Why not put a bank on the Moon? Currently if you want to avoid paying high taxes you have to put your money in an offshore account in places like Belize, Switzerland, Andorra, Austria and the Cayman Islands.Some of these countrys are coming under pressure to disclose the contents of accounts held there which then allows your government to take and waste yet more of your hard earned cash.
As most money is now held in electronic form it is not unfeasible that a bank computer could be placed on the moon or in space near the earth. The money could be transferred there by encrypted radio transmission.
Which government on earth has jurisdiction over the moon? they cannot tax money which is stored there.(how would they seize it?) If the banking rules require that the actual paper currency be placed in a vault then that makes things a bit more expensive but very rich people would be able to pay to have some of their cash stashed up there.
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Taxes are a method for a community to sustain services beneficial to all components of its social matrix. If members of the community refuse to contribute funds to the community for the services they are held responsible for, the community wil, at end, either force proper contribution or suffer from the lack of necessary funds. No outlandish plans will be tolerated if those plans threaten the function of the community.
If you really believe that all taxes raised are used to benefit the community you are being naive.Maybe thats how it works in Finland but in the UK vast amounts (we're talking billions of pounds per annum here)of tax revenue are lost to domestic and foreign criminals making fraudulent social security, welfare and family tax credit claims, further huge sums are wasted on thousands of bureaucrats being paid top dollar to do meaningless and pointless paper shuffling jobs.
To make up for these loses the government do'nt chase the criminals to recover the money or cut back on these useless employees but instead they raise the taxes of the easy target that is hard working law abiding families and in this crazy scenario you are quite justified in trying to protect the fruits of your labours from these lazy money grabbing bureaucrats.
As for it not being tolerated, how are they going to stop free thinking and enterprising individuals from taking advantage of an offworld facility which they have absolutely no jurisdiction over?
Juristiction over the moon is a nonsense concept. If a government sees tax funds escaping it has enough juristiction over the Earthbound individuals trying to evade their responsibilities to see to it that they conform to social obligations. Your view that the benefits established by the community to see to it that the community is well cared for should be evaded by greedy individuals is an archaic and antisocial viewpoint. Any general system has its criminals but the percentage of individuals indulging in criminal activity are generally small and not a real danger to the entire system. If anything the criminal activity is usually more prevalent amongst the people with large incomes.
I am talking about tax avoidance not tax evasion, there is a legal difference. Currently if you have declared funds in a bank account your government can tax the interest generated from those funds, if you put those declared funds in an offshore or offworld account they can't.
Building some personal wealth is not an archaic and antisocial viewpoint, it is your view that we should all be part of a collective that is archaic, this model has been shown to fail in all of the countries that have tried it.
Out of the 3 billion paid in social security benefits annually in the UK,an estimated 2 billion of it is lost in fraudulent claims, (dont take my word for it check it out yourself)they have lost even more in fraudulent claims in 2005. No country can sustain this level of theft and making honest citizens pay for it is'nt just plain wrong it's insane and will shut down the economy!!!
There is'nt a socialist economy in the world which isn't stagnating because of high taxation and social security fraud you only have to look at France and Germany to know this is true. Yes we should take care of the weaker members of our community but if governments put as much effort into preventing fraud as they put in to taxing law abiding and hard working citizens people would not have to consider placing their money in tax havens.
>>Juristiction over the moon is a nonsense concept. If a government sees tax >>funds escaping it has enough juristiction over the Earthbound individuals >>trying to evade their responsibilities
Not true!! they don't have enough resource to catch these people, much easier for them to make up the shortfall by hitting Mr or Ms Honest Citizen in the wallet.
There is a project to build a giant ocean going ship called freedom which will be a tax haven and stay permanently at sea;no government will have jurisdiction over the people who live on that.
You are interested in escaping society, not participating in it. I am interested in how this permanantly seagoing vessel will obtain its food, its fuel, the replacement parts for its machinery, the clothing of its participants etc. its sustenance funds without getting involved with onshore facilities and thereby paying taxes. And if it has a disaster, as a permanantly seagoing vessel normally encounters, will it call on the emergency forces for rescue without accounting for the heavy expenses of the operation?
I am not interested in escaping from society but in changing it.However as there are so many bureaucrats in comfortable well paid jobs who have a vested interest in perpetuating and expanding this madness the task will be very difficult. The opening of an offworld bank might provide enough of a shock and 'provocation' to get them to reform the current system and stop the fraud.
