RE: Re: As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a Little Boomlet
Just to add an interesting experience to this thread, I've flown to Bermuda and to the Cayman Islands (not an attractive place, but great diving). On the flight to Bermuda the in-flight magazine had several articles discussing Bermuda's aggressive moves against being a tax haven. Saw the same kinds of articles in the magazines while on the beach there. In stark contrast, the in-flight magazine to the Caymans had several large advertisements and one govt.-sponsored article promoting the fact that banking transactions of less than $50,000 (per transaction) are never reported to law enforcement inquiries unless it has been adquately proven that the transaction was the result of a drug deal. Other advertisements stated the cost of starting a bank (as little as $5K if I remember correctly) and of starting a private holding company (a little more than starting your own bank). Interestingly none of these islands/countries have the SA (societe anonamie (sp?)) laws of French islands. An SA company by definition never reveals the board members, officers, founders, etc. pz -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Duncan Frissell Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 11:04 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Re: As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a Little Boomlet At 11:29 AM 1/10/01 +, Ken Brown wrote: One of the interesting, and to my mind odd, things is that they *aren't* "popping up in tax havens around the world". They are popping up in little islands that are formally or effectively under British colonial rule, if not actually occupied by the British army. The British colonial possessions discussed in the article are, indeed, tax havens and have been described as such by every writer on the topic from the flakiest up to the Economist Intelligence Unit http://store.eiu.com/description/M727des.asp. Red Tony's attempt to corral his colonies has been going on for a few years now. The OECD has gotten into the act with its Financial Action Task Force (http://www.oecd.org/fatf/) handling Money Laundering and the OECD, itself, http://www.oecd.org/daf/fa/harm_tax/harmtax.htm handling what it calls "Harmful Tax Practices". By the latter, it means evil countries that set their taxes too low. It does not mean the harm involved in tax collection itself. The Barbados meeting http://www.oecd.org/media/release/nw00-123a.htm was co-sponsored by the Commonwealth (formerly the British Commonwealth). They released a hopeful closing statement of agreement and cooperation but nothing is likely to come of it since the world's largest tax haven (the US) is never the subject of these talks. After watching these activities since shortly after the US government started to crack down on trusts back in 1962, I have learned to ignore what governments say and watch what they (and the market) actually do. More important than bank secrecy itself is the ability to easily create legal entities. One of the reason that the US is a popular tax haven (for non-US persons) is because it is so easy to create various business and personal entities here. The Net have only made things worse. With a dozen P2P payment intermediaries created in the last 18 months or so and hundreds of online securities brokerages, it's rough for the control forces. DCF "May the Lord enlighten ... the Swiss banks -- that they might uphold justice and preserve the integrity of their own laws and the laws of confidentiality, trust and basic decency between the banks and their clients." Imelda Marcos' Prayer for the Swiss Banks - Manila - Sunday 25 February 1996.
Re: As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a Little Boomlet
On Wednesday 10 January 2001 05:29, Ken Brown wrote: ... The sun still doesn't set on the British Empire (not while we have Pitcairn!), London is still the heart of darkness, it is is still the place where the money is (most of the money in the world, by orders of magnitude, is in meaninglessly large dollar accounts in databases owned by London banks, representing currency trades), and if you think you can trust these guys to do anything other than act in the interests of their own profits you are making a big mistake. Their interests are in making capital grow and prosper. These are diametrically opposed to the interests of high taxation and socialism. I don't think the Bermuda dot-coms are worried about these guys acting in their own interests. I think they are banking on it jim -- Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
Re: As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a Little Boomlet
At 10:54 AM 1/10/01 -0600, Jim Burnes wrote: On Wednesday 10 January 2001 05:29, Ken Brown wrote: ... The sun still doesn't set on the British Empire (not while we have Pitcairn!), London is still the heart of darkness, it is is still the place where the money is (most of the money in the world, by orders of magnitude, is in meaninglessly large dollar accounts in databases owned by London banks, representing currency trades), and if you think you can trust these guys to do anything other than act in the interests of their own profits you are making a big mistake. Their interests are in making capital grow and prosper. These are diametrically opposed to the interests of high taxation and socialism. I don't think the Bermuda dot-coms are worried about these guys acting in their own interests. I think they are banking on it Published Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News WORLD NEWS offshore banking Developed nations pushing to get rid of tax havens Wealthy countries aiming to recover billions of dollars lost to offshore tax havens are trying to convince small countries to give up the banking secrecy that has helped their fragile economies survive. Officials from about 40 countries and territories were to reconvene Tuesday in Barbados for a second and final day of discussion about what the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development terms ``harmful tax practices.'' The organization's 30 member nations, which include the world's wealthiest nations, have set up international standards that they want all nations to abide by. Countries that have no taxes or low taxes are being pushed to change their laws steve
Re: As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a Little Boomlet
