Hacker News Reader

Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

"Have a stash that people dont know about,"

... is probably illegal in almost every known reasonable country because it usually amounts to tax evasion.

So I'm not sure about this meme of "mega millionaires hiding their money is 'bad' if they identify as 'CEOs' but 'maybe good' if they identify as 'hackers'".

View on HN

do it with money you already paid tax on lol. so so many options

If you make more money with this money you stash away, that is taxable as well in most places in the western world. You normally also are obligated to inform the government wherever you are about your holdings in the west.

The way to get around this, is to start an offshore company in whats referred to as an tax haven. Basically its a company that has an unknown owner normally some legal secretary or a lawyer firm stands as owner and somewhere there is a presigned agreement by them that transfers the ownership of the shares in the company to someone else that you can write in(TBD). So the company is basically in limbo between owners .

But yeah, that how you would do it, of course its a bit more, but that is the gist of it.Just make sure the legal company you hire or find on google isn't hacked, lol. Oh, and also, don't get a company card with this offshore company and use it to buy groceries, the tax people look out for that sort of thing :)

I don't think an offshore company gets around the requirement to report your holdings. You would legally need to report on that company and pay taxes on any profits if you are a US citizen.

But you could likely defer taxes this way, by holding the bitcoin with the offshore company. You would then only pay taxes when you liquidated the bitcoin and paid yourself something.

Whereas if you held the bitcoin yourself, you would need to liquidate to pay taxes every year that it increases in value.

This is actually a good point. The government know you've been paid it and you've paid tax but that doesn't mean you can't rightfully hide the rest of the money away somewhere.

They don't know if you spent the rest of it immediately or kept it if you never put it into a domestic bank.

You can indeed 'rightfully stash $1B in cash under your mattress' - but almost any other private/public storage mechanism will involve gains/losses which have to be disclosed.

Wouldn't they only have to be disclosed when they get turned back into usable currency within your jurisdiction?

US citizens are taxed on their worldwide capital gains (and income).

Right, but capital gains tax is calculated based on the profits relative to the currency in which it was bought and sold with. You have to sell the bitcoin or exchange it for another form of recognized currency in order to pay capital gains on it. This is more or less how stocks work as well.

I believe those are generally only taxed when “realized”.

No 'lol' because gains/losses on those assets relate to taxation, also, in many regimes you'll have to declare it anyhow.

which you only have to worry about when you have to tap into the rainy day fund, or when the collateral gets liquidated

Because you can borrow against it instead of selling and without touching a financial institution, and this gives you liquidity without a tax event

Welcome to the 2020s

"which you only have to worry about when you have to tap into the rainy day fund, or when the collateral gets liquidated"

If your 'rainy day fund' is a stack of bills in a box, sure, but other than that there isn't much you can do with significant amounts of money that isn't going to involve some kind of transparency.

Literally trading those dollars for anything else involves gain/loss.

You're not going to be able to 'borrow against' anything under your mattress, it will have to be in some kind of regulated security, a bank account, or real estate - but it's moot - exchanging one asset for another is on the whole financial neutral.

More pragmatically, if you're 'borrowing against sums' you will be paying interest, there's almost a 100% chance you'll want to declare that against any other form of income for the tax shield.

Again, all of this 'hide your money' stuff is really the domain of tax evaders and likely the #1 flag for tax audits.

ok. the only thing directly applicable in your analogy is that if you choose to report something for deduction, then you will need to account for the rest of the capital.

there is no obligation to report possible deductions.

you wouldn't here and you would remain compliant if you paid the interest with money you already paid taxes on.

the rest of your analogy just doesn't work.

>Because you can borrow against it instead of selling and without touching a financial institution, and this gives you liquidity without a tax event

But how do you repay the loan without liquidating the bitcoin?

You can pay principle and interest with other dollars

No different than unsecured debt

Reply on news.ycombinator.com