Comment by gscott | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gscott | Hacker News Reader

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People have tried and the problem is when you want to bring the money back to use it on something. Say you setup a licensing company on an island nation that use to then charge yourself $10,000 a month to license the software you wrote... that you transferred there. Now lets say you want to buy a house and you bring back a certain amount of money. That money is taxable and that is where people mess up they don't report it.

Big companies like Apple instead of bringing the money back they borrow billions of dollars at low interest rates. This lets them keep their money offshore where they invest it to make a bigger return then their interest rate on borrowing in the US.

Apple also has a routine for money in the US. You will find in Nevada Apple has an investment corporation. They will do the same thing, send the ownership of software to Nevada, charge their company in some xyz state (CA) and then they use that money in Nevada to invest it for more money then it costs them to borrow. So apple is covered both ways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braeburn_Capital#:~:text=Braeb....

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-apple-dodges-billions-in...

The first point of failure is that if you are a US taxpayer, then you are already taxed on your worldwide earnings, including the earnings of your wholly-owned foreign subsidiary. Even if you could borrow domestically against your foreign earnings in order to finance your lifestyle, you would have already been taxed on those foreign earnings, as an individual.

if you're spending US money. Someone you describe may set up properties outside the US not taxable by the US.

Sure, by my original point was that you get taxed before you even get to that step.

How do big corporations get away with it? Is it because they aren't wholly-owned by an individual?

Edit: NVM. I saw your explanation in another comment. Good info :-)

You are taxed but the starting tax threshold is high, 150~200K if I recall correctly.

I worked in Japan for a while and had to file but never paid taxes.

I'm not very familiar with US taxation, but when you do this, don't the transfers end up taxable? Eg. Shouldn't the Nevada company license fee have some sort of CA sales tax on it?

You're partly correct but here's an overview of what's really going on.

The money is "brought back" (if it even left) into segregated accounts in the US. Most of that US off-shore money is in New York to avoid currency risks, etc. Then those accounts are used as collateral (if needed. I doubt if anybody says to Apple, "Where's your collateral?") for loans.

Also, the biggest money havens in the world are 2 US states, with special privacy laws. All those guys playing games in Panama, etc. were better off just using US state tax shelters.

Which states are those?

Delaware to incorporate and East Texas to file patents?

No, those states have well-understood roles, though East Texas is diminishing in importance because of the notoriety.

There's a couple of states that quietly hide money, nothing to do with any useful purpose to the public.

South Dakota is one

> The money is "brought back" (if it even left) into segregated accounts in the US. Most of that US off-shore money is in New York to avoid currency risks, etc. Then those accounts are used as collateral (if needed. I doubt if anybody says to Apple, "Where's your collateral?") for loans.

This is super interesting. stupid question perhaps: does Apple have the reserves to move a small currency if they decide to convert their cash all at one go?

There is no problem if you just don't bring the money back until congress declares a tax holiday. (Yet when another country, like, say, Greece declares a tax holiday, while running a large deficit, our financial press mocks it as populism and corruption...)

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