7 ms·

We set up an offshore company in a tax haven

66 points by sgloutnikov 5y ago

shapefrog 5y ago
1) I am happy NPR have covered this and many subjects well over the years, here they are calling back to their 2012 work on the subject. 2) I am sad that despite the comprehensive coverate of the subject the 'revelations' are a shock to people.
mkingston 5y ago
It occurred to me in the wake of the release of these Pandora papers that mass availability of tax avoidance could be one way of shutting down (almost) any availability thereof. Worded cynically: bring tax avoidance to the middle class and the poor, and it'll be shut down promptly.
- lixtra 5y ago
  In the end I don‘t see how hiding value somewhere can be stopped without total surveillance. Maybe we are getting there.
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    End corporate taxes and all of a sudden the whole scheme becomes unnecessary.
    - smackay 5y ago
      Wouldn't you have to rescind the concept that corporations can act as individuals as well? I'm not sure whether this is a legal, moral or philosophical position but in the spirit of no taxation without representation then it seems right that all political lobbying by corporations would have to be ended as well.
      - AmericanChopper 5y ago
        They can’t act as individuals. This is a falsehood perpetuated by people who want to make witty hot takes.
        shapefrog 5y ago
        God damn the Supreme Court and their perpetuating of falsehoods with witty hot takes.
        AmericanChopper 5y ago
        The Supreme Court has never ruled that corporations are people. They ruled that corporations have 1st amendment protections. But yes, that was exactly the type of substance-free hot take I’m talking about.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > The Supreme Court has never ruled that corporations are people. “Under the designation of ‘person’ there is no doubt that a private corporation is included.” Pembina Consolidated Silver Min. & Milling Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U.S. 181 (1888). Among others. That corporations are people has never really been substantially in dispute (legal personhood is fairly expressly the central point of the corporate form as an innovation where partnerships already existed), though whether particular references to person, persons, or people in the law are intended to refer to all legal persons or only specifically to natural persons is sometimes in dispute.
    - flud 5y ago
      Yup, that sounds like the perfect solution to the problem of companies not paying enough taxes
      - AmericanChopper 5y ago
        Companies were never supposed to pay taxes on their profits, they were supposed pay dividends which are then taxed as income. The desire to tax that profit twice (or 3 times if you count consumption tax) is what creates this whole mess, because you fundamentally can’t force a company to make a profit. The outcome of trying is a tax system that only applies to SME.
      - cpursley 5y ago
        Corps don't pay taxes, their customers do in the form of higher prices.
  - fartingflamingo 5y ago
    In case of the land locked EU micro states, a blockade would be an obvious way. Rather surprisingly, I can't seem to find a lot of historical examples of, say, German trade unions completely blocking Liechtenstein, demanding a fairer taxation system.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  I firmly believe that for any meaningful change in tax exceptions for multinationals one needs to bring it to the masses, like you say. For example by creating a multinational entity that swallows you all the small shops, while letting them be the owner as they were before. But they now use a service that consistently costs so much that it's not returning a profit. While they also start a new business through a foreign Enterprise that is stationed in any tax Haven you have your eyes set on. When on scale this will drain the tax income of most small shops and must force the government to shut down these constructs. Challenge being that in doing so the precedent crested will also force the multinationals, like Shell, Unilever, etc. To shut down their unfair tax advantages. I don't think the idea is novel, and I think it's extremely risky, but something worth chasing I believe.
  - throwawaycuriou 5y ago
    Stepping sideways from the multinational revelations of the Pandora Papers, as a US citizen I'm floored by how much tax abuse comes from organized religion and how little we seem to be concerned by it. I've considered creating my own church for along the same reasoning you describe. If I can make a Mary Mag Was Actually Jesus Church with minimal effort, and the end result is I get to play the same game that corrupt ministers do, shouldn't I ethically do so? There's good and bad about it, and I leaned towards no. But maybe the problem is it's unethical if too few people do it. If I scale it up, does it become ethically different? Say TurboTax starts providing any Joe Schmoe the chance to click a few buttons and handle all the hard things to establish his new 'church' is a legally tax-exempt financial vehicle on religious grounds. What would come of it? Would it accelerate the good or bad?
