Offshore Trusts

- a brief overview of what you can get, in full privacy

There are many myths about Offshore Trusts. Officially, they are "dead", as far as the US government goes. There are no benefits from using them, it claims. You can find a lot of support for that point of view - all kinds of "lists" of cases that prove that people get nothing but trouble out of using Offshore Trusts.

But it is like reading the newspaper. You hear of all the accidents - never a word about all those responsible drivers that allow traffic to flow smoothly.

It is true that many people have been "burnt" by using Offshore Trusts in non-smart or illegal ways. The number is probably comparable to the number of people killed in traffic...

You still drive a car, don't you?

This is a matter of knowing how to do it. Buying a car alone will not bring you far. You need to know how to drive it safely - and you need to know the traffic laws. We tend to take this for granted when it comes to cars - so why would it be so difficult to accept the same kind of concept for running your financial affairs offshore? Yes - it takes some additional knowledge of a kind you cannot learn in any public school or education system. But you do not have to be a genius to learn it - if you can manage a business or an investment portfolio, you can also do this.

The real trouble is that no governments want you to know the truth! And the people who know how to do it right will not advertise how exactly you can do it too - they do not need any government harassment, but prefer to "do their own thing" in the privacy they enjoy and value so much...

We often get the question, "is it legal?" - and the answer to that is "YES, but it depends on how you do it..."

If you are in doubt about how to interpret that answer, then please check out this page before you make any decisions that could be wrong for you (the link opens a new window).

The benefits from "going offshore" are enormous, also for non-millionaires. Even for people who are so broke that they consider filing for bankruptcy can benefit very seriously from an offshore presence! In fact, when you are well established offshore, filing for bankruptcy doesn't hurt you at all! It just eliminates your personal debt...

So, what are the concerns? The true concern is that doing it wrong is criminal and will put you in jail for tax fraud. But doing it right will keep all your business and investment income free from taxation, forever, and it will retain your assets completely inaccessible for any future creditors of yours, including your own government.

This is why we focus on education. You cannot "just buy" any offshore entities from us. We want to make sure that, when you get control over your entity, you also know how to use it legally!

Trusts are legal entities with the rights to do business, just as a live person. However, unlike corporations, they have no owners. They own themselves.

As for corporations, Trusts must have live persons to make decisions for them. That's the role of the Trustee - which, in this regard, can be compared to a Director for a corporation

The corporation's shareholders have no direct parallel when we talk about a Trust. The three roles they have are split over three offices:

1. The Settlor (or Grantor) - who is to be compared to the "Initial subscriber"
2. The Beneficiary - who is the one that will eventually harvest the value created in the Trust
3. The Protector - who is the management appeal function, like the shareholders' vote at the General Assembly for a corporation.

For your privacy protection, you cannot assume any of those four offices for a Trust in a foreign country!

But there are other ways in which you can exercise the control you need over such a Trust...

Proceed with learning more about the set-up of that control now!

For a more detailed understanding of what a Trust is and how it works, please check this brief overview (opens in a separate browser window).

Briefly said, some of the benefits you can get include:

• By law in the country where the Trust is established, it has no obligation to report its income or financial affairs to anyone. (This means "no bookkeeping" and "no taxes"...)

• You can use the Trust as a "second identity" to conduct business that is illegal or impossible for you to do personally. (Again, this means that you can get the Trust to issue you a debit card or a credit card, for instance, even if you just filed for bankruptcy, and the banks in your own country want nothing to do with you...)

• You can protect your assets from all kinds of future creditors, including your own government's tax agency, by creating and executing an asset protection plan that involves the Trust. (Nobody can force you to sell someone else's property in order for you to pay your personal debt, so when the Trust owns everything of value, you can declare bankruptcy without losing anything...)

• You can access offshore investment opportunities that are extremely lucrative, compared to those your government approves of for public offering in your own country... (The government restrictions on what investments are allowed to be solicited to the public are huge - they typically costs $500,000 just to get started - and no promising business venture will spend that money and, at the same token, give away all their trade secrets because of the disclosure requirements of the Securities Commissions in just about all countries in the World... they go elsewhere for financing!)

