Please help re US Tax laws and Seychelles Tax Laws

[bastardino]

Hi, I have a question that I believe any qualified US CPA (with specialty in offshore) should be able to answer.


Here is our situation in brief:


We are a company that does apartment rental services in Ukraine. The company at the moment is being operated as a US corporation (along with US merchant processing). However, almost all of the money received in US, gets wired out to Ukraine to pay for salaries, expenses, etc. Right now the income tax, state tax, etc are all paid in US and in Ukraine.


To avoid the double taxation and also reduce our tax rates, we have registered a corporation in Seychelles. We also started looking for offshore merchant processing, but are now facing problems because they all seem to be either not reliable or have very high fees / bad terms.


My question is the following, can we legally simply create a bank account in a Seychelles bank which would be linked to our Seychelles based corporation and simply wire the money from US bank account to the Seychelles bank account. In other words, merchant processing would still be done out of US via US corporation but all the money, or almost all of it would be wired to Seychelles bank.


The tax returns would still be done in US, with the wires being shown as expenses, which they are. So simply, the structure above has US merchant processing, US bank account and ultimately Seychelles bank account gets everything and then partner in Ukraine withdraws the money from Seychelles account using ATM card. Is such structure viable / legal by US tax definitions?


Please let me know if any clarification is needed. The Seychelles Corporation is owned by US citizen and Ukrainian citizen with equal shares.


Thanks in advance.

 

[JohnLocke]

My question is the following, can we legally simply create a bank account in a Seychelles bank which would be linked to our Seychelles based corporation and simply wire the money from US bank account to the Seychelles bank account. In other words, merchant processing would still be done out of US via US corporation but all the money, or almost all of it would be wired to Seychelles bank.

That should be possible, however, Im not a proff in US tax laws i may be a good idea to find a local tax advisor to further explain. I believe that most US citizens have more or less no options to avoid to pay tax in the US since they control the most part of the world

 

[tnmoonlight]

That should be possible, however, Im not a proff in US tax laws i may be a good idea to find a local tax advisor to further explain. I believe that most US citizens have more or less no options to avoid to pay tax in the US since they control the most part of the world

So, are you saying, that US individuals, that form an offshore IBC, have no options but to pay US taxes?

 

[JohnLocke]

So, are you saying, that US individuals, that form an offshore IBC, have no options but to pay US taxes?

What I say is, that it is almost impossible for any US citizens to hide any money or assets in offshore accounts, the reason for this "statement" is that most offshore banks simply reject to open bank accounts for people from the USA. There may be legal setups which include the incorporation of offshore companies and offshore banking, but honestly, please consult a local tax or legal adviser specialized in offshore tax.


I'm very well aware of that you will find many websites that tell you the opposite, however, trusting such statements without consulting a professional will only bring you nothing else than lots of troubles.