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Operating address in offshore company documents

@pastet89
What country would that be?

Bulgaria. And this is the ex-financial minister with an offshore company in BVI.


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But as I said, it's legal. Because the CFC rules cover only BG companies owning offshore companies. Natural persons owning offshore companies are not covered (the law is obviously created this way on purpose).
 
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Very common after all, I have several entities where my personal address was listed. I simply rent an office today in Romania, it is fully equipped, so I have a utility bill for it, however, I made a photoshop one with my name and this address on. They took it, so now I'm vanished again :)
 
Could you please share the source where it is stated that what you are doing is legal?
It's not coming from a public source, I have consulted 3 lawyers and 1 accountant, as mentioned probably in other topics.

When I need to act financially, I always do private legal consulting and don't just rely on anything I read online. My friendly advice to you is to do the same, never trust 100% anyone online, including me, for something which concerns your tax - the responsibility is yours. That being said, forums like this one are an amazing tool because they give us the ability to share for free our experiences and to know which setups are worth being researched further and which - not.

, I made a photoshop one with my name and this address on.
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That being said, forums like this one are an amazing tool because they give us the ability to share for free our experiences and to know which setups are worth being researched further and which - not.
Exactly, that's why we are all around here ;)
 
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It's not coming from a public source, I have consulted 3 lawyers and 1 accountant, as mentioned probably in other topics.

When I need to act financially, I always do private legal consulting and don't just rely on anything I read online. My friendly advice to you is to do the same, never trust 100% anyone online, including me, for something which concerns your tax - the responsibility is yours. That being said, forums like this one are an amazing tool because they give us the ability to share for free our experiences and to know which setups are worth being researched further and which - not.

Thanks for your advice, but when I asked you for the source, I didn't mean for you to quote some random guy on Reddit. I asked you to show me the actual law/exception from a government website or the Bulgarian National Revenue Agency.

All laws are online, so whatever an accountant says also needs to be fact-checked. When the NRA knocks on your door, they'll show you the actual law, you telling them 'but I consulted with 3 lawyers and 1 accountant' is not going to help you.
 
Thanks for your advice, but when I asked you for the source, I didn't mean for you to quote some random guy on Reddit. I asked you to show me the actual law/exception from a government website or the Bulgarian National Revenue Agency.

All laws are online, so whatever an accountant says also needs to be fact-checked. When the NRA knocks on your door, they'll show you the actual law, you telling them 'but I consulted with 3 lawyers and 1 accountant' is not going to help you.

I think it's obvious in the law it's not written that you could do that. Nor you can tell the tax authorities the whole truth. What you can do is to tell that "I can't give you that information" and there is no way for them to request it. I think that's what the lawyers rely on, plus the evidence from the (lack of) settled cases in court.

The law says you must register foreign company doing business in Bulgaria. But the practice shows when it comes to offshores the idea of doing it seems just absurd. It's assumed that because it's untraceable it's there to be abused (BTW that's not just in Bulgaria, I have heard a Spanish lawyer telling me if X can't be traced it can be done - but in another context). When I asked one of the lawyers if I should do it his reaction was like if I had lost connection with reality.

Furthermore, the whole offshore setup in Bulgaria is not something sneaky which came to my mind and I decided to verify it with advisors to see if my dirty idea might work out. It was straight out advised to me by an accountant with a legal degree (who by the way suggests it not only in private, but publicly, in a YouTube interview), as something which is not even a gray area. And when I further asked lawyers about it no one of them even questioned it as something which might be problematic.

When it comes to law, one thing is how the law is written, and how it is applied. I think the practice is even more imporant. In a country like Bulgaria when people barely pay tax, the tax authorities are happy if you pay them anything. Most people don't pay any tax at all, their income is for monthly survival and they don'e report it (can't blame them as Bulgaria has no tax-exempt minimum income which even rich countries have). The ones which do pay small tax, the big fishes are mafia and abusing heavily schemes like this one.

BTW coming from such a context that's why I am wondering, how are offshores traceable in other "problematic" countries with aggressive tax offices. Because I was told when it comes to offshores, in jurisdictions without DTA, there is no way the tax authority may request financial inspection of the books. They simply don't have the right to look into entity from another jurisdiction.
 
I think it's obvious in the law it's not written that you could do that. Nor you can tell the tax authorities the whole truth. What you can do is to tell that "I can't give you that information" and there is no way for them to request it. I think that's what the lawyers rely on, plus the evidence from the (lack of) settled cases in court.