• You can use the Trust to invest in just about anything you want to invest in, including your own business! (This is how the big multinationals can end up paying no income taxes at all, without breaking the law....)

Before committing to working with an Offshore Trust, you need to understand that your government will not approve of your doing it in privacy. It will want you to report all income from your Trust as personal taxable income. However, there are powerful and legal ways of avoiding that problem, so it becomes legally none of your government's business to snoop into this - not to mention extorting any harassment on you because of this.

Most governments will do it anyway, though! And they will tell you that, "just to be safe", you should disclose everything about the Trust and assume personal liability for paying taxes for it - regardless of the fact that you have no legal obligations to do so. But if they can make you feel threatened enough to volunteer some administrative work and tax money they literally have no legitimate way of getting by honest means, then... well, you get the picture.

We are certainly no novices in this industry. And we must say that we have never yet been approached by a potential client who truly understood what this "offshore business" was all about! Each and every one of those who have contacted us about this have had a perception of things that would lead them directly into crime if they would go ahead with what they thought was "the right thing to do", because "this was what what was recommended to them", or "this is what they read from reliable on-line sources"! And not a single one has had even a clue about what exactly they truly needed to know and do in order to avoid buying themselves a ticket to jail. Unfortunately, you can find hundreds of service providers on-line who ignore this - and exploit it!

The whole issue is not simple. If it were, you could be assured that any smart government would try to prohibit it by tomorrow! Instead, all governments choose to embark on a bandwagon of scaremonger and misinformation, in order to discourage people from exercising their fundamental rights in a legal way. The amounts of that scaremonger and misinformation are enormous. But you can understand that when you consider that all professional accountants, financial advisors, lawyers, etc. all depend on their government for their existence! If the government disapproves of their conduct, they can look forward to having their business license revoked... No offense intended, but, if you seriously expect to find all the sober, unbiased, genuine information you need about this on any public web pages you can access at no charge, posted by credible government-approved sources, then you are too naive for this....

The good news is that operating in privacy offshore is most definitely not out of reach for normal intelligent people. We will not claim that everybody can learn it, but we will claim that every one who has the ability to read, think, and reason at a grade-10 level can indeed learn this. But it also takes the ability to make decisions to get started...

It really boils down to understanding jurisdiction - and your own rights. We strongly suggest that you respect the government's powers and stay away from doing anything stupid or criminal. So, please take the scaremonger with the grain of salt it deserves, but also don't fall for the deceitful public advertising from 99% of the service providers in this industry.

If you are in doubt what you should check in order to resist giving in to the wrong things, so you can keep your head straight on what is really important, here is your checklist (opens in new window).

The answer is "no". You can't order a Trust set up through us - and you shouldn't... That's not the way we do things, for reasons already briefly explained. But, through us, you can obtain the exclusive powers over an Offshore Trust - it is just done in a completely different way, which we do not disclose without knowing more about you... The reason is that we do not want you to have to break the law in your own country, in order to benefit from an Offshore Trust. And, if you order the set-up or even pay for it from a bank account in your own name, then you can kiss the most important benefits good-bye forever...

There is some serious administrative work involved for us in giving you the education you need in order to fully understand this - and we expect you to want us to protect your privacy - which we are happy to do. You can confirm this by checking our privacy policy.

Also, we are not interested in putting our most crucial trade secrets on public display. And seriously: if you can find someone who does, then we will strongly warn you against doing business with them, as they obviously have no clue about the most fundamental principles everybody has to respect in order to be successful in this industry!

For these reasons, we split the the education process up into several stages, each of them providing you with the information you need in order to make a decision about going ahead with the next educational stage or not. The final stage includes handing you over the "reigns" of an Offshore Trust. But, as we said earlier, we are not going to do that without first making sure that you do indeed have the education we know you need about what is involved in your doing this safely and legally. For this purpose, we split the payment up in smaller installments, and we need to know who you are, for fraud prevention. You see, once we provide you with the important and crucial knowledge, we cannot take it back...