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      The issue with mandatory taxation is that the powerful in society will always corrupt the system somehow to pay what they are happy to pay (paying taxes or doing charity can be good investments reputation-wise) while everyone else will have to pay "their fair share". As soon as everyone start using loopholes they will simply lobby to make it harder, to keep the powerful safe and everyone else paying. From anecdotal evidence, I'm pretty sure the religious route you recommend won't work. The only way to make things fair in terms of taxes would be to have zero mandatory taxes. With zero taxes there is no-one benefitting from corrupting politicians. Career politicians would not exist anymore because there would be no more money in it. Without taxes you're left with the problem of organising society without a central entity, eg. by having private police and protection, private healthcare, private education, private roads and by supporting those without means through voluntary charities instead of mandatory taxes.
- nspattak 5y ago
  I do not think that this will work. Unless people actively force them not to, they will shut down this door and they will build a new one for the elites to continue their business as usual.
- pydry 5y ago
  Your core problem is the rich mostly owns both parties and most of the media that can blast propaganda to the effect of: * It's simply Not Possible to fix the problem of widespread tax avoidance because There Will Always be Loopholes. * In any case if you tax the wealthy too much they'll run away with their money which will be worse in the long run and the government can't stop them and Then You'll Be Really Sorry. The public can't really be trained to believe that tax havens are ok but maybe 70% can be led to believe the lie that theres nothing that can really be done about them so they dont demand politicians fix it while a good 40% are susceptible to persistent character assassination on politicians who do try to fix it (e.g. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-ethics-complaint-met-gala https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-ethics-complaint-met-ga...) Trying to convince Bahamanian lawyers to charge less than a million dollars for setting up elaborate tax structures that Congress winks at because their donors like them isn't really a viable fix. A) they won't B) if they did that particular method would be shut down and theyd shify to others because the core problem of "Congress doesnt work for you" hasnt changed.
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    France started heavily taxing some rich people, and some of them like Gerard Depardieu promptly 'immigrated' to Belgium (A whole km outside France in his case). As far as I know, France did not suffer too much from this. https://jonathanturley.org/2012/12/12/french-government-denounces-wealthy-leaving-country-after-imposition-of-75-tax-rate/ https://jonathanturley.org/2012/12/12/french-government-deno...
    - shapefrog 5y ago
      Given most countries tax their residents as opposed to their citizens, I say let them leave and they forfeit their right to be residents. In the case of the US, where they tax both their citizens and their residents. If you want to leave and not pay, you forfeit the residency and the citizenship.
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        How do you mean? He's obviously a resident in Belgium otherwise he'd be paying French taxes? If he moves back to France he'd become a French resident again or if he in practice spends more days of the year in France than in Belgium, then he'll be treated as if he's a resident in France.
- sbacic 5y ago
  > Worded cynically: bring tax avoidance to the middle class and the poor, and it'll be shut down promptly. This already exists in certain places and under certain conditions. Several EU member states offer very generous tax rates provided you make under a certain sum and meet other (fairly specific) criteria.
schnebbau 5y ago
The way I understood it, correctly setting up an offshore company for tax avoidance is expensive -- there's no benefit unless you are already a multi-million $ company. This is because you actually need a presence (including employees) in the haven country. So if that presence costs more than the tax you're hoping to avoid, then it's a net loss.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  This presence is often an entry on a building directory and a registered agent willing to accept official papers (where that directory and that person serves as the registered agent for hundreds of companies). It’s still costly, but you only need a fractional “employee” not employees plural in many cases.
pembrook 5y ago
I think what’s most surprising about both the Panama papers and the Pandora papers, is the total lack of Americans in both. If you were to believe popular media narratives, rich Americans would be the number 1 clients of most of these firms. But they aren’t, and if you adjust by percentage of rich people, the US is dramatically underrepresented. I think there’s two contributing factors to this: 1) The US has relatively low capital gains and inheritance taxes as compared to most countries in Europe and elsewhere, and since most rich people only care about capital gains and inheritance, it makes tax evasion less profitable when done successfully 2) The power of the US treasury to enforce draconian global reporting laws like FATCA and FBAR and global tax. This cannot be overstated. The US can cut off your banks ability to trade in dollars—-which is effectively a death sentence for a bank. Therefore pretty much every bank on earth is willing to comply. In the US, the problem isn’t offshore tax evasion, it’s the actual domestic tax code itself which allows for all the loopholes! Meanwhile, if you’re an average joe American expat living abroad, your financial life will be a nightmare since the US automatically assumes you’re some rich tax evader. Good luck opening even a basic bank account while abroad. It’s easier for a non-American to create an anonymous shell company inside the US than it is for an American exchange student to open a bank account while abroad.
