Thanks for the clarification, I'm so used to read about long term canadian residents bitching against chinese nouveau riches that I jumped to the wrong interpretation. I have no intention to short canadian real estate btw, but if Dw is right and it will become easy to tax chinese immigrants on their worldwide income, than the chinese will stop coming and probably leave in throves - back home -until now at least- the government leaves them largely in peace with what happens in their local personal bank accounts, even if they are still residents in China - I hear much more of people upset over currency controls in the Mainland, especially that things got much tougher in hong Kong, than tax. But for some reason those myriads of chinese multimillionaires seem to trust more the number of succesful audits so far in Canada and probably Australia than our local DW's doom previsions, so one might be careful on their shorts.
Vancouver Canada real estate is already down 15% this year, while the real estate in China top tier cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou grows by 25% this year. It is no coincidence. China government passed some financial rule last year. Anyone invested more than $50,000 USD abroad will be fully audited by the government financially. So I think the rich in China now stop investing in real estate abroad. Instead they invest in their own cities. I live in New York City. Real estate here is starting to cool too. Rent is down across broad and in some area in Brooklyn, real estate has dropped by $250,000 USD from last year. Probably Chinese stop buying real estate in New York City as well. But real estate in Australia and New Zealand is booming. It grows by 10% this year. I think the China mega rich buy a lot of real estate there. Jack Ma bought some houses in New Zealand. They are not scare of the the recently financial rule.
Tier 1 cities have been hot for a while, Shenzhen went up around 50% in 2015, and quite a bit up before that year and 2016. Average prices were even higher in SZ than Shanghai last I checked. 50k usd a year is the limit an individual in China is allowed to exchange in foreign currency from onshore rmb, so it makes sense the government is tracking down the ones who invest more than the limit - but the limit has been in place for many years and for many years a lot of money invested abroad by mainlanders has virtually passed the border through underground channels. I haven't read the specific threat you write about, but it does appear that China intends to use the CRS to track and punish chinese local residents who invest abroad - if it was simply going after extra tax revenues, it would be much easier to start with local personal bank accounts which still go largely unchecked. Capital flight appears a sensitive topic in China. The HK based South china Morning post writes a bit about China and crs btw if someone needs references. About Vancouver RE prices, if the tax on foreigners (20% ?) another poster mentioned on this forum is real it must have tempered down foreign apetite and high end property value more than any upcoming CRS, I was surpised reading about that tax and hearing simultanously chinese talking of buying multimillion $ house there. But than I have no idea how it is applied, if it even exists or if there are exemptions.
@luisHK The Vancouver foreign owned tax is real and is a major contributing reason to the fall in high end property prices. So when the stats come out it says the average home price fell, well of course it did, based on the high end. But the other poster @JSOP claiming it was causing locals to be priced out of the market is completely incorrect. The lower to mid range of Vancouver property still has plenty of bids. This is the range where the locals compete at. The mainlanders have shifted to Toronto.
This thread is dead... Anyway back to AEOI, we understood some poster here is convinced it starts in full swing next year, and the below link from OECD is irrelevant, because he prefers other links or claims his advisors say so. Yet below are publications from IRD, Hk tax authorities, which explain a little more the issue. Btw JJ, whereas HK will start AEOI beginning of 2018 with Japan and UK it has already signed agreements with a few other countries, see links below, and Canada is one of them. There is another link from IRD which i can't find back, where they give tentative dates on when those new agreements would come into force, but from memory those are expected to start 1 year later. More agreements are supposed to follow. http://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/ppr/archives/16102601.htm http://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/ppr/archives/17012401.htm http://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/ppr/archives/17031701.htm And in summary, although I don't know how often it is updated : http://www.oecd.org/tax/automatic-e...framework-for-the-crs/exchange-relationships/
yeah probably because most people here are broke ass *iggers so tax is the least of their problems init.
The tax aspects of Panama have been talked about on this thread. Does anyone know anything about the safety, education & medical care there? I know this thread is about zero/low tax environments but for me it's a trade off. If you have a partner & kids then safety, education & medical care are very important, tbh they should also be priorities if you are single its just when you are young you don't think about things like that. There are plenty of places you can live on this planet with zero or very low tax but may are unsafe especially if you have plenty of money. Then you have the issue of your kids receiving a shit education and job prospects when they become adults. We all get sick sometimes, in some of these dogshit countries they feel for your wallet before your pulse. Their training and facilities can be shocking especially as they have no incentive to make you better as they try and bleed out your bank account.
No idea about Panama, but some thoughts about the other aspects, which many expats share. About education, if you are going for international schools, those can be totally different than the general education system around (In Thailand for instance some international schools come out with great maths results while the general schooling system is way down the international rankings, but in China local schools tend to achieve better academic results - still some locals go through quite a few hoops to get their kids a foreign nationality and have them attend international schools) and it might not be easy to know what the international schools are worth because of a lack of feedback. But as a general rules most capital and large cities should have decent international schools for the diplomats, foreign executives and wealthy locals, in the case they are allowed in and don't trust the local system. Health system is an issue, quite different from country to country, I lived in a few places in emerging Asia and prefer the system back home, problem can be an overly commercial system (like beeing sent to a couple of expensive tests without the surgeon actually going through the basic physical tests for this issue, and hospitals selling themselves overpriced medication), or in China encountering a system where it is difficult t find doctors who speak fluent english, and who have little time to give their patients - plus in secondary hospitals, the instruments they use as well as the doctor's qualifications are of dubious quality . About the future for kids, i favour living in thriving cities, where prospects are good for the locals, but not sure it makes much difference, you could raise your kids in privileged schools in shithole countries and I wonder if that would hurt their future ( as mentioned before I used to do business in Yangon, which was a backward as it gets, yet local businessmen I dealt with had their kids in a local international school from where they had no problem getting into good UK universities, not so sure what happened to them now but their future looked quite bright when we lost contact, and they sure made a lot of money once the country opened up and the premium real estate skyrocketed - or so I heard)
EU country, where the cost is higher than in emerging Asia btw if you get treated in well off areas private practices/clinics, but the fact to be treated in one's own language is a plus as well, I suspect it gets even more important with age. I don't see myself pulling proper english sentences while on death doorsteps, even now when i get overexcited/distressed, making sense in english is hard.