Expatriate Your Wallet

From The Daily Reckoning and Max Keiser

By Terry Coxon

04/22/11 If everything you own is held in your own name in your own country, then you are not merely exposed, you are vulnerable absolutely, to whatever decisions the government might make about how you should behave and who gets the wealth you’ve earned. Tomorrow’s new government measure, which might land out of the blue, could be a law that affects everyone, or it could be a rule devised to deal with people like you. Or, it could be an administrative action aimed at you alone. In any case, with all your assets at home, you’d find out how the lobster feels when his trap is being hauled out of the water. Nothing he can do about it.

The only way to protect yourself against the risk of being boiled in a government pot is to keep some of your assets in another country. Depending on how you go about it, the specific benefits you might achieve are:

Protection from currency exchange controls
Protection from the confiscation of precious metals
A lower profile as a lawsuit target
Income tax planning advantages
Estate planning advantages
Easier access to investments in other countries
A measure of financial privacy
Practical readiness to move additional assets quickly
Psychological readiness to think and act internationally when you need to
There are many ways to go about getting those benefits. None is right for everyone, and they all come with some element of cost or inconvenience. Here’s the main menu.

Small bank account. A small account at a foreign bank gives you a ready and private landing spot if you ever decide you want to move a large amount of money in a hurry. If you’re a US person, the account is non-reportable, so long as the balance (together with any other foreign financial accounts you own) never reaches $10,000.

Large bank account. A large account at a foreign bank also provides a landing spot for anything you want to send later. If foreign exchange controls are ever imposed, the new rules may require you to repatriate the money – or they may not. Depending on the specifics of the new rules, your account may be grandfathered. In that case, the overseas funds would enable you to travel outside your own country while others are forced to stay at home.

A foreign bank account also slows things down if you’re ever under attack. It’s safe from an instant seizure by functionaries of your own government or by the unassisted order of a court in your own country.

The disadvantage of a large bank account vs. a small bank account is the loss of privacy. If you’re a US person, you are required to report your foreign financial accounts if their aggregate value reaches $10,000.

Physical gold. Gold stored in a safe deposit box in a foreign bank is not a foreign financial account, nor is physical gold in segregated storage with a non-bank safe-keeping facility. So a US person can store an unlimited amount of metal that way without triggering any reporting requirements. Avoiding a need for annual reporting is a plus, but don’t rely too heavily on the privacy you get with a safe deposit box, since the steps the gold takes to get there may create records of their own...



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