Then, the natural question: "What does it all cost?"

Trusts are cheap. And you cannot buy one, because they own themselves! The expensive part is your education on how to use them safely! The price also depends on what exactly you need, that means, which specific features you require the Trust to have. We suggest you budget a total cash layout between US$1,500 and US$2,000, including your personal education and all fees, including the fees for first year's maintenance. If this is completely out of your possible range, then go here instead where you will find a solution that costs less cash up-front, but still allows you to revert back to the same end result later.

How much time is required for this education?

It depends on yourself, but the total time commitment from your side is probably comparable to the time commitment a person must provide in order to obtain a driver's license without ever having tried to drive a vehicle before. However, you can start small.

First step is to get the crucial information you need in order to make a decision on whether or not to even consider this as a possible venture for yourself. That first part is a few hours' reading on your part. Not more. The diligent student will want to spend also some hours following through on some of the suggestion we make in that education package, but we do not know of any clients of ours who spent more than about a day in total on that initial education.

Second step (which you cannot access without first taking the initial education) is significantly more comprehensive, and you should count a few days studying before you fully understand it all, at least well enough to know how you can play safe. You can skip some of the due diligence we suggest, though - so, it is technically possible to pretend having done it in a day or two...

Third and final step lasts a year. We do this as a correspondence course with a letter every 20 days, each letter giving you another tidbit of advice that might be beneficial for you to use, and it might not. It depends on your personal situation. The third step is not required for you to finish before you can get started; it is meant as supplement, so you can get the best possible value out of your education.

How long it takes to get going, so you can start operating?

That depends more on you than on us.... We can do our part of this in a less than 2 days. But you will have paper work to do and payments to make, and things to read and learn - so a realistic expectation for most people is probably a couple of weeks.

The ordering procedure for the first step of the education you need in order to even understand what we are talking about here is as follows (all links open in a new window):

1. You set up a hushmail account - if you don't have one already. Communication with us about these matters will only take place through encrypted e-mail.... We make zero exceptions to this!

2. You make an initial symbolic payment with a credit card in your own name, so we can verify your identity. (If you do not have a personal credit card, then please contact us so we can find an alternative way of verifying your ID. There will be an extra fee for that - and it will cost you extra money for mailing/couriering documents to us, but we can certainly do it. Please check check this page for more information on this.)

3. You send us this affidavit by opening a new e-mail in your hushmail account, copying/pasting the affidavit into that mail, and editing it as instructed, so you insert your personal information in all the places indicated. You will need your payment receipt number for this.

When you made you symbolic payment and sent us the affidavit, we will reply to your hushmail with further instructions for how you can access the information you need. Some of the instructions will be given in the hushmail, and some on a password protected page you will get access to. That will provide you with more information about the product and the process. On that page, you will get enough information to make up your mind if this is for you or not. We are fully aware that you shouldn't do that on the basis of the information we give you on this page alone! But, the unfortunate thing is that the information you need is not suited for public display, hence this little extra security procedure with a symbolic payment and an affidavit.

If you feel that you need more information that what we are giving you here before you can commit to starting an offshore venture you can draw the full benefits from, then we completely agree with you! But if you feel that spending $20 on your education so you can get the answers we know you need in order to find out if this is worth doing or not, then we must sadly tell you that this is not for you, because that information is not free...

If you do not understand why we do things this way, you need to check your checklist again....

Let's recap what your benefits are from doing this business with us:

1. At the end of this process, you get full control over an Offshore Trust - without assuming any legal liabilities at all, even if you live in the USA and other people tell you that you can't.

2. We do not ask you to commit to anything, until you know what you are doing... and we allow you to cut your decision into several steps, so you easily can restrict the knowledge you need at each stage to what is relevant for the decision at that stage, instead of being overwhelmed with semi-correct or partially irrelevant information you cannot easily assess the value or importance of.

3. You get the education and support you need in order to take full advantage of this Offshore Trust, including personal consulting. And our level of communicating these complicated legal matters is down-to-earth, just the facts you need, in a way you can understand and use.

