Mauritius beach

Vacation

Dear readers, commentators, forum posters, and community members in general, I am taking a vacation for an undecided period of time. The degree of vacation is also undecided, in that I expect to not completely avoid this website and others like it. What happened? In November 2015, I moved the…


No Picture

Jurisdiction Spotlight: Luxembourg

We’re back in Europe, today taking a look at one of the least tax-haven-like tax havens: Luxembourg. Or, if you ask a local: Luxembourg (French), Luxemburg (in German), or Lëtzebuerg (Luxembourgish). Somewhere between Belgium, France, and Germany is this tiny nation of many languages, businesses, EU institutions, international organizations, and…


No Picture

What’s up in Myanmar?

When I scheduled this post, many months if not a year ago, Myanmar was not at all in the news the way it has been in recent times following the election. I aim to keep this blog apolitical, and I will not be going in-depth. Those expecting a treatise on…


No Picture

Jurisdiction Spotlight: The Gambia

The government of Gambia has finally issued a statement. The Icommerce Registry is a scam. This article has been updated and removed of most content, so as to not continue conveying any sort of trust for the Icommerce Registry. ministry of justice press release companies The General Public is hereby…


No Picture

Flags of Convenience

Ahoy, skipper! Unless you are looking for brief, general information about which tax haven to register your freight ship or yacht in and how flags of convenience work, this probably isn’t going to be an interesting article to you. What is a Flag of Convenience? A flag of convenience (FOC)…


No Picture

Jurisdiction Spotlight: Nauru

That’s actually not the Curaçao flag, but good eye! The butt of many jokes in the financial services sector, Nauru is a husk of what it once was. And thank goodness for that. When people think about offshore jurisdictions like Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and even the less upstanding ones like…


No Picture

The Reality of Secrecy Today

This is a companion article to my recent article on Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI). It spurred from a discussions over at the forum about Real Jurisdiction secrecy and AEOI (among other threads on the subject). With banking secrecy being eroded over the last decades and corporate secrecy penetrated by…


No Picture

Jurisdiction Spotlight: San Marino

Tucked away up in the Apennine Mountains of Italy, which fully surrounds the tiny nation, San Marino is the longest surviving sovereign state and republic, tracing its origins to the 3rd of September in the year 301 when it gained independence from the Roman Empire. Since then, not much has…


No Picture

Banking in the Philippines

At this point, you might have heard about the Philippines as an unusual but not necessarily offshore banking jurisdiction. I have contemplated doing a Jurisdiction Spotlight about the Philippines and while there may be enough to say about incorporation and residence in the Philippines, I thought banking deserves its own…


No Picture

Jurisdiction Spotlight: Guatemala

Streber / the 31st of March 2016 Guatemala has most of everything one has come to expect from a Spanish-speaking tax haven in South America: territorial taxation, low taxation, secretive banking, and a very comfortable lifestyle. Guatemala has however suffered a problematic past which has left the country lagging behind…


Skip to toolbar