Gerard Depardieu hosts a bash in his Belgium home. The Stones release their album "Exile on Main St." David Bowie moves to Switzerland. Dart moves to Cayman. What do all these events have in common?
Attempts to tax top earners at 83% in the UK during the 70's coincided with a significant number of wealthy people (whether famous or not) seeking residence in other parts of the world. Today the threat of 75% tax on people making over one million Euros in France seems to be making people move to Belgium.
Cayman has nothing to fear of the recent attempts to increase transparency. It is clear that the days when people could illegally reduce their taxes by creating "paper companies" somewhere else are long gone; we don't want anything to do with it. But the need to consider ways to legally manage your total tax exposure is still here for corporations and wealthy people, and those days are here to stay.
The movement of wealthy people seeking residence in a more tax beneficial jurisdiction is poised to increase. Continued pressure on multinationals to allocate net income across countries in a prescribed manner is likely to make those corporations reconsider where they base some of their operations. Change can bring opportunity and crisis. There is change in the horizon, is up to us how we want to face it.
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