Offshore to contract around the world?

**Eirikur** · 4 February 2016, 08:59

Cayman Islands?

**LisaContractorUmbrella** · 4 February 2016, 10:28

Where are you currently tax resident?

**vadhert** · 4 February 2016, 11:23

Are you in the driveways industry?

**lecyclist** · 8 February 2016, 12:00

Worth doing some reading on the ''sticky" properties of tax residency: easy to get, hard to lose.

**bobcamilleri** · 9 February 2016, 21:43

I spent more than 6months in Ireland, so I guess that gives Ireland a claim.

I'm a citizen of Malta however, so that's where I worked mostly.

I'm not looking to do anything dodgy - I just need advice on a good solid and legal setup, with which I can invoice companies around the world and not pay useless amounts of tax.

**LisaContractorUmbrella** · 10 February 2016, 07:52

Originally posted by bobcamilleri View Post

I spent more than 6months in Ireland, so I guess that gives Ireland a claim.

I'm a citizen of Malta however, so that's where I worked mostly.

I'm not looking to do anything dodgy - I just need advice on a good solid and legal setup, with which I can invoice companies around the world and not pay useless amounts of tax.

If you are a citizen of Malta and that's were you worked 'mostly' then I assume that you are tax resident in Malta and therefore that is where your tax will be payable and that is where you will need to take advice. Just because you will be 'invoicing' companies around the world it doesn't mean that your tax liability will be spread around - your liability lies in your main place of residence. If you think that you may be liable for 'useless' amounts of tax then I would suggest that you pay for the services of a chartered tax advisor (or equivalent) to advise you - you are unlikely to get that sort of advice on here I'm afraid

**bobcamilleri** · 10 February 2016, 09:49

That's where I was resident until last year, but I currently am not, and have no intention of going back at least for the next couple of years.

I have spoken to a couple of accountants (in Malta and away) but all seemed focused on setting up in their own countries and seemed to have no knowledge of how being constantly travelling might effect me.

Is anyone here aware of a decent accountant who has knowledge of such international matters?

**LisaContractorUmbrella** · 10 February 2016, 10:10

Originally posted by bobcamilleri View Post

That's where I was resident until last year, but I currently am not, and have no intention of going back at least for the next couple of years.

I have spoken to a couple of accountants (in Malta and away) but all seemed focused on setting up in their own countries and seemed to have no knowledge of how being constantly travelling might effect me.

Is anyone here aware of a decent accountant who has knowledge of such international matters?

What makes you think you are going to be 'constantly' travelling??? Normally you will need to be away from a country for a reasonable period of time to escape their tax jurisdiction and, if you have any ties at all you can be held liable even if you are not resident.

The reason that you can't find anyone to tell you what you want to know is that no tax accountant, however good, will have knowledge of every tax jurisdiction in the World so unless you know exactly where you'll be going you're asking the impossible. You also have to consider that in some counties, the Netherlands for instance, you pay tax locally as soon as you set foot in the place so even a 1 week contract could find you liable.

The only way I think you could genuinely avoid tax would be to be constantly moving between tax havens or countries that have zero tax rates - couple of months in Saudi Arabia, few months in Monaco - you get the picture

**ASB** · 10 February 2016, 11:33

Incorporating is a jurisdiction with no/little tax is not really an issue. BVI, Cyprus, CI, IOM all sorts will have structures that can help. i.e. they levy no corporate taxes on non local income.

The problem is ensuring the corporation remains fiscally resident there. e.g. if working in the UK you might find the corp becomes UK tax resident (whether you would declare and whether the fiscal authorities would notice is another matter).

A further problem is getting clients to contract with that entity (though incorporating another co locally and entering into some for of IPR licensing can be effective).

For humour we will assume those hurdles can be crossed; thus you end up with an entity receiving money in an offshore jurisdiction and it is not taxed, or very lightly so.

We will also assume that you do not become personally tax resident in any of the jurisdictions you are working in (or have managed to utilise the DTAs where existent in such a way that there isn't a local liability - again a big hurdle).

The next step you need is to legitimately get the money out, without incurring a tax liability.

One way of doing this is to get yourself resident in a regime which does not levy taxes on overseas income. Usually dividends. e.g. Monaco. More big hurdles.

Yes, I know large multinationals do it successfully (and legally). But there are a couple of crucial differences.

There are hundreds of millions at stake, and they can afford an army of very expensive lawyers.

Also, they are not trying to distribute that money to a number of proprietors. They are looking to use it as collateral and deploy it within their business.

One successful way individual do it is to incorporate with nominees, bank account with nominees and a nominee based plastic card. This is then used to extract the funds. Preferably in loarge lumps of cash when in a lightly regulated jurisdiction.

Of course this falls foul of quite a lot of legal aspects and is more than frowned upon. It also means you have to be entirely cash based. That gives its own problems of course.

This may beof interest. But it is somewhat old.

Becoming a Perpetual Traveller (Nov 1999)

Offshore to contract around the world?