back to indexRPF0698-Seven_Rings_of_Freedom-State_Liberty
00:00:14.000 |
Your new Toyota car, truck or SUV is available now. 00:00:30.000 |
Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. 00:00:41.000 |
My name is Joshua. Today we're going to talk about freedom from government control, freedom from state control. 00:00:48.000 |
This is part of our 7 Rings of Freedom series. 00:00:51.000 |
This is ring number 6, wherein we talk about state liberty. 00:00:55.000 |
I'm going to share with you some ideas about how you can live freely in an unfree world. 00:01:00.000 |
Now, I put this show as point number 6 on purpose, because I believe that this is the order that you should think about these things in. 00:01:09.000 |
As much as many people like to talk and worry about politics, and I'm one of them, as much as most of us like to moan and gripe and complain, blah, blah, blah. 00:01:18.000 |
Reality is politics doesn't matter nearly as much to your life as all the things that I have talked about previously. 00:01:26.000 |
As much as we complain and gripe and complain, complain, did I say complain? 00:01:32.000 |
As much as we moan about this new law and that new law, the reality is most of the time laws don't affect us all that much. 00:01:39.000 |
And most of the time you can pretty much ignore the laws and get away with it, if you have some of those other things in place. 00:01:45.000 |
And so everything I've talked about heretofore is going to be, as I see it, a foundation for the ideas discussed in today's show. 00:01:54.000 |
If you have everything I've talked about previously, then the context of government control is probably one of the least of your worries. 00:02:06.000 |
And moreover, you will probably need some or all of the things I've previously talked about in order to be effective here in this show, or in these areas. 00:02:18.000 |
Because, just an example, I'm going to talk about changing your jurisdiction in today's show. 00:02:25.000 |
Moving yourself from a jurisdiction of more government control and less freedom to a government to a jurisdiction of less government control and more freedom. 00:02:34.000 |
Well, in order to do that, you're going to need some of those previous things I've talked about. 00:02:39.000 |
It's hard to move if you don't have any money. If you're deeply in debt and you don't have any money, you can't move. 00:02:44.000 |
It's hard to move if you've got a job and you've got to figure out how to get a new job. 00:02:47.000 |
It's possible, but it's hard compared to having a business that you can just move with you. 00:02:52.000 |
It's hard to move if your wife has a job too, that you've got to figure out how do we replace her job. 00:02:57.000 |
And it's hard to move if your children are in local schools. 00:03:01.000 |
It's a lot easier if your wife doesn't have a job outside the house, if your children are homeschooled, if you're out of debt, if you have money saved. 00:03:09.000 |
And if you have your own business, now you can just simply move pretty easily. 00:03:12.000 |
It's not that difficult to move from one state to another state, from one country to another country. 00:03:16.000 |
It's not even that difficult to be a perpetual nomad, traveling all around the world and getting the benefits of nomadry. 00:03:29.000 |
And I think that if people spent the time that they spend griping about politics and invest that into gaining freedom in their personal life, the politics matter less and less. 00:03:43.000 |
And unfortunately, I think that thinking about politics is for many people really destructive. 00:03:54.000 |
Whenever I get interested in politics and I get sucked into something, it destroys my personal freedom. 00:03:59.000 |
The last time I got sucked into politics, I remember I was in Idaho. 00:04:06.000 |
And I was in Northern Idaho and I was hunkered down at a campground trying to write a course. 00:04:12.000 |
I was trying to write my credit card course that I started selling last year. 00:04:15.000 |
And that was when all of the Senate hearings for the Supreme Court Justice in the United States, Brett Kavanaugh, were on. 00:04:27.000 |
And I lost days of my life just sitting there staring at that YouTube, watching this thing, this debacle, and getting nothing done. 00:04:41.000 |
It was such an expensive thing for me to lose three days of my life to this thing over which I had no control, 00:04:48.000 |
that if it ever affected me whatsoever, it was only tangentially and only had the ability to get me mad. 00:04:54.000 |
And when I could have spent that three days and invested it into my own personal freedom and gotten my course done sooner 00:05:00.000 |