On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 12:22:52PM -0500, John Young wrote: The full story of crypto is yet to be written, in particular its deceptions, perhaps a piece by Vin McLelland, one by Declan, one by Tim May, if not by distributed cyperhpunks not quite so malleable as solo individuals given privileged access on the condition that . . . True. As a journalist, I do my best to avoid those conditions. I think of them (probably not an original thought) as entangling alliances. I could easily cobble together a book proposal that would include chapters by cypherpunk types; I'd edit. I've been thinking of writing a book for a while -- even had meetings with publishers in '96 -- but it would take too much time. Editing would be far easier. What about that timing of CRYPTO release and the NSA show? Ah, it was a lackluster show and not that important. -Declan
Re: As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a Little Boomlet
On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 01:11:01PM -0800, Tim May wrote: I hope you don't do this. There have been several of these kinds of collections--a guy at MIT has done at least a couple of them (I forget his name, though three of my short pieces are in one of his books: the books cost $40-60 or so, for a damned paperback, which is why I don't have my own copy. Even at this high price, they don't pay for submissions and they don't even give out copies to contributors!). As someone who makes the vast bulk of his income from speaking fees, I wouldn't undertake such a project unless I could pay contributors and get a generous number of copies to hand out. Seems only fair. There's probably a role for a good book on, say, "digital money," with a mix of overview articles and detailed articles. This would be a _lot_ of work, and the editor would need to be well-versed in the field. Yep, and not something that I'd be that interested in. But a limited focus would be necessary. Maybe something titled "Crypto Anarchy." :) -Declan
As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a Little Boomlet
As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a Little Boomlet By MICHAEL ALLEN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL HAMILTON, Bermuda -- Operating out of a hurricane-proof command center in a former U.S. military base, Paven Bratch is a tax examiner's nightmare. Although his Internet company, music and video merchant Playcentric.com (www.playcentric.com1), has just 10 employees, didn't go live until September and has yet to turn a profit, it has the structure of a major multinational. Its computer servers are located here, its operating unit is in Barbados, and it has a distribution deal with a big record-store chain in Toronto. The 36-year-old Mr. Bratch figures this setup will save him so much on corporate income taxes and other expenses that he'll be able to undercut Amazon.com Inc.'s prices by more than 45% and still make a bundle. "One thing that always amazes me is, why would anyone who's planning on generating a profit locate themselves in a full-tax jurisdiction?" he says. 'First Generation' Plenty of dot-coms are asking themselves the same question these days. Undaunted by their industry's growing ranks of flameouts and hoping to emerge as one of the profitable few, dozens of them are popping up in tax havens around the world. In Bermuda, they range from tiny publisher ISI Publications Ltd., which sells hard-to-find business books under the domain name Booksonbiz.com (www.booksonbiz.com2), to E*Trade Group Inc., the big online stockbroker, which is locating its international trading operations here. Further south, on the Caribbean island of Antigua, an American trader has set up Indextrade.com (www.indextrade.com3) to allow small investors to bet on swings in market indexes, while in Cyprus, a former British jazz singer is doing a brisk business by listing vessels such as a Soviet-era submarine on Ships-for-sale.com (www.ships-for-sale.com4). "These merchants are the first generation who can really domicile anywhere, " says Andrea Wilson, chief executive of Bermuda-based First Atlantic Commerce Ltd. (www.firstatlanticcommerce.com5), which provides credit-card payment systems for e-businesses. "They can be a virtual corporation if they choose." The trend started with Internet gambling companies, which fled to the Caribbean to avoid the long arm of U.S. law. But now, thanks to an explosion of new telecommunications links to places such as Bermuda and Britain's Channel Islands -- and an ambitious push by promoters in such countries as Panama to set up facilities capable of hosting hundreds or thousands of Web sites each -- more-legitimate Internet companies are starting to make the leap offshore. A Wealth of Ambiguity There are serious questions about whether some of the structures would pass muster with the Internal Revenue Service and its foreign counterparts. But many accountants figure there's enough ambiguity in the industrial world's offshore tax codes that e-commerce companies could, at least theoretically, rack up tax-free profits for years before the authorities sort things out. The issues are often murkier than for a standard offshore tax shelter, because they involve technological innovations that the U.S. Treasury couldn't have anticipated when it began laying the ground rules for offshore taxation in the 1960s. For instance, nobody's entirely sure how to tax the earnings of a programmer who sells his software by allowing buyers to download it from a Web site hosted on a computer server in a zero-tax jurisdiction. Some tax attorneys take the position that the sale takes place where the server is located, and that the business owes no corporate or sales tax in the buyer's home country. "It would be no different than you or I getting on a plane, flying to the Bahamas, and buying a T-shirt in the hotel," says Lazaro Mur, a Miami tax attorney. New telecommunications options have brought Bermuda and much of the Caribbean even closer than a plane ride away. Cable Wireless PLC's phone monopoly among former British colonies in the region is breaking up, and CW's new competitors are starting to lace the seabed with modern fiber-optic lines, breaking down old technological barriers to working offshore. At the same time, so-called server farms -- warehouses built to accommodate row upon row of computer servers -- are sprouting up to accommodate high- tech newcomers. At Fort Clayton, a former U.S. military base in Panama, local entrepreneurs plan to open a 50,000-square-foot "high-tech hotel" later this month they say will be capable of hosting as many as 1.2 million Web sites. HavenCo, a self-proclaimed "data haven," announced plans last year to host Web sites from an antiaircraft platform abandoned by the British after World War II. The North Sea platform has a colorful history: In 1966, a retired British army major seized control of it and has operated it
