment Companies
*Holding Companies
*Dot Com Companies
*Property Owning Companies
*Shipping Companies
*Employment Companies
*Intellectual Property & Royalty Companies
*Asset Protection Companies
Professional Service Companies:
Individuals, e.g. Consultants, IT professionals, engineers, designers, authors and entertainers operating outside their resident country can benefit
significantly from using an Offshore Company. The offshore company shows the individual as a company employee and gets a fee for the services rendered by the ‘employee’ [owner]. This fee is received and saved tax free. The individual can then take the payment as he or she wishes to minimize their taxes.
Trading Companies:
Import/Export and general trading companies activities are also well suited for the structure of Offshore Companies. The Offshore Company takes orders from the supplier and has the goods delivered directly to the customer. It does the invoicing to the customer and saves the difference in a tax free country. e.g. Products from China to Kenya could be invoiced by a Seychelles offshore incorporation and the profits retained there.
Investment Companies:
Individuals use offshore investment companies to the n buy mutual funds, shares, bonds, property, jewelry and precious metals. Sometimes they will also use these companies to trade in currency, equities and or bonds either via the internet or through managed funds run by banks and financial institutions. The very rich will also have different offshore investing companies for different class of assets; for different countries or by different types of investments.
The diversification hedges the risk. But also in cases where capital gains taxes are levied, e.g in property or equity, sometimes it is cheaper to sell the company rather than the individual asset itself.
Holding Companies:
Offshore companies can also be used to own and fund operating companies in different countries. The could also be joint venture partners or the ‘promoter’ of publicly quoted companies. Mauritius is well suited as a country for investing companies because of its favorable double tax treaties.
Dot Com Companies:
The internet has made the cost of business entry very low and consequently the legal protection of the company’s assets, both physical and intellectual, that much easier. Dot com companies now use this flexibility to develop different software projects in different offshore companies to invite different investors and to keep the flexibility of raising funds separately for different projects depending on the project’s success. Both Mauritius and Seychelles have Protected Cell Company [PCC] structures available for just this kind of need.
Property Owning Companies:
As discussed earlier, owning property in an offshore company saves you the capital gains taxes that may be levied at the time of the property’s sale, which are avoided by selling the company instead of the property. Other important advantages are the legal avoidance of inheritance and other transfer taxes. Importantly, in some countries, e.g. Islamic ones, inheritance is via Shariah Law and not your will. So an offshore ownership will ensure that the assets owned outside the country need not be distributed according to Shariah Law.
Shipping Companies:
The use of Offshore investing companies to own or charter merchant ships and pleasure craft is very common worldwide. Shipping companies accumulate profits in tax free offshore jurisdictions and, if each ship is placed in a separate Offshore Company, it can obtain significant asset protection by isolating liabilities of each individual ship.
Employment Companies:
Multinational companies use offshore investing companies to employ expatriate staff who are deployed in different tax jurisdictions around the world. To facilitate transfers, reduce the employee’s taxes and administer benefits easily an offshore company employment is preferred. working on assignments throughout the world.
Intellectual Property and Royalty Companies:
Offshore investing companies are being seen as vehicles to own Intellectual Property and royalties received for software, technology rights, music, literature, patents, trademarks and copyrights, franchising, and brands. These companies are in the form of trusts or foundations.
Asset Protection Companies:
It is estimated that a professional in the US can be expected to be sued every 3 years! And that more than 90% of the worlds lawsuits are filed in the US. Amazing statistics! If you have an income or assets of more than US$ 100,000, you should seriously consider offshore investing companies!
Most offshore jurisdictions require that for a law suit, a lawyer must be hired and paid up front before a suit can be filed, thus keeping frivolous law suits away. Often a substantial bank bond has to be placed with the government, to even implement a lawsuit. It can also (take years of waiting) to get into court in some offshore jurisdictions.
If you have substantial liquid assets you should consider a Trust which would own the offshore company. This will provide a greater degree of protection, at the least expense. However, we should remember that this structure is for asset protection, not for tax savings and so the focus should be maintained.
What Is Offshore?
Simply put, any country other than the one where you live could be considered "offshore". Providing you are from outside the jurisdiction that you choose (both as a citizen or a resident) you can obtain some special financial or asset protection considerations. If you live in the US, other countries are offshore. If you live in the UK, other countries and the US are offshore.