- villasv 5y ago
  > If you were to believe popular media narratives, rich Americans would be the number 1 client of most of these firms. Not my expectation exactly because > The US has relatively low capital gains taxes This is very euphemistic. The US is a maze of tax havens and loopholes. Some states make it easier to launder art, some make it easier to zero-out income taxes and so on. Plus endless tax benefits “for the sake of the economy”. So congratz to the US on allowing such nasty behavior inside instead of adding a few more contrived hoops to those who wish to evade taxes…
- shapefrog 5y ago
  Global taxation. US citizens pay tax on global earnings. Almost every other country in the world you do not. Your tax rate for say a UK citizen if you shift from onshore to offshore goes from 40% to 0%. For a US, no change. If you are spending 10k/100k per year to maintain the strucures the motivation is not there for the US. Philosophically this is interesting as they are taxing residents as well as citizenship, which has a right to residency at any time.
harvie 5y ago
Parliament elections in Czech Republic will start in one hour. I wonder if results for current PM Andrej Babiš will get affected by his affair regarding Pandora papers. But his voters are totaly brainwashed and beleive that Pandora papers are fake news crafted by Czech interrest groups with sole purpose to impair his election score.
- SwiftyBug 5y ago
  I can see that having absolute idiots is not an exclusivity of Brazil.
- davidjytang 5y ago
  > Prime Minister Babis and his populist ANO party had sought re-election on Saturday after four years in power. But they were beaten in the poll by the centre-right coalition Spolu (meaning Together), which took 27.8% of the vote compared to ANO's 27.1%. I copied that from a [BBC article][1]. It seems that election didn't go well for him. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58863671 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58863671
  - harvie 5y ago
    ANO actualy got more mandates (chairs) than Spolu, due to some system which gives different weights to votes from various districts. However most likely he will not be able to get 50% needed in order to accept new laws, since all his possible partners were defeated as well. (including communist party, which for the first time in exactly 100 years didn't make it to the parliament)
_hilro 5y ago
2012... FTA: > Note: This episode originally ran in July 2012.
sumedh 5y ago
Can someone on HN setup a startup which offers a website where normal people can setup a company/bank account in a tax haven completely online so that the rest of us can have the same advantages as rich people.
- dalmo3 5y ago
  I'd gladly pay $5/mo for that.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  I genuinely have no idea - is this legal? Would this be tax evasion or just tax sheltering?
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    Depends on the jurisdiction where you physically reside, but most likely your country can claim the offshore company is actually a company based in your country of residence and tax it accordingly. If you have employees offshore, a director offshore, quarterly shareholders company meeting offshore and the income is not coming entirely (or, even better, not at all) from your country of residence, then maybe it will be just sheltering (subject to the laws in your country of residence that can change at any time). I've been thinking of setting up a company in a low tax location (non blacklist, maybe 5-12%), receive payments for a group of contractors working with foreign companies in high tax jurisdictions (think, living in Spain for a US or UK company) and then keep a ledger of payments received, expenses and money paid out. Company shares could be granted among the contractors and the manager of the company based on how much the contractors brought into the company and invoices for work (and dividends) could be paid to the contractors who need some money to live. The money left in the company could be invested for the contractors in whatever they prefer. After a decade working and saving outside of your expensive jurisdiction you could move to some tax friendly location (Dubai, or Portugal under the NHR scheme) and extract all the profit you made over your career. If the contractors were all shareholders and going to shareholders meeting in the offshore location, there may be enough substance to keep tax collectors at bay and having multiple people bringing income would make it hard for the authorities to claim they could tax the offshore company as a national company. The price to pay would be trusting the managers of the company not to run away with your money and to respect the contract.
spurgu 5y ago
Mods please mark this as [audio] and perhaps [2012].

