Happy to pay a Wealth Tax - to your Financial Adviser?

This calculator will do the sums for you

https://larrybates.ca/t-rex-score/

No one has voted for this: Intl Exchange of Tax Information

Quite apart from the fact that there are simpler ways to increase tax revenues the international agreement violates basic rules of a proper democracy. The agreement is negotiated several steps removed from what ordinary citizens care about, or what they want. Anonymous bureaucrats deal over the head of citizens in backroom fashion. A withholding tax would have been simple to introduce and administer and the privacy of savers would have been preserved.
The hypocrisy surrounding this form of legislation is evident when just recently the Italian government announced that the Super rich would be offered tax-haven status in Italy. A billionaire would be able to pay just €100.000 (!!) per year in full settlement of his tax obligations! And an (in)famous Italian, Signore Draghi does his best to confiscate the incomes of hundreds of millions of hard-working and honest citizens in order to bail out his profligate fellow-citizens.

Property a safe Investment - think again!

Zero or near-zero interest rates push desperate investors - individuals as well as institutions - to look at supposedly safe property as a haven. No one can deny that buildings and land are not safe - from a physical point of view. But in the same way that governments and their minions in the 'independent' central banks rob savers of hundreds of billions (a year!) there is no reason why states will not deny themselves the opportunity to rob/expropriate the wealth that citizens have in the shape of property. And there is the big advantage that real estate can not be moved out of the reach of the tax collector.

Highest Income Tax Rates Worldwide - KPMG Study

A handy reckoner for those interested to move to a tax-friendly climate can be found here

Is Switzerland a safe place for your Money?

Recent reports about Swiss financial institutions refusing cash disbursements when clients demand them cast a very long shadow on Switzerland as a safe location for investors that traditionally have seen it as a bulwark against authorities in their native countries. We leave it to our readers to work their way through the various agreements between Switzerland and other countries (see for example the agreement with Germany) but the fact is that these are rubber paragraphs where the interests of the investors are right at the bottom of priorities and the interest of an overbearing state is right at the top. We would add that a perusal of the 'interpretation' by the Swiss Banker's Association or a 'position paper' issued by the Financial Regulator does not inspire more confidence either.

FATCA - The road to serfdom is well travelled

The absurd legislation making its way through the US government machine is a sad indictment for the inability of the European 'elites' to make a clear and determined stand in defending the interests of their citizens and the financial industry in the Continent. A simple threat to retaliate tit for tat and subject the US institutions to the same treatment would have stopped the whole nonsense right in its tracks. After all, if the US is so keen to catch potential tax cheats it could impose stringent controls on its own citizens, control all movements of money in and out of the country and in the process make a laughing stock of the expression 'land of the free'.

Do-good politicians want a third bite off your money

Not enough that income from employment is often taxed higher than income from (often inherited) wealth and that returns on savings are taxed again, now the Nomenklatura that runs our governments - and especially the pointless Eurocracy - wants to 'direct' your investments into 'socially-desirable' activities as it becomes more and more difficult to raise the 'yield' from ever-increasing taxation to finance the ambitious goals of the do-gooders. Investment strategy has to be carefully planned to prevent the fall-out from these schemes.

Governments wage war on savers?

Not only are taxes on investment income excessive in many countries but governments who support 'Quantitative Easing' (Cleartext: Money Printing) also threaten the very survival of thrifty pensioners and savers who rely on fixed incomes from their investments.

Perspective on Banking Secrecy

During the recent past politicians and lobbies of all persuasions seen to have found a new 'Enemy Number One' - Banking Secrecy and linked to this Tax Havens large and small.
Politicians and their paid servants the regulators have failed miserably to prepare for the current global financial crisis. Despite the fact that institutions like the Bank of International Settlements has spent roughly 10 years and produced a report of 1000 pages the Bale 2 rules did nothing to prevent the debacle that has afflicted major banks around the world.
So it appears to be nothing more than a desperate search for scapegoats when politicians attack banking secrecy and tax havens. They are not the cause of the current crisis!
Not so long ago there was a time when anyone could walk into a Bank in Austria and open a bank account without presenting any form of documentation. No one asked what their name or address was. You paid in your money and you received a bearer passbook that was the only document you needed to claim back your money. In his teenage years the author even opened a number of passbooks on the same day. That way he pocketed a small amount of money that the banks put into new passbooks as a reward for opening the account.
Was crime any higher as a consequence of lax banking regulation? Was corruption rampant? Not at all. Since the (US inspired) crusade against banking secrecy gathered speed both crime and corruption have - if anything - increased. The world certainly does not seem to be a safer place.
Ironically, much crime and corruption can be traced back to ill-conceived legislation: the war on drugs, arbitrary taxes (tobacco, alcohol), questionable regulations and subsidies (agriculture, trade tariffs), limits on prostitution. All these laws and regulations may be well-intentioned but they provide a fertile field for criminal activity and usually are counterproductive as well as costly to the taxpayer and citizen (who most of the time get no say on respective laws.
If countries want to close down tax loopholes they can avail themselves of a solution that is easy to administer and leaves the precious privacy of all citizens untouched: Legislators can decide to impose taxes at source. If politicians are really only interested in reducing the amount of tax that in unpaid this solution should be suffice. Anything more intrusive indicates that the authorities are really interested in invading the private sphere of the individual and increase the control that the state already has over the citizen's lives.