I have no problem with paying social security to people who become unemployed or can't work because they are genuinely ill and need it but why should I and others have to use our energy working to generate money to provide a huge number of fraudsters who won't contribute to the community with an easy life? Until this problem is addressed and solved people will always try to get around it by seeking and using tax shelters.
There's nothing wrong with stopping fraud. The huge number of fraudulent corporation heads who have robbed their investors of millions is in the headlines every day. It just seems to me to be rather grotesque to establish an expensive off Earth project to do so (with doubtful results) when a more direct approach of seeing to it that the law is obeyed by establishing enforceable guidlines for public assistance is much less expensive with more realizable results. I still don't understand how that boat idea will avoid paying maintenance costs without contributing to the tax base.
I'm not sure if the people building the Freedom ship have solved the problems that you mention.
It's "income tax", it's charged where you live, not where you earned it or where you store it. If you live in one country and work in another, it's always the one you live in that taxes you (done it - got the tax bill to prove it).
If you hide money (Cayman islands, under the bed, on the moon), you are still liable to pay tax on it. You are just hiding it and if the tax people ever find out, which they probably will if you try to bring the money back to spend it, you've had it.
The only way to avoid income tax is to live for most of the time (> 6 months per year) in a low-tax place. Easy, but you still have to earn enough money in the 5 months you are outside the country to support your lifestyle / pay for your oxygen supplies to be sent to the moon.
P.S. Why have you called it "offshore"? Switzerland, Andorra and Austria are landlocked and definately not offshore.
I called it offshore cause I live in the UK which is surrounded by water so everywhere is offshore to us....and yes bringing the dosh back from the tax haven will be difficult but not impossible. Why was there an Austrian navy? as you say it is a landlocked country but they still had a fleet when they were in the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Prior to 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Empire did have a coast. It included what is now Croatia, and all it's coast down to Dubrovnik, plus the Trieste area which is now in Italy.
Look up "Austria-Hungary" in Wikipedia.
That's why the railway main line south from Vienna ends in Trieste, it's the nearest port.
To get back on subject ....
If the aim is just to hide the money in a bank which the police can never investigate, you could do this cheaper by putting your computerised bank in an orbiting satellite, or in a rebel-controlled part of some country (Somalia, Congo, etc.). "Protection money" to the local warlords will be cheaper than launch fees.
But being outside the reach of the law works both ways. If the bank refused to give you your money back, there would be nothing you could do :-) !
Having a Bank Account on the Moon or somewhere Offshore to save taxes domestically is futile. What is the point of having MONEY on the MOON .. can you spend it there? Obviously at tsome time you may wish to buy an ice cream or something on your home planet. Regulators trance the movement of money to and from Offshore.<P> If you do not report income then it is go to jail stuff. And they have what is called BETTERMENT TAX - which just means you pay tax because you are seen to be buying too many ice creams or driving flash cars or using Plastic Cards. <p>The US Government and Australia have obtained data on persons holding Offshore Visa and Mastercards and regularly get details of Shareholders and Directors from Offshore Company Registries. The US is currently in Court to extract information from Paypal. <B>Big Brother IS WATCHING!</B>If you want to save taxes - annihilate them - you can do it quite effectively ONSHORE - legally and without raising the ire of the IRS. You need professionals skilled in the area. It is certainly not do it yourself stuff.
The main benefit of going OFFSHORE though is ASSET PROTECTION .. but unless you are fairly wealthy you can do that too just as effectively onshore.<p>
If you have businesses offshore generating revenue then it is best not to bring the income onshore at all (US Citizens will still be taxed on Offshore Income - and go to jail if they are found to not have declared it). Therefore there needs to be Professionally Structured Offshore business entities.<P>
Then if you invest the money through nominees from an Offshore vantage point you can successfully avoid tax on the profits made. However extreme care needs to be taken to ensure your actions don't breach the law. No longer can a US citizen simply keep quiet about offshore companies and bank accounts. It is imperative then that you carefully structure shareholdings and directorships, nominees and trusts, and define beneficiaries so that the US Government remains powerless to interfere. That can be best achieved using Offshore nominees for most things.
Obviously because of the MONEY - you may wish to access funds and therefore repatriate the money at times. This should not be done via loans from Offshore or the Moon - as you have just given the game away. Again you need assistance to bring the money back onshore - through Domestic structuring. Then you can obtain local loans without raising eyebrows.