and taken that three days and written a whole other course. 00:05:02.000 |
And so that's the last time I got involved in politics. 00:05:08.000 |
As a political junkie, I've just seen it again and again. 00:05:11.000 |
Anytime I get involved in politics, it harms me in one of these other areas. 00:05:15.000 |
And so I'm going to give you some practical things that you can do, not getting involved in politics, 00:05:19.000 |
but I just want to point out to you that politics really doesn't influence your life nearly as much as everything else does. 00:05:25.000 |
If you have all the rest of these things in place, then it doesn't really matter who's president. 00:05:34.000 |
The things that it's actually going to impact your life on are just a handful and peripheral versus all the rest of this. 00:05:41.000 |
And the older I get, the more I'm convinced of that, that my life only has marginal changes depending on who's president. 00:05:48.000 |
And most of those marginal changes are not even visible from the outside. 00:05:52.000 |
Now, I do care. I don't want to be too dismissive. 00:05:57.000 |
I do care, and I've done things in my life based upon preparing for who becomes president in the next election. 00:06:04.000 |
I mean, I left the United States for a reason, for many reasons. 00:06:07.000 |
And part of those were, "Who's going to get elected next president?" 00:06:11.000 |
I'll share with you some of the strategies that I put into place and some of the strategies that work. 00:06:15.000 |
But at the end of the day, if you've got everything else, chances are the government control doesn't affect you all that much. 00:06:23.000 |
So I'm going to go through a number of different things. 00:06:25.000 |
But what can you do if you are living in an area where your freedom is eroding and there's more and more control over your person, over your business, and over your life? 00:06:38.000 |
Well, let's get some of the low-hanging fruit out of the way with first. 00:06:48.000 |
I have a conflicted relationship with the concept of voting. 00:06:54.000 |
I can't deny that elections do have consequences and there are things that happen based upon the results of elections. 00:07:04.000 |
But voting doesn't need to control your life. 00:07:10.000 |
It's basically you need a little bit of research, you need to understand why you would vote for somebody versus not vote for somebody, and then you go and perform the act of voting. 00:07:24.000 |
In addition to voting, you could get involved in political activism, organization and activism in some way. 00:07:30.000 |
Now if you're going to do that, I would beg of you, do that on the local area, as local as you possibly can. 00:07:39.000 |
I've had the problem and the disease in the past of getting involved in national politics and there is no more unwieldy game that you're guaranteed to lose than getting involved in national politics. 00:07:50.000 |
But there are ways that you can make a difference at the edge, on the periphery, especially at local politics. 00:07:56.000 |
And so I think there are a lot of interesting models where in your local community you can get involved on an issue, you can organize other people to get involved on an issue, and you can make some change in the local community. 00:08:07.000 |
And so that can lead to freedom, increasing levels of freedom. 00:08:11.000 |
You see that happening on many issues all around the United States and around the world, that local activism, there is still a place at which that works. 00:08:19.000 |
And if I were going to talk about getting involved in politics, I would go over some of the interesting models of getting involved in your local community and talk about some ways that that could actually make a difference. 00:08:30.000 |
Probably more important than activism is just simply being a part of a local community and changing the culture of that local community. 00:08:41.000 |
But again, that's a little bit beyond where I want to go today. 00:08:45.000 |
You can vote, you can organize for change, and you can make an impact on a periphery of an issue at the local level. 00:08:52.000 |
That is possible, and I don't think that's a fool's errand if that's something that you're interested in. 00:08:56.000 |
However, that's probably only marginally going to affect your personal freedom. 00:09:02.000 |
I believe those things are worth doing if you're interested, especially for the coming generations, but it's only going to make a small difference in your life. 00:09:10.000 |