4. You get a very competitive price - if you can show us anyone who offers the same or more for less, we will refund you twice the difference!

5. We walk our talk...

So, first decision: is this something you would like to know more about?

If "yes", then get started by accessing the crucial information you need in order to make the next decision.

If anything else, then please consider this:

• How many hours of tedious surfing do you think it will take for you to find some idiots who will display the information you need on a public web page?

• And how are you going to know that their information is worth anything when they act that foolish?

• How would you feel about their protection of your privacy when they are this stupid about managing their own business?

Just some food for thought....

Seriously, if you don't think it has any value for you to know what it takes to protect your privacy, your assets, and your business and investment income, then why did you even read this far?

The symbolic fee we ask for the crucial information is not making us rich - or you poor. Aside from barely covering our administrative costs, it makes it possible for us to provide the information you require, and to do so in confidence, because we get to know who you are, and we get to supply the information as we want: in privacy. In other words, because we protect this information, we can put things straight and let you get to the core of what is important, instead of stating the obvious, which does not give you the precise answers you need. There is no way anyone in this industry could give you those answers on a public web page - and stay in business! That's why you probably already experienced that most of our competitors remain so general in what they dare to claim in public that even intelligent people get more confused than enlightened by paying attention to it.

And if the information isn't worth the money we ask? No problem - we will be happy to give you a refund. We are not trying to screw you. We are doing things this way in order to avoid letting you down by withholding information you truly need, just in order to protect ourselves. That's not in your best interest. Your best interest is secured by accepting the way we do this as the best possible compromise between publicity and confidentiality. Honestly, if this offends you, then you are the wrong person for offshore ventures....

So, here is your diligent choice:

The big no-nos you absolutely have to abstain from:

• If you assume any office for any offshore legal entity, then you are obliged to report that fact to your government. You can guess at what your government wants that information for...

• If you have your name on any public papers whatsoever, relating to this offshore legal entity and showing that you have powers to make decisions on its behalf, then you can rest assured that, some day, a copy of those papers will be in your government's possession. Again, you can guess at what action your government will take on that...

• If you use a bank account or a credit card in your own name to pay for the set-up of any legal entities, then your government will regard you as owner of that legal entity - with all the tax liabilities that follow from that, whether such ownership is legally correct or not (Trusts and Foundations own themselves, for instance, but most governments completely ignore this when it comes to taxes). Remember, there is no such thing as privacy in banking any more: Your government has full access to your bank account!

• In the USA and most other western countries, it makes no difference to any of the above if you use a agent to do this for you... As long as you make it happen, then you are liable!

• Whenever you show any government-owned ID (like a passport, SIN/SSN, birth certificate, driver's license, or similar), then you are acting in your default capacity of a government representative, and everything you obtain through such action legally belongs to your government! (If you do not understand this, then please educate yourself about the difference between a sovereign individual and a government-owned person. You can get that education here.)

• If you think you are better off waiting with the set-up of your offshore presence until your investments start to pay off, then you are very, very, very, very wrong!!!! Doing this is like buying the ducks for your duck farm, but not protecting them by putting up a fence for them... You need the fence first, then the ducks. If you want to remain within the law, then protecting a matured investment will cost you several thousand dollars more than protecting one that hasn't matured yet. The reason is that moving valuable assets out of your government's jurisdiction/control is not going to happen easily; your government isn't stupid enough to let you reduce its tax base for nothing...

Learn how you can avoid those pitfalls!

Alternative option for people with a strained cash-flow:

If you need protection for your investment now, but do not have the funds to establish the protection, until it starts paying, then you are trapped!

The protection issue cannot wait till later, because it would put you right onto the path of crime if you try to transfer the investment to an offshore ownership once you get access to just a few pennies of that investment!

We can certainly help you out very fast - at an up-front cost that is only about 10% of the cost of establishing an offshore entity. We create an Investment Incubator for you, so you do not assume any ownership of the investment when the critical time for tax liability occurs. And the very best: you can use the funds from that investment to establish the protection and get the investment back under your control!

More info on this here.