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I do this in my day job -- international tax lawyer. As the saying goes, "science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet." In theory you can wr
by philiphodgen 10y ago
I do this in my day job -- international tax lawyer.
As the saying goes, "science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet." In theory you can write enough code and SOPs to mirror the laws of multiple countries.
Unfortunately, laws change.
Further, even if the laws remain static, the facts change. People do the weirdest thing -- they change their minds, they do new stuff. Your code and SOPs will have to be adapted.
In theory you can write code and SOPs to handle current law, keep up with changes in the law, and accommodate human frailties, indecision, and mistakes.
Then in order to make the code and SOPs profitable, you must push enough customers through the pipeline at a high enough price in order to make a profit.
It is here that I think you fail in your quest. I happen to know -- from talking to trustees in the Cook Islands -- the approximate number of asset protection trusts established every year. It is a number whose small size surprised me. This tells me the market for international business structures is small.
The market is especially small after you chase away all of the bullshit artists who want to do skanky stuff offshore. Those doors are closing all the time. It's that "the law changes" thing I talked about.
So. Legitimate users of offshore structures. Small number.
Your cost to build a system with software instead of humans. Big number.
The actual tax benefits to companies like those on HN that are larger than a breadbox and smaller than the Hoover Dam -- not a big economic benefit to the income statement. (Hint: it involves the time value of money, which means that you have to be pushing a lot of dollars through the pipes to make the present value/future value numbers to look like "jackpot!").
Sorry. I'm probably just a crusty old incumbent ripe for disruption.
Or there is another possibility -- humans, even at $1,000/hour, are cheaper than code.