1. You have no interest in evading taxes or of hiding anything from the government, nor anyone else. You have simply decided it would be to your benefit to have money overseas, probably in a foreign bank account. You may want this in order to facilitate trading in foreign markets or currencies or, possibly, you think it is prudent to keep part of your assets outside of the country in which you live.
2. You have no desire to break laws or evade taxes, but you would like to keep your affairs as private as possible. You are willing to report all your financial affairs to the government, if required to do so, but not to anyone else. It may be that you want to shield your private affairs from creditors, business associates or relatives.
3. You do not want the government, or anyone else, to know the details of your financial life because you are uncertain of what the future will bring. However, you don't want to evade taxes because evasion could lead to more trouble that it's worth. You will continue to report all of your income.
4. You don't want to evade taxes but, nevertheless, you do evade them simply because you cannot report all your taxable income without disclosing other information you want to keep private.
5. You are a tax evader by intention and hope to hide income earning investments outside the country. You have no intention of ever reporting any of your activities or income to the government.
Please understand that no one advocates or recommending that you or anyone else violate any laws or government rules. On the contrary, the purpose is to show clearly that such violations are not necessary. You might be inspired to stay away from illegal methods once you understand how you can accomplish as much, often more, with lawful methods.
How much privacy you need and how best to acquire it are decisions that only you can make. You are the person who will have to live with the consequences of your decisions, not the many people who so freely offer advice and so freely issue orders. It is not the intention of any authors, editors or publishers of this important information, to press you into any given course of action. Instead, the purpose is to expand you knowledge of the available possibilities. We believe the need for privacy is a driving force in the individual's quest for survival in these uncertain times.
Questions of financial privacy:
1. Many people simply feel that what they have earned, paid taxes on and accumulated is no one else's business. For some people this appetite for privacy is as ingrained and automatic as the desire for neatness, cleanliness, order or freedom. These people revere privacy - privacy from everyone, but from no one in particular.
2. Other people have specific, concrete motives for financial privacy. Their financial success requires that they protect personal information from relatives, business associates, competitors or others who might use such information to gain an unfair advantage.
3. The largest group are those who want privacy from their own government. For many, the net of government controls and regulations is not yet so tight as to be intolerable. But what about tomorrow? Only the naive believe the net will not tighten further. The trend toward less privacy, less freedom and toward greater government intrusions seems to be inexorable.
Financial matters were once broadly respected as private and personal. Such matters were held to be nobody else's business. They are now routinely available to any government agency. Even presidents have been shown to use information reported on personal tax returns to damage their political enemies. It is easy to forget that only a few years ago you did not have to give your social security number to a bank, mutual fund or stock broker to open an account. As recently as the 1960's, the government had no power to require reports from banks concerning cash withdrawals, deposits or money transfers. In fact, just twenty years ago most people would have been horrified if someone had suggested that you would have to report foreign accounts or transfers of money to the government. Now, ALL OF THIS IS LAW! One may be labeled a criminal for doing what everyone considered to be an inalienable right just twenty years ago.
What's the next step? Which of our rights, taken for granted today, will tomorrow be transformed into crimes? How far can government go? Unfortunately, just a far as the people allow and the politicians think necessary. Two examples demonstrate the attitude that politicians have for your wealth, your privacy, your freedom:
In the 1970's, American politicians shrugged off the international run on the dollar by saying that the United States Dollar is backed by America's tremendous resources, and;
In Canada, the government advertised its bonds with the slogan "backed by all the resources of Canada."
Think what these two examples mean. In both cases, they are saying that what you think is yours is really not. It is only available to pay the government's bills at the whim of politicians. There is nothing privately owned that is beyond the reach of government. Every resource in the country, regardless of ownership, is available to back the government's currency or bonds.
Of course, government's activities and intrusions are always called necessary by those who reap the benefit. Each year, more and more things become "necessary," but these "necessary" measures never seem to solve the problems they were allegedly intended to cure. The laws requiring reports on foreign bank accounts and foreign money transfers, were sold to the public originally as ways to hinder organized crime; and we all are opposed to organized crime, aren't we? Yet years later we haven't heard of even one major member of organized crime who has been nailed by the reporting laws. We do know that the non-criminal citizen has found it much more difficult to conduct his financial affairs because of these laws.
Most people see nothing ominous in this, they think everyone should be thankful for what we have and not complain about the government's intrusions into our wealth and privacy. Will these people still be thankful when the increases reach the point where the government is taking, say, one-half of their income instead of the one third it now takes? At what point do you draw the line? At what point has the government gone too far to be respected?
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