66 points by sgloutnikov 5y ago

1) I am happy NPR have covered this and many subjects well over the years, here they are calling back to their 2012 work on the subject. 2) I am sad that despite the comprehensive coverate of the subject the 'revelations' are a shock to people.

mkingston 5y ago

It occurred to me in the wake of the release of these Pandora papers that mass availability of tax avoidance could be one way of shutting down (almost) any availability thereof. Worded cynically: bring tax avoidance to the middle class and the poor, and it'll be shut down promptly.

lixtra 5y ago
In the end I don‘t see how hiding value somewhere can be stopped without total surveillance. Maybe we are getting there.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  End corporate taxes and all of a sudden the whole scheme becomes unnecessary.
  - smackay 5y ago
    Wouldn't you have to rescind the concept that corporations can act as individuals as well? I'm not sure whether this is a legal, moral or philosophical position but in the spirit of no taxation without representation then it seems right that all political lobbying by corporations would have to be ended as well.
    - AmericanChopper 5y ago
      They can’t act as individuals. This is a falsehood perpetuated by people who want to make witty hot takes.
      - shapefrog 5y ago
        God damn the Supreme Court and their perpetuating of falsehoods with witty hot takes.
        AmericanChopper 5y ago
        The Supreme Court has never ruled that corporations are people. They ruled that corporations have 1st amendment protections. But yes, that was exactly the type of substance-free hot take I’m talking about.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > The Supreme Court has never ruled that corporations are people. “Under the designation of ‘person’ there is no doubt that a private corporation is included.” Pembina Consolidated Silver Min. & Milling Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U.S. 181 (1888). Among others. That corporations are people has never really been substantially in dispute (legal personhood is fairly expressly the central point of the corporate form as an innovation where partnerships already existed), though whether particular references to person, persons, or people in the law are intended to refer to all legal persons or only specifically to natural persons is sometimes in dispute.
  - flud 5y ago
    Yup, that sounds like the perfect solution to the problem of companies not paying enough taxes
    - AmericanChopper 5y ago
      Companies were never supposed to pay taxes on their profits, they were supposed pay dividends which are then taxed as income. The desire to tax that profit twice (or 3 times if you count consumption tax) is what creates this whole mess, because you fundamentally can’t force a company to make a profit. The outcome of trying is a tax system that only applies to SME.
    - cpursley 5y ago
      Corps don't pay taxes, their customers do in the form of higher prices.
- fartingflamingo 5y ago
  In case of the land locked EU micro states, a blockade would be an obvious way. Rather surprisingly, I can't seem to find a lot of historical examples of, say, German trade unions completely blocking Liechtenstein, demanding a fairer taxation system.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hetspookjee 5y ago
I firmly believe that for any meaningful change in tax exceptions for multinationals one needs to bring it to the masses, like you say. For example by creating a multinational entity that swallows you all the small shops, while letting them be the owner as they were before. But they now use a service that consistently costs so much that it's not returning a profit. While they also start a new business through a foreign Enterprise that is stationed in any tax Haven you have your eyes set on. When on scale this will drain the tax income of most small shops and must force the government to shut down these constructs. Challenge being that in doing so the precedent crested will also force the multinationals, like Shell, Unilever, etc. To shut down their unfair tax advantages. I don't think the idea is novel, and I think it's extremely risky, but something worth chasing I believe.
- throwawaycuriou 5y ago
  Stepping sideways from the multinational revelations of the Pandora Papers, as a US citizen I'm floored by how much tax abuse comes from organized religion and how little we seem to be concerned by it. I've considered creating my own church for along the same reasoning you describe. If I can make a Mary Mag Was Actually Jesus Church with minimal effort, and the end result is I get to play the same game that corrupt ministers do, shouldn't I ethically do so? There's good and bad about it, and I leaned towards no. But maybe the problem is it's unethical if too few people do it. If I scale it up, does it become ethically different? Say TurboTax starts providing any Joe Schmoe the chance to click a few buttons and handle all the hard things to establish his new 'church' is a legally tax-exempt financial vehicle on religious grounds. What would come of it? Would it accelerate the good or bad?
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    The issue with mandatory taxation is that the powerful in society will always corrupt the system somehow to pay what they are happy to pay (paying taxes or doing charity can be good investments reputation-wise) while everyone else will have to pay "their fair share". As soon as everyone start using loopholes they will simply lobby to make it harder, to keep the powerful safe and everyone else paying. From anecdotal evidence, I'm pretty sure the religious route you recommend won't work. The only way to make things fair in terms of taxes would be to have zero mandatory taxes. With zero taxes there is no-one benefitting from corrupting politicians. Career politicians would not exist anymore because there would be no more money in it. Without taxes you're left with the problem of organising society without a central entity, eg. by having private police and protection, private healthcare, private education, private roads and by supporting those without means through voluntary charities instead of mandatory taxes.
nspattak 5y ago
I do not think that this will work. Unless people actively force them not to, they will shut down this door and they will build a new one for the elites to continue their business as usual.
pydry 5y ago
Your core problem is the rich mostly owns both parties and most of the media that can blast propaganda to the effect of: * It's simply Not Possible to fix the problem of widespread tax avoidance because There Will Always be Loopholes. * In any case if you tax the wealthy too much they'll run away with their money which will be worse in the long run and the government can't stop them and Then You'll Be Really Sorry. The public can't really be trained to believe that tax havens are ok but maybe 70% can be led to believe the lie that theres nothing that can really be done about them so they dont demand politicians fix it while a good 40% are susceptible to persistent character assassination on politicians who do try to fix it (e.g. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-ethics-complaint-met-gala https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-ethics-complaint-met-ga...) Trying to convince Bahamanian lawyers to charge less than a million dollars for setting up elaborate tax structures that Congress winks at because their donors like them isn't really a viable fix. A) they won't B) if they did that particular method would be shut down and theyd shify to others because the core problem of "Congress doesnt work for you" hasnt changed.
- hyperman1 5y ago
  France started heavily taxing some rich people, and some of them like Gerard Depardieu promptly 'immigrated' to Belgium (A whole km outside France in his case). As far as I know, France did not suffer too much from this. https://jonathanturley.org/2012/12/12/french-government-denounces-wealthy-leaving-country-after-imposition-of-75-tax-rate/ https://jonathanturley.org/2012/12/12/french-government-deno...
  - shapefrog 5y ago
    Given most countries tax their residents as opposed to their citizens, I say let them leave and they forfeit their right to be residents. In the case of the US, where they tax both their citizens and their residents. If you want to leave and not pay, you forfeit the residency and the citizenship.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      How do you mean? He's obviously a resident in Belgium otherwise he'd be paying French taxes? If he moves back to France he'd become a French resident again or if he in practice spends more days of the year in France than in Belgium, then he'll be treated as if he's a resident in France.
sbacic 5y ago
> Worded cynically: bring tax avoidance to the middle class and the poor, and it'll be shut down promptly. This already exists in certain places and under certain conditions. Several EU member states offer very generous tax rates provided you make under a certain sum and meet other (fairly specific) criteria.

