What would you suggest a noob to do
@Talyn ?
I would ask:
1) How much money? 100k, 1M, 10M?
2) a) B2B or B2C business?
2) b) If B2B what is the withholding rates with countries which didn't sign a DTT?
3) a)Do you have a plan to use this money? An ATM car is great if you plan to use it to buy some clothes, book some nice travels, but if you want to buy something expensive like cars, properties or other things... That's useless.
You can't wire 100k to your personal
bank account (or if you want to have the full jail experience).
3) b) Did you meet a tax lawyer in your own country?
3) c) If you plan to set up a
loan agreement between you and your offshore, does your country's laws require to inform your tax office? If yes be prepare for a tough tax investigation and hope that you're clean since the last 5 years (or whatever length of period your tax office can investigate on).
4) Did you check what are the risk of "
tax evasion" in your own country? What is the worst risk?
5) Did you list all the costs for the offshore thing (including lawyers, etc.), vs incorporating in your own country and compared it? Does the possible economy still worth it?
After that, it's up to OP, benefits vs risks.
I don't know why he needs an offshore and what he plans to do with it, i'm just saying that having an offshore just to avoid paying taxes is not a good idea in long term, but there is always plenty of setups that involve
offshore companies and can be seemable "legit": Royalties/Intellectual properties hold by an offshore, a Scottish partnership between a company in your own country and an
offshore company, etc.
Anyway, I am not an expert, not at all.