Yes and no. 1. If you are talking online trading..most will not directly allow US Citizens. 2. That leave you with an old fashioned brokerage house. High comissions which would make your momma blush. We are talking 1% of the account to make a trade. 3. as stated above, they do get all your info, they do a KYC, AML and you normally need to prove non-US residence..utility bill, Lease agreement, mortgage, deed. etc. 4. NOW, if you get past all that BS you would be home free. Odds are the company just has a master account with a prime broker.. your info never gets reported. you could cheat/launder to your hearts content and the brokerage house wouldnt know the difference. When I was at Scotia, there was just a big master account in the name of the company. The accounts were segregated internally and the IRS nor the SEC nor the prime broker ever saw this. I brought this to the attention of the CEO but he didnt care either. They did AML thorugh compliance and such...but they just wanted to keep out drug dealers. You had to fill out tax forms but they never went anywhere..they just did it for intimidation purposes and to have on file.
top tax bracket is over 50% on ny, chicago and LA (add in fed, state, city taxes) I would love become an Hong Kong citizen and trade us equities. would have to renounce your US citizenship first though. god I hate taxes
Thanks all for the responses and insight. Given the complexities it sounds like I'd be better off finding a broker in Tokyo, so will work on that... It occurs to me I may even find one in English, which would be really fantastic...
I have a Texan friend who moved to Beijing (where Jim Rogers also wants to live) and he wishes he had never renounced his US citizenship. The stories he tells me indicate it simply is not-worth-it for any amount of tax savings. Being a realist, I decided recently to keep things simple and pay my designated share (fair or not)... while eliminating any suspicion of tax evasion and maximizing tax avoidance. If a domestic trader is taking six figures of distributions per year, they should have a tax attorney on retainer anyway. Pick one you like. At $500 an hour, friendly terms round the hours down in your favor. If he cannot figure out how to cut your taxes from 33/39% down to 25% in short order, buy another shark. Yes, yes, I know Hussein is likely to stick it even more to traders with higher and more numerous taxes, further complicating matters, but what else would one expect from an administration who borrows against taxes receivable from one hundred years into the future? Yet more reason to have a tax attorney on your side when you make it to six figures per year in profits.
looks like the collective knowledge in the thread has sent the new member offshore expert on his way. i'd love for his 'make 1mm, pay yourself 87m tax free and keep the rest in your offshore corp also tax free' fantasy to be true. unfortunately, there are no real easy avoidance measures. the bitch is how easy and accepted it is for small businesses to evade- yes, 'evade', not avoid. for cash businesses, i would imagine the cheat rate is >80%. frankly, i bet that's way too low. had a girlfriend whose parents owned a restaurant. looked like struggling 1st gen business owners- look that way to the IRS too. dress conservative when they're in their home state, look like the multi-millionaires they are everywhere else. yearly trips back to the home country to launder the money (they buy gold and other jewelry). was tempted to drop a dime on them to the IRS when we broke up (not due to the break up- due to their utter disdain for the country that allowed them opportunity to become rich. they are also about the most racist people i've ever met. and, no... i didn't turn them in)! couple neighbours with their own businesses- lots of under the table and off the books stuff- of course, nothing of the methodical evasion of my x's family. and her profession.... CPA (as an aside, put CPA at the bottom of your list, yes- below crack whore, for girlfriend occupations.everything you'd imagine about dating a CPA is even worse in reality!).