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Hello, everyone-
An expat business owner I met in CR tells me of a way to send money to CR to avoid US income taxes. It is essentially this: If you own your own business in the US (I do) and wish to bring money to CR to purchase land or a home (I do), you can pay your own Sociedad Anonima a consultant/management fee, which your business then writes off as an expense. As long as the money is deposited in a CR bank and is spent in CR, there are minimal CR taxes. So you can essentially avoid US income taxes.
I will, of course, consult my CPA and lawyer in the States, but does anyone have any experience/knowledge of this? On the surface it seems reasonable (what if I really did hire a foreign company to consult? Surely I could write that off). But something tells me the IRS will have thought of this before I did and have taken steps to prevent losing their cut.
new moon
shhhhhhhhh.. your right.. but like anything else.. its best to keep these strategies under the rader
Isn’t the strategy that newmoon is asking about essentially what all the U.S. corporations are doing when they sell themselves to a holding company based in the Bahamas or Cayman Islands and whose corporate offices are wholly contained in a local post office box? They pay those holding companies exorbitant fees for essentially nothing and write them off as business expenses that are deductible against the taxes on their U.S. profits.
The question I would raise is how those consulting fees that newmoon proposes to pay him/herself will be treated by the Costa Rican taxing authorities.
If that is interesting. I work with a number of CPA’s/business owners. An interesting practice that is used with some US businesses with family in China is to gift a certain amount of money (limit per person) to family members outside the US to avoid taxes and then at the end of the year bring the money back tax free.
Sometimes I marvel at the seeming selfcenteredness of some of my cohorts on this forum. I believe that one should be pleased that one has been blessed with the ability to make a profit and grateful that one is able to pay taxes to help the country in which the money was made govern its land and people in a benevolent manner.
AnneLiseIf you’re referring to the US, all our tax dollars are going to support a war that should never have started in the first place given that the premise was all a great big fat lie. If I could pay NO taxes here I would be very happy because I do not support the war, or the slaughter of innocents that it has wrought. As Neil Young says, “Who hired all those criminals?” I would be happy to pay taxes in Costa Rica. At least then I could maybe get medical treatment if I needed it.
Certainly there is a problem getting medical treatment everywhere in the U.S., Harvey.
If you are one of the now 43.5 million people with no health insurance whatsoever, then there’s an enormous problem. If you’re one of the (who knows how many) more people whose medical insurance is inadequate, then you, too, have a problem getting medical treatment. Taken together, that’s a lot of folks. And a big problem.
Interesting aside: There’s a public service announcement running on CNN that promotes the Special Children’s Health Insurance Program. What’s the government has done (to their everlasting credit) is open eligibility for Medicaid to children of the poor who would not otherwise qualify. Some ten million children are now covered. It’s a huge step in the right direction, but it’s certainly not meeting the need.
The PSA also suggests that, without the program, America’s number of uninsured would be around 53 million — about one in six — and that number is growing.
Two considerations: “Availability” and “Accessibility”. Just because the hospital in your neighborhood makes excellent emergency and definitive care “available” isn’t enough. That care has also to be “accessible”. You must have a means of getting that care, and for almost everyone, paying for that care is a huge obstacle to accessibility. A third-party payer (either insurance or the government) is the only option for most Americans.
I can only speak from my personal experience, but I spent much of my adult life without insurance and had no problem getting treatment, from vertigo to kidney stones. The places I went even gave me a hige discount and a payment plan. Maybe I was very fotunate or maybe I just got lucky but it was never a problem for me and perhaps becasue I tried to make all the payments I got a break. I don’t know what your uninsured experience was, but I guess life is what you make of it wherever you are.
My post was a specific question regarding the comment about what I perceived to be a problem for her to get medical treatment.
After being injured in an auto accident and needing shoulder surgery, the insurance company decided not to pay. Because they wouldn’t pay, my doctor wouldn’t operate, and no hospital would allow me to be admitted without a pre-authorized payment plan, which would’ve been okay with me, but the surgeon and physical therapist would not go along with this program. I had to take the insurance company to court and get a court order for them to provide treatment. That little incident opened my eyes to what people must go through every day in this country.
“Who hired all those criminals?” Answer: The US Supreme Court for the first time in our nation’s history!
Here’re the rest of the lyrics to Neil’s song, “Let’s Impeach the President” off his “Living With War” album. Poignant, ain’t it?
“Let’s Impeach The President”
Let’s impeach the President for lying
And misleading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the doorWho’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
They bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to warLet’s impeach the President for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephonesWhat if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government’s protection
Or was someone just not home that day?Flip – Flop
Flip – Flop
Flip – Flop
Flip – FlopLet’s impeach the president for hijacking
Our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglectedThank god he’s cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There’s lots of people looking at big trouble
But of course our president is clean.Thank God
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