Top 10 Tax Havens

This country is imploding, and not because of the mounting job losses and mortgage foreclosures, or ex-bankers pole-dancing to put food on the table, or Latvian-owned brothels refusing to accept credit cards. No, I’m talking about something far more dangerous: the rush among the world’s “elite” governments to wage war on simple wealthy folk to recover taxes on income believed to be hiding in offshore shelters.

There are many reasons why this is wrongheaded, foremost of which is a disgraceful lack of respect for the autonomy of the world’s more diminutive nations. Hey, if a small country wants to set a zero-tax policy, as opposed to the 35 percent tax rate in the States, I will defend their sovereign right to do so with well, maybe not my life, but certainly the lives of several thousand of my working-class countrymen.

Herewith, then, is a list of the safest offshore sites for your spare millions. 

no.1 CAYMAN ISLANDS

 A mere 15-minute suborbital rocket flight from Florida, these three little islands south of Cuba attract one big swinging industry: hedge funds. Start up an exempted corporation here and there’s no tax on income, profits, capital, wealth, capital gains, property, sales, estate, or inheritance I’d go on, but the excitement of an equity spike makes me squirt. The capital, and the financial and business center, George Town, is home to more registered businesses than people, a fact that prompted Barack Obama in a 2008 campaign stump speech to attack the Ugland House, a five-story office building that, according to Mr. Big Govern- ment, houses 12,000 corporations. “That’s either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record,” he said. “And I think we know which one it is.”

I felt like I’d been gut-punched by Karl Marx (easily the least funny of the brothers), so I checked Obama’s “information.” Sure enough, he was wrong: It’s not 12,000 corporations that are registered at Ugland House, but 18,857. Let’s stick with the facts, Mr. President. 


no.2 LIECHTENSTEIN

In a picturesque mountain valley between Switzerland and Austria sits the world’s oldest tax haven, a tiny pimple of land no bigger than the dog run behind my second home, a micro- state called Liechtenstein. How thrilled am I about its extremely strict bank- secrecy laws? When visiting, I send my underlings out to give every one of its 135,000 citizens a high five (in German, of course—hoch fünf !). But even better, I love Liechtenstein for its famed “rent-a-state” program: For as many as 1,200 at people between $320 and $530 a day per person, you can rent the entire country, granting you access to its restaurants, hotels, castles, and clothing-optional ski slopes—there’s simply no better way to demonstrate wealth than to slalom downhill with three poles exposed. A few years ago, my hadgefund partner, Morty, rented Liechtenstein for his son Benjamin’s bar mitzvah; I’ll be doing the same soon for my son, Grant—and we’re not even Jewish.