schnebbau 5y ago

The way I understood it, correctly setting up an offshore company for tax avoidance is expensive -- there's no benefit unless you are already a multi-million $ company. This is because you actually need a presence (including employees) in the haven country. So if that presence costs more than the tax you're hoping to avoid, then it's a net loss.

sokoloff 5y ago
This presence is often an entry on a building directory and a registered agent willing to accept official papers (where that directory and that person serves as the registered agent for hundreds of companies). It’s still costly, but you only need a fractional “employee” not employees plural in many cases.

pembrook 5y ago

I think what’s most surprising about both the Panama papers and the Pandora papers, is the total lack of Americans in both. If you were to believe popular media narratives, rich Americans would be the number 1 clients of most of these firms. But they aren’t, and if you adjust by percentage of rich people, the US is dramatically underrepresented. I think there’s two contributing factors to this: 1) The US has relatively low capital gains and inheritance taxes as compared to most countries in Europe and elsewhere, and since most rich people only care about capital gains and inheritance, it makes tax evasion less profitable when done successfully 2) The power of the US treasury to enforce draconian global reporting laws like FATCA and FBAR and global tax. This cannot be overstated. The US can cut off your banks ability to trade in dollars—-which is effectively a death sentence for a bank. Therefore pretty much every bank on earth is willing to comply. In the US, the problem isn’t offshore tax evasion, it’s the actual domestic tax code itself which allows for all the loopholes! Meanwhile, if you’re an average joe American expat living abroad, your financial life will be a nightmare since the US automatically assumes you’re some rich tax evader. Good luck opening even a basic bank account while abroad. It’s easier for a non-American to create an anonymous shell company inside the US than it is for an American exchange student to open a bank account while abroad.

