MY TAKE ON THE MASSIVE “PANAMA PAPERS” LEAK:

A good percentage of smart Gringos and Expats living in Latin America have been lucky enough to get their assets out of the US and the US banking system. The see the writing on the wall and soon a desperate Big Brother will slam that exit door too. Smart people know that with the passage of FATCA, the bail-ins and the push for the cashless society, it’ll be the depositor’s money in US bank accounts that becomes the source of the next bank bailout- probably not another QE. That said, using offshore corporations and bank accounts have always been, perfectly legal ways to do business, keep money and assets somewhat anonymous as well as protected from confiscation and lawsuits etc. But now with the massive “Panama Leaks” story the world sees how corrupt, sociopathic, scumbag politicos and untouchable megabuck-jerks use these same legal tools to hide and redirect their payoffs and ill-gotten public loot. Unfortunately, with that breaking story everyone who uses these legal and valuable tools are now being stained by the media with the same brush…

BTW: hate to say I told you so but as I’ve said all along, Panama’s been labeled such a high-profile money-laundering center- a hot spot like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands- its naturally on every first-world tax authority’s radar. That said, only clueless gringos and Expats are nuts enough to bank or create Panama based corporations. If you need to incorporate or do banking, there are so many nicer, better, low key places in Latin America.

-INTERVIEW WITH AN EXPAT TAX PREPARER- PART ONE:

It’s APRIL! Gringos and Expats are much concerned with filing their US taxes and wonder who should prepare them. Today we have Part One of an interview with a profession Expat tax preparer with over 600 Expat clients. He lives in Medellin, Colombia so he knows the peculiarities concerning Expats and US taxes and we’ll ask him tax questions that most concern Expats.