If you're looking for the path of least resistance, the easiest thing that you can do to increase your freedom, it's going to be for you to simply move. 00:09:19.000 |
Move from a place of less freedom to a place of more freedom. 00:09:25.000 |
A geographic change is one of the most powerful things that you can do to increase freedom in your life. 00:09:32.000 |
And the easy way to do this is to change counties, change states, and then we'll talk in a little bit about changing countries. 00:09:40.000 |
But if you'll change counties and change states, you'll accomplish a few things. 00:09:44.000 |
See, governments are always going to be bound. 00:09:47.000 |
Governments are generally going to be bound by some kind of geography. 00:09:52.000 |
It's an unusual government organization that can extend beyond the bounds of geography. 00:09:57.000 |
And so the only person that most governments listen to is another government. 00:10:06.000 |
They don't pay much attention to what an individual wants. 00:10:08.000 |
They do pay attention to voter bases and et cetera, but they don't pay attention to individuals. 00:10:13.000 |
About the only authority that a government respects is another government. 00:10:17.000 |
And so if you're having problems with your local government, about the best thing that you can do is move yourself under the authority of another government. 00:10:25.000 |
This strategy also has the benefit of being a peaceful strategy, nonviolent, where you're not trying to coerce somebody else to do what you want. 00:10:35.000 |
You're not taking up arms against the government. 00:10:37.000 |
You're just simply removing yourself from one government to another. 00:10:40.000 |
Now, chances are no one's going to pay attention to what you've done. 00:10:44.000 |
But you can dramatically improve your life by moving from a place of less freedom to more freedom. 00:10:50.000 |
If more people do what you're doing, in time a government will wake up and pay attention. 00:10:56.000 |
And the reason is the authority that a government gets comes from its citizens. 00:11:02.000 |
It comes from the number of citizens that it controls. 00:11:05.000 |
And the money that funds a government comes from its citizens based upon how much tax revenue the government is able to extract from its citizens. 00:11:13.000 |
Well, when people start moving from one place to another place, then that government loses authority, it loses clout, and they lose money. 00:11:26.000 |
And in the United States, you can see this happening all over the country. 00:11:30.000 |
You can see the flows of people from one place in the country to another place in the country. 00:11:36.000 |
I'm not saying that there's a broad, massive trend from people moving from less freedom to more freedom. 00:11:42.000 |
Although I think there is that trend, but time will tell. 00:11:45.000 |
People move for all kinds of different reasons. 00:11:47.000 |
But they move, and when they move, it changes the makeup of government. 00:11:51.000 |
You see cities becoming more and more powerful as the culture becomes more urbanized and more and more people want to move to big cities. 00:11:58.000 |
And that makes the country areas, the rural areas, less powerful because they represent fewer people. 00:12:04.000 |
That's changing the economics of cities versus rural areas. 00:12:09.000 |
You see this affecting states as states impose higher and higher taxes, and they lose taxpayers. 00:12:14.000 |
And although I'm not sure that it's making a big impact, I notice it is making some impact. 00:12:20.000 |
You see states in the high tax, low freedom Northeast corridor paying attention to how many people they're losing to lower tax jurisdictions in the United States. 00:12:33.000 |
I'm not trying to say that it's all in the favor of what I would like. 00:12:36.000 |
Just simply that they do exist and that governments do pay attention to that. 00:12:39.000 |
And if you simply pick up and move from one place that is controlling you and removing your freedoms and reducing your freedoms, 00:12:47.000 |
and you move to another place that is not controlling you, that's giving you more freedoms, you will substantially improve your life. 00:12:54.000 |
You have the benefit of doing this in a way that really fits you. 00:13:02.000 |
These will be a little bit of political hot button issues, but let me give you a couple of examples. 00:13:13.000 |
And this is part of your life and your lifestyle. 00:13:22.000 |
If you live in a state where smoking marijuana is illegal, you face tremendous personal risk, tremendous legal risk by living in that state. 00:13:35.000 |