villasv 5y ago
> If you were to believe popular media narratives, rich Americans would be the number 1 client of most of these firms. Not my expectation exactly because > The US has relatively low capital gains taxes This is very euphemistic. The US is a maze of tax havens and loopholes. Some states make it easier to launder art, some make it easier to zero-out income taxes and so on. Plus endless tax benefits “for the sake of the economy”. So congratz to the US on allowing such nasty behavior inside instead of adding a few more contrived hoops to those who wish to evade taxes…
shapefrog 5y ago
Global taxation. US citizens pay tax on global earnings. Almost every other country in the world you do not. Your tax rate for say a UK citizen if you shift from onshore to offshore goes from 40% to 0%. For a US, no change. If you are spending 10k/100k per year to maintain the strucures the motivation is not there for the US. Philosophically this is interesting as they are taxing residents as well as citizenship, which has a right to residency at any time.

harvie 5y ago

Parliament elections in Czech Republic will start in one hour. I wonder if results for current PM Andrej Babiš will get affected by his affair regarding Pandora papers. But his voters are totaly brainwashed and beleive that Pandora papers are fake news crafted by Czech interrest groups with sole purpose to impair his election score.

SwiftyBug 5y ago
I can see that having absolute idiots is not an exclusivity of Brazil.
davidjytang 5y ago
> Prime Minister Babis and his populist ANO party had sought re-election on Saturday after four years in power. But they were beaten in the poll by the centre-right coalition Spolu (meaning Together), which took 27.8% of the vote compared to ANO's 27.1%. I copied that from a [BBC article][1]. It seems that election didn't go well for him. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58863671 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58863671
- harvie 5y ago
  ANO actualy got more mandates (chairs) than Spolu, due to some system which gives different weights to votes from various districts. However most likely he will not be able to get 50% needed in order to accept new laws, since all his possible partners were defeated as well. (including communist party, which for the first time in exactly 100 years didn't make it to the parliament)

_hilro 5y ago

2012... FTA: > Note: This episode originally ran in July 2012.

sumedh 5y ago

Can someone on HN setup a startup which offers a website where normal people can setup a company/bank account in a tax haven completely online so that the rest of us can have the same advantages as rich people.

dalmo3 5y ago
I'd gladly pay $5/mo for that.
silicon2401 5y ago
I genuinely have no idea - is this legal? Would this be tax evasion or just tax sheltering?
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Depends on the jurisdiction where you physically reside, but most likely your country can claim the offshore company is actually a company based in your country of residence and tax it accordingly. If you have employees offshore, a director offshore, quarterly shareholders company meeting offshore and the income is not coming entirely (or, even better, not at all) from your country of residence, then maybe it will be just sheltering (subject to the laws in your country of residence that can change at any time). I've been thinking of setting up a company in a low tax location (non blacklist, maybe 5-12%), receive payments for a group of contractors working with foreign companies in high tax jurisdictions (think, living in Spain for a US or UK company) and then keep a ledger of payments received, expenses and money paid out. Company shares could be granted among the contractors and the manager of the company based on how much the contractors brought into the company and invoices for work (and dividends) could be paid to the contractors who need some money to live. The money left in the company could be invested for the contractors in whatever they prefer. After a decade working and saving outside of your expensive jurisdiction you could move to some tax friendly location (Dubai, or Portugal under the NHR scheme) and extract all the profit you made over your career. If the contractors were all shareholders and going to shareholders meeting in the offshore location, there may be enough substance to keep tax collectors at bay and having multiple people bringing income would make it hard for the authorities to claim they could tax the offshore company as a national company. The price to pay would be trusting the managers of the company not to run away with your money and to respect the contract.

spurgu 5y ago

Mods please mark this as [audio] and perhaps [2012].