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>And why would you buy it personally? Because they refer to buying real estate as a way to avoid this law, so forming a limited liability company wouldn't work

• tialaramex 6y ago
  Actually the trick to corporate ownership of real estate goes like this: Suppose jurisdiction X has a tax on real estate transfers and there's a lovely castle there, Castle Y which Person A owns. Person A transfers the ownership of Castle Y to a holding corporation HoldCorp. There might be a tax for this, but there might well be some exemption, especially if Person A is willing to wait a while before... Person A wants to sell Person B the castle. Instead they sell HoldCorp. The castle never changed ownership, and no tax is paid. Later person C wants to buy the castle. They now buy HoldCorp from person B. The castle still didn't change owners and no tax is paid. If jurisdiction X tweaks their law you might need to tweak your procedure slightly. Maybe Person A must stay as non-beneficial owner for 5 years after the sale, or maybe you must use a two lawyer shell corporation in Bermuda to properly insulate HoldCorp from the taxes. A lawyer will sort this out for far less than the taxes, all of which goes in their pocket and isn't used on government services for ghastly poor people.