When you smoke marijuana, the only safe place to smoke marijuana is in your house. 00:13:40.000 |
And the only safe way for you to get marijuana is to grow it yourself. 00:13:44.000 |
If you smoke marijuana and you're doing anything except growing it yourself and smoking it in your own house, you're taking a huge, huge legal risk. 00:13:52.000 |
And I can't understand how it would possibly be worth it for you to do that. 00:13:56.000 |
But what you can do is you can move from your state to a state where smoking marijuana is entirely legal. 00:14:12.000 |
You don't have to engage in some back alley transaction that comes with significant personal risk and significant legal risk. 00:14:21.000 |
And you can just simply smoke it wherever you want, whenever you want, within the laws of that state. 00:14:26.000 |
And that is a good example of just simply choosing to go somewhere where you have more personal freedom and making a simple choice. 00:14:33.000 |
And I've got to imagine that if I smoked marijuana, that I would want to live in a place where it were legal. 00:14:39.000 |
It's just not worth the major legal risk to you and to your life. 00:14:46.000 |
If you wind up with a felony to your name, your life will be destroyed. 00:14:50.000 |
If you wind up even getting arrested, your life will be destroyed. 00:14:54.000 |
Go back and listen to episode 456 of Radical Personal Finance called "Protect Your Money by Arrestproofing Yourself and Your Children." 00:15:03.000 |
And I'll demonstrate to you in that show how big of a deal it is simply to be arrested for the possession of marijuana, 00:15:10.000 |
for the transportation of marijuana, for the traffic of marijuana. 00:15:13.000 |
It's a huge deal to your life and to your lifestyle. 00:15:17.000 |
And it's a risk that is foolish to take when you could eliminate that risk either by not smoking marijuana, 00:15:25.000 |
or if it's important, you just move to a state where smoking marijuana is legal, or move to a country. 00:15:31.000 |
So that's an example of something that is a major... 00:15:36.000 |
You can improve your life and your legal situation significantly by moving. 00:15:40.000 |
Another example would be something like firearms laws. 00:15:44.000 |
The laws in some states over firearms are so nuts where they try to restrict the number of cartridges your magazines can hold. 00:15:56.000 |
And they say that a standard capacity magazine can't be more than... 00:16:00.000 |
Because your gun comes with a standard 17-round magazine, that that's illegal in your state. 00:16:04.000 |
And the punishment for that is so huge that it's just not worth living in those places. 00:16:11.000 |
So either you say, "Well, it's not a big deal. I'm going to suck it up and I'm going to follow the law." 00:16:15.000 |
Or you make a change and talk all you want about, "We're going to stand up and do it." 00:16:23.000 |
But hey, you can solve that by simply moving. 00:16:26.000 |
Move from a state that dumps on you to a move to a state that supports your freedoms. 00:16:35.000 |
You can gripe and complain all you want about taxes, but at the end of the day, you've got to pay your taxes. 00:16:40.000 |
The legal risks are so significant to you if you don't pay taxes as owed. 00:16:50.000 |
It's hard for me to see how any honest analysis of the subject would lead to any outcome other than simply saying, 00:16:56.000 |
"They've got the guns. They'll throw me in prison. If I don't pay my taxes as agreed, I'm going to pay my taxes as agreed." 00:17:02.000 |
But you can just simply move from a state that imposes heavy taxes to a state that doesn't. 00:17:07.000 |
And depending on your particular unique collection of issues that are important to you, you can make major changes. 00:17:16.000 |
I'll talk in a moment about the international perspective of homeschooling, 00:17:18.000 |
but you can move from a state that makes things very difficult for you, and very expensive, and very invasive, 00:17:26.000 |
And you'll experience a major improvement in your lifestyle if you do that. 00:17:31.000 |
So you can just simply move to a state or to a place that has more freedom. 00:17:35.000 |
And I think it's one of your most powerful, least difficult decisions that you can make. 00:17:41.000 |
Now, I'm not minimizing that it can be difficult. 00:17:46.000 |
But if you care about freedom, reward the states that are recognizing and supporting your personal freedoms. 00:17:52.000 |
And penalize the states that are not, by simply withdrawing your consent and moving. 00:17:57.000 |
It's one of the most important things, although I'm an anti-federalist, 00:18:01.000 |
