Ayography

Archive for November, 2009

Where should you go to put some of your hard-earned money? Some of the most popular countries or territories for asset protection are Bermuda, Gibraltar, Barbados, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Cook Islands, Belize, Labuan, Nevis, Seychelles, Cyprus, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Niue, Anguilla, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Turks and Caicos.
Mintz and Rubens advise clients to choose a jurisdiction with well- established trust laws favorable to asset protection strategies. Further, the jurisdiction should be inconvenient for predators to reach the assets of the trust by commencing an action in the foreign country. Key factors you must consider before you pick a haven should include ease of communications, the availability of experienced and well established trustees, no or low tax jurisdiction, strict bank secrecy laws, favorable trust laws, stable local government, favorable asset protection laws, the absence of exchange or currency controls and confidentiality. Cornez suggests more rigorous standards in evaluating offshore choices. He recommends that you take a look at the general reputation or quality of the tax havens, particularly those with a rich history of business- friendly legislation and flight capital is low. This means that countries with burdensome taxes, long-winded bureaucratic rigmarole, absence of political volatility, and massive court congestion due to numerous lawsuits should be avoided. He cites as examples countries that should not be on your list: Canada, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Greece, Venezuela, Australia, South Africa and the United States. Also consider the choice of governing law (British common law or the system called the Westminster model is preferred such as that in Liechtenstein and the French Territories). For purposes of asset protection, Cornez suggests that the haven of your choice should have rules that do not enforce foreign judgments and bankruptcy court orders, no forced heirship rules and no rule against perpetuity and does not honor any tax claim from other jurisdictions. Pick a place in a user-friendly time zone that has English as the principal language with high-quality communications
and Internet servers, especially those equipped with voice scramblers,
full encryption devices and modem-to-modem data transmission facilities.
Like Mintz and Rubens, Cornez wrote that the haven of your choice
should have a democratic and stable central government (such as the
Caymans, the Bahamas, and the federation of St. Kitts and Nevis)
that has not been affected by a change in the governing political party.
You have to choose a country that is not susceptible to violent political
swings, massive corruption, foreign invasions and military coups. More4aisbaIl
over, you must inquire into the levels of banking and financial privacy
and the existence of tax and assistance treaties with your home country. It is also preferable to choose a country with minimal or no currrency regulations or exchange control. It is essential to have the ability
to have asset protection by utilizing a variety of currencies (currency
diversification), as many have done with Swiss annuities, Euros and
others. You should also determine if there are qualified professionals
such as consultants, lawyers, accountants, trustees, and asset and port
established folio managers. Stability of the local currency against the U.S. dollar,
work ethics, religion, labor movements, social life, politics, business
customs, crime, drug involvement, the possibility of getting a second
passport or citizenship and the limitations on real estate ownership are
other factors that should be high on your list.