The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States

We&#x27;ve been sailing for a little over a year now. We&#x27;ve encountered many US flagged boats where there isn&#x27;t a single US citizen owner, captain, or crew aboard. This has been the case where the owner is Turkish, Israeli, Emirati, and lots of middle-east countries.<p>The super yachts still prefer to use the Marshall Islands, Caymans, or Gibraltar as their flag of registration.<p>Our boat is US LLC registered since my wife, a foreign national, can&#x27;t be a direct owner for a US registered vessel. Nor can I be registered owner in her country as a non-citizen. So a US LLC is a convenient neutral mechanism. It&#x27;s split 51&#x2F;49% with me having the controlling shares as required by law.

It has been suspected that for a long time now people have been parking questionable cash into NYC real estate. Somewhat related to this, the Treasury dept. will pierce the veil of LLCs making &gt;= $3 million cash real estate purchases and require the owner identities to be reported. I guess we&#x27;ll see if that leads to new tricks...<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;01&#x2F;14&#x2F;us&#x2F;us-will-track-secret-buyers-of-luxury-real-estate.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;01&#x2F;14&#x2F;us&#x2F;us-will-track-secret-bu...</a>

I found &quot;Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World&quot; a very interesting book on tax havens, and it made the point about the US.<p>I also found this idea from the book enlighting: All the tax havens around the US, they don&#x27;t have &#x27;real&#x27; banks, they put the money into NYC banks. Same with the UK: Tax havens in the cloud&#x2F;former empire of the UK put the money into banks in London. The real beneficiary are not those islands, but US and UK banks.

That is rich. So they US wasn&#x27;t fighting the good fight here, but rather looking after itself, arm twisting the existing tax heavens so that it could become the new tax heaven!<p>Ah well I guess hypocrisy is something the US has mastered to perfection decades ago.<p>Well I hope the EU is not going to stand for this. I am tired of American bullying. Some mutual respect would be nice for a change.

A lot of startups founded in Spain have the legal headquarter in Delaware (USA). Anyone knows the reason for this?

Related: but Seattle&#x27;s $750K+ housing market is dominated by Chinese cash buyers.

Love the illustration in this article by Steph Davidson adds much meaning to the context.

I never understood why when people cheered on the pursuit of US money in foreign banks why they never understood the big picture. The US government regardless of party is only looking after one thing, itself. While you may have talking heads sent out to decry abuse of the system they are their to misdirect. Politics wants money and not for the public coffers. While they will bleat all day how this money in foreign institutions is depriving the people and theft what they really want is control over the people who have the money so they give it to those they want it given too, themselves. It is the same when corporations sell themselves over seas, the influence factor is lost and in turn the ability to extort campaign funds

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss<p>And people think &quot;whistleblowers&quot;, and &quot;think tanks&quot; denouncing &quot;lack of transparency&quot; in certain locations have only ethics at heart.