There are several practical reasons to get an offshore bank account now!

April 3, 2017

By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP

The ongoing offshore banking public relations battle continues…

Unlike the mainstream media that likes to operate in a vacuum with various distractions and incomplete context, I’m going to give you the full view.

Are there criminal applications of offshore banking? Absolutely.

Look, you can use a knife to slice tomatoes or a knife to stab your neighbor to death. The media only focuses on the killing, not the practical applications of having a knife. I’m not going to stop using knives because there are a handful of criminals out there misusing this tool.

So, same thing goes for offshore bank accounts: you can use an offshore account to cover up fraud; but there are also very practical and helpful applications for an offshore account that have no criminal implications at all. It’s important to know the latter as well.

I’m not here to help people defraud others. In fact, I’m here as a counterweight against all the crooks in this industry and carve a path for the legitimate producers out there who are just trying to do business. I’m not going to abandon offshore banking because somewhere in the world there’s a guy defrauding people using offshore bank accounts. They help more than they hurt, and they might help you too!

We wrote this Offshore Banking Report to share with you what we have found to be some of the world’s best options: Click here to read about them.

Limited Tax Liabilities

There’s no way around FACTCA. So if you’re thinking you can somehow avoid the IRS altogether, stop there. You will have paperwork to file. And you should always consult with a tax professional who is seasoned in offshore banking to learn exactly what your obligations are.

However, I have covered EXTENSIVELY how you can lower your tax burden through a Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, and even defer taxes using an offshore trust. There really is no reason to pay MORE in taxes than you absolutely have to. Tax avoidance is like the mail-in rebate: they are counting on people NOT to do the legwork to get that money back. The IRS is likewise counting on people not to do the legwork of learning what their legal options are to avoid paying more in taxes.

It’s easy to speak to it as an American expatriate myself. I know what the numbers come out to first hand. Check out any one of my interviews and I almost without fail cover the tax benefits of offshore banking:

Publishing Profits Podcast Interview: Lower Taxes Legally

Eventual Millionaire Interview

Nomadtopia Interview: Personal and Financial Freedom

Higher Interest

Now this is a little known consideration for offshore banking. If you’ve been reading our free newsletter, then you’ve seen the series of warnings I’ve published about quantitative easing, helicopter money, as well as zero and negative interest rates.

The cliff notes bottom line is: these sort of policies punish savers. I mean simple math of having a 3% inflation rate and less than 1% interest says you’re operating at a 2% loss. You’re not keeping up which means your money is depreciating before your very eyes. You don’t need a degree in economics to know that storing your wealth where the interest rates exceed the rate of inflation is a winning proposition.

“Unfortunately, such rates are made possible in part by skyrocketing inflation, financial instability, central bank actions and currency fluctuations. And many of these yields are off limits to Americans, since some banks will only make accounts available to residents or people doing business in those countries.” (Source: Marketwatch)

I’m not saying run out and get a bank account in Bangladesh. I’m saying, it’s a legitimate factor to consider. It doesn’t have to be the primary or only factor, but it could be the difference between two countries you were already considering anyway.

Reduced Risk

Nowhere is it written that your home country is the smartest and best at central banking. In fact, I’ll do you one better: central banking is one of the worst things to ever be introduced into human civilization. HOWEVER, while central banks might not allow competition within its own jurisdiction, they do ironically compete with one another. That battlefield is in offshore banking.

If you are a Cypriot, I don’t need to explain the risks of banking in Cyprus. The historic “bail-in” set a new precedent for what central banks can get away with. But as a Cypriot, the idea of diversifying OUT of accounts in Cyprus is an obvious strategy.

Considering Russia, Cyprus, India, Argentina, and Iceland all have some form of capital control policies in place, it’s understandable that people from those countries might want to divert their wealth into more stable jurisdictions like Singapore or the Cook Islands. Singapore has never had a banking failure. The Cook Islands holds all their deposits in cash so are very well capitalized.

Don’t wait for your country to become so unstable that capital controls keep you from saving your assets.

Diverse Currency Holdings

The one thing you will notice about my Offshore Banking Report is the number of currencies each of these institutions deal in. You can absolutely hold a diverse number of currencies in many of them. This can help mitigate or at least limit risks in exchange rates, but also if your lifestyle requires it of you, lets you deal in those currencies with greater ease.

Click here to access the Offshore Banking Report and see which banks deal in multiple currencies

Protection against Litigation

In the United States alone, there is a lawsuit filed every 17 seconds. I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in…

Time’s up.

I cover this quite a bit as well, and offshore accounts do a good amount in protecting your assets from frivolous litigation as well as government entities.  There is a certain amount of privacy that comes with corporate structuring, especially offshore.  That privacy offers protection too.  Celebrities like Emma Watson enjoy the privacy offered by offshore accounts even!  So why not you?

I did an interview a little less than a year ago with Savvy Landlord, where we discussed this extensively, but I also shared a based-on-a-true-story account of what can happen if you don’t restructure your asset holdings. This was just an accounting of a domestic structure helping them: “The Two Little Pigs (One Was Eaten)”.

There’s actual cases where a Cook Island Trust protected someone from the US Department of Treasury! Check it out:

“The Cook Islands: Your Assets’ Best Friend”

“The Cook Islands: STILL Your Assets’ Best Friend”

I refer to this use of structuring as an “insurance policy”. It’s not that you WANT something to go wrong, but in the event that it does, you’re really relieved to have the policy in place.

Operation of a Business

This is rather obvious, but if you are actually living, working, and/or operating a business outside the United States, opening an account there is kind of a no-brainer. The estimates range, but there are upwards of around 9 million non-military American expats around the world. I’m one of them. I also happen to be a digital nomad which means I’m all over the world, and deal in various currencies in various countries. It’s impractical to have one account in the US.

Often times, business owners find that incorporating offshore makes more sense not only logistically, but financially because the fees and tax obligations are lower.

Businesses set up abroad for multiple reasons. There are often tax and cost advantages, but there is also the marketing aspect. Just like Americans fall over themselves over something being made in America… other countries have that same syndrome. They like to know their goods are produced there. So opening up a factory in Mexico to sell products to Mexicans is a good brand strategy. Seems only normal to have an account there with the factory.

I really encourage you to look over our Offshore Banking Report. It has a lot of topline information about their functionality and covers a broad spectrum of their practical use applications.

Click here to access our Offshore Banking Report now!

Click here to schedule a consultation as I’m happy to help in any way I can to get you started on internationalizing your life!