The law says you must register foreign company doing business in Bulgaria. But the practice shows when it comes to offshores the idea of doing it seems just absurd. It's assumed that because it's untraceable it's there to be abused (BTW that's not just in Bulgaria, I have heard a Spanish lawyer telling me if X can't be traced it can be done - but in another context). When I asked one of the lawyers if I should do it his reaction was like if I had lost connection with reality.

Furthermore, the whole offshore setup in Bulgaria is not something sneaky which came to my mind and I decided to verify it with advisors to see if my dirty idea might work out. It was straight out advised to me by an accountant with a legal degree (who by the way suggests it not only in private, but publicly, in a YouTube interview), as something which is not even a gray area. And when I further asked lawyers about it no one of them even questioned it as something which might be problematic.

When it comes to law, one thing is how the law is written, and how it is applied. I think the practice is even more imporant. In a country like Bulgaria when people barely pay tax, the tax authorities are happy if you pay them anything. Most people don't pay any tax at all, their income is for monthly survival and they don'e report it (can't blame them as Bulgaria has no tax-exempt minimum income which even rich countries have). The ones which do pay small tax, the big fishes are mafia and abusing heavily schemes like this one.

BTW coming from such a context that's why I am wondering, how are offshores traceable in other "problematic" countries with aggressive tax offices. Because I was told when it comes to offshores, in jurisdictions without DTA, there is no way the tax authority may request financial inspection of the books. They simply don't have the right to look into entity from another jurisdiction.

So, in summary, what you are doing is illegal, but --according to your lawyers-- hard to trace or currently unenforced in Bulgaria.
 
So, in summary, what you are doing is illegal, but --according to your lawyers-- hard to trace or currently unenforced in Bulgaria.
If you ask me, I'd rather say "yes", but rather "impossible" than "hard" to trace.

But I am not a lawyer. And because usually it's me the overly concerned about things being 100% clean, I asked multiple times all the lawyers and the accountant - "is this legal?" and all of them said confidently, without even a second though "yes".

As I mentioned, when it comes to the "legal" definition, my understanding is that in law, it's much more important to see the practice of how the law is interpreted and applied than how is written. There is a legal term for this, English is not my native language, but in essence it means looking through all the law cases who regarded similar matters and to see their outcomes.

For example, when I mentioned to Gibraltar and BVI lawyers I will get a full power of attorney from the Nominee Director and distribute the dividends myself and do everything as if I was the director, they said, wait a minute, if you do this obviously you will be perceived as the director yourself, this will not hold. When I asked my BG lawyer about it, he said, if you wish, I will send you the link to all the law case outcomes regarding similar things to see yourself - there is simply not such a case in the entire history.

I can understand where you are coming from and I was asking many questions as well, at some point I gave up as I felt I am the weird one in this situation. I figured if the mass practice is this to be done and not even investigated, why even bother changing the law? There is a difference between killing someone and hoping you won't be found, and doing something about which everyone, including the authorities, know they will not even try to find out. For example, a reputable accountant would not give with a huge confident smile on a public youtube interview an advice to kill someone and hide, but she obviously gives a clean professional advice for doing this offshore setup. On an interview, which can be obviously viewed by the TAX authorities. And if they wish they could dig at least into her clients.

When it comes to "untraceable" it's not Bulgaria though. Yesterday I discussed with a Maltese accountant the setup of Maltese company + Portuguese NHR (here). It obviously relies as well on being untraceable. And the accountant claimed he knows and works with multiple Portuguese lawyers, who have confirmed this setup is fine.

That's why I asked on so many other topics, how do other countries find out about the offshore business when they don't have the authority to inspect it? I still have no clear answer. So my understanding is that what is untraceable as per law has other means for being faught against. For example, in Portugal they tax 35% dividends from tax havens, even if you have NHR. In countries with strict CFC rules, being a natural person tax resident is enough to make your offshore company tax resident as well. That's a good example for measures about such setups - if they can't trace it (I still don't understand how they could), they would do something else about it.

In Bulgaria... the parliament in a funny scandal accepted the CFC law (I think in the first place they accepted it only because they were forced to do it by the EU) with a ridiculous mistake "not on purpose": that it covers only low-tax, but not zero-tax jurisdictions. Later they were forced by the EU to fix that and they fixed it it but they still left CFC rules to apply only for companies and not for natural persons. This should speak enough about their intentions and the "spirit of the law" in Bulgaria when it comes to this.
 
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Fair enough.

Hope it works for you. I could never do it if the law says one thing but the practice is to do the opposite because it was never enforced. I'm too paranoid haha.
I think I understand how you feel about it as a foreigner. I feel 100% confident doing it in my country, but as I want to go somewhere else now, I feel nervous about doing it elsewhere. Best of luck to you as well!
 
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