More often than not however, "offshore" is used to describe a nation where there are either no taxes or low taxes for foreigners either personal or corporate. For anyone except Americans, the US can be an offshore haven of value. Banking, investment (trading/brokerage accounts) and financial activity are included in this. This includes real estate ownership, stocks and securities and bonds.
True, offshore havens have created a unique legal and tax climate for foreign individuals and businesses. They cater specifically to them. More than half the world’s wealth resides in such asset havens. Financial privacy, a stable legal climate and realistic regulations are the hallmarks of these jurisdictions.
Ramapati Singhania specializes in creating and managing web businesses. His latest website http://www.incorporation-offshore-saves-wealth.com focuses on helping you to incorporate offshore companies in Seychelles, Mauritius and BVI. You can also visit his blog, http://www.ramapatisinghania.com
Article Source: articlestreet
Is Offshore Banking Legal?
Is offshore banking legal? This is a question often asked these days, as various nations seek to clamp down on offshore tax havens and offshore banking. And while such banking may raise eyebrows in certain quarters, or invite disapproving comments from politicians seeking to balance budgets and maximise tax revenue, the fact is banking offshore is perfectly legal.
However, it helps if one first clarifies the situation by defining the words "offshore" and “tax havens”.
Offshore simply means some place other than your home country. So if you’re in the USA, then having a bank account in the UK would be considered offshore. Or if you live in Australia and have a bank account in Singapore then that would be offshore also. Neither of these places are known tax havens of course, but never-the-less they would be considered "offshore" if you banked there but didn’t live there.
So while an offshore account may very well be in a tax haven, it doesn’t have to be.
There are various negative associations with the term “tax haven”, as such countries are widely perceived to be places where unsavoury characters do shady business dealings or worse, engage in money laundering. But the truth is, a tax haven is simply a country where either no income tax is paid, or less tax compared with other countries.
The motivation for a country to become a low tax or no tax haven is usually to gain some competitive advantage. They do this by offering financial and incorporation services designed to attract foreign business – and boost the local economy. And this is usually the essence of the hostility towards such places. Most developed Western countries have a large socialist component to their economies, where high taxes are used to fund various social welfare programmes. So when some countries lower or eliminate their income tax it naturally attracts those who seek to pay less tax – both companies and individuals.
The fact is, any sovereign nation has the right to determine its own tax rules and the rate of tax they seek to impose. And it’s perfectly natural for there to be tax competition in the world. Without it, nations would find no barrier to raising taxes and would no doubt exploit all of us in the process. Low tax and no tax nations provide an important counterbalance to the high tax countries and the existence of such tax competition is healthy and should not be discouraged.
So if you see the advantage of banking in another country – offshore – then you are certainly free to do so. And provided you live in a country without currency exchange controls – which is most of the developed world – then transferring your funds to an overseas bank account is a simple matter, and like I said 100% legal. However, there can be complications, if you don’t know your own country’s rules and regulations.
Give you one example. If you’re a US citizen or resident, then you are obliged to report the existence of any offshore bank account with a balance of $10,000 or more – or the existence of accounts where the aggregate balance is over $10,000. You’re allowed to have as much money as you like in the account – but are required to report it. Most other countries do not have this requirement.
Another example would be the existence of various funds transfer reporting requirements. These vary from country to country, but let’s say you wanted to transfer $50,000 from your domestic bank account to an offshore one – then it’s highly likely the transaction would be reportable by your bank, meaning they would have to notify the relevant authorities that it has been done.
Given these potential reporting requirements another obvious question would be, "So what are the advantages of banking offshore?". And the potential answers are many. It could be to seek more security, more financial privacy, to diversify currencies, or that overseas business dealings make having such a bank account necessary.
Having access to foreign currencies is becoming increasingly useful, given the wild fluctuations between the value of such currencies. Right now, for example, the USD is on a long term downward trend, due to the negative economic fundamentals affecting the country. This means that anyone inside the USA, whose funds are exclusively in US dollars, is likely to see the value of their savings erode over time. Holding such savings in a stronger currency would be a rational decision, and using an offshore bank to achieve this would be a sane financial strategy.
At the end of the day, given the increasing global nature of living and business, it’s perfectly natural for people to consider opening bank accounts in other countries if they can see any personal gain to be had from it. And as long as that demand exists there will always be reasons and ways to bank offshore.
David MacGregor has been active in the offshore world since 1998 and lives the Internationalist lifestyle he writes and advises about. He operates a private information service for those seeking more personal and financial freedom, and offers a free introductory e-course called the FreedomShift, which is available from: http://www.sovereignlife.com
Article Source: articlestreet