it's one of the most important things about federalism. 00:18:04.000 |
The idea that states will compete with one another for your business. 00:18:08.000 |
They compete with one another for your residency and for your business. 00:18:12.000 |
And so you should pay attention to what different states have to offer, 00:18:15.000 |
and you should choose a state that provides for you the best combination of laws, of culture, of opportunity, etc. 00:18:28.000 |
The next thing that you can do is you can change your activities 00:18:33.000 |
to move from an area where you're experiencing less freedom to an area where you're experiencing more freedom. 00:18:38.000 |
So a good example here would be to move from a regulated industry to a less regulated industry. 00:18:45.000 |
Back when I was a professional financial advisor, 00:18:48.000 |
I was in one of the most heavily regulated industries that I know of, 00:18:52.000 |
where basically every word you say is on the record. 00:18:55.000 |
Everything you say can and will be held against you. 00:19:04.000 |
I have to analyze every transaction for money laundering and for anti-money laundering. 00:19:13.000 |
Oh, and I had to do cash reporting requirements. 00:19:15.000 |
And if you receive cash, you have to report it in this way. 00:19:18.000 |
So you've got the laws of the national government. 00:19:23.000 |
And if I move, I have to report my home address within, what was it, 30 days of moving. 00:19:28.000 |
So the government has to know where I live at all times because I have a life insurance license. 00:19:38.000 |
Every text message has to be scraped and held so that any communication with a person has to be able to be produced in court. 00:19:45.000 |
And so my firm would, again, hold every email, every text message, 00:19:50.000 |
every one of my social media posts is archived and put into a system. 00:19:54.000 |
So if I ever say give bad investment advice to somebody on Facebook, then that's got to be listed there. 00:19:59.000 |
I have to have notes on every conversation that I have with a client 00:20:02.000 |
and contain these detailed client files so that I can defend myself in a court of law and everything. 00:20:08.000 |
And if you do all that stuff, I'm not saying you can't run a business in the middle of it. 00:20:17.000 |
You probably should have some client notes and things like that to protect yourself. 00:20:21.000 |
But it's just incredibly regulated and incredibly constraining. 00:20:25.000 |
And then when it comes to investments, one of the reasons why you always get the same, 00:20:28.000 |
no matter what investment firm you go to, you get the same advice 00:20:41.000 |
So as the general economy goes and falls, you go and fall with it. 00:20:45.000 |
And as the industry goes and falls, you go and fall with it. 00:20:48.000 |
And everybody in the industry is engaged in covering your rear end operations 00:20:54.000 |
to make sure that, well, if I did bad, at least if I don't do worse than everybody else, then I'm defensible. 00:21:00.000 |
And there are so many industries like that where you're just subjected to these never-ending, 00:21:10.000 |
About the best thing you can do is to leave that kind of industry 00:21:13.000 |
and go to an industry where there are fewer rules and fewer regulations. 00:21:17.000 |
That's what I did when I got rid of all my licenses, walked away from all of that. 00:21:27.000 |
And since there's theoretically some ability for me to speak freely, 00:21:32.000 |
I can speak freely and my ideas can have their impact without being filtered by anybody. 00:21:36.000 |
I don't have to archive every--here's how it was. 00:21:39.000 |
If you're ever going to do--for financial advisors to do a podcast, 00:21:45.000 |
Then you have to run that script by a team of lawyers before you record the script. 00:21:50.000 |
If you're going to go on a TV presentation, let's say that you're watching your local news 00:21:53.000 |
and the financial advisor from the local financial advice firm comes on the news. 00:21:58.000 |
The way that works is you create the idea of what you're going to talk about, 00:22:02.000 |
you run your script by the attorneys, the attorneys read your script, 00:22:06.000 |
make sure that everything is good, take out any juicy, sexy, tantalizing thing 00:22:11.000 |
that you might have said and dumb it down to be the stupid pablum that everyone else says. 00:22:16.000 |
And then you go and you do the show, you do the spot, you do the interview, 00:22:19.000 |
and then they take the tape and they archive it and transcribe it 00:22:21.000 |
and put it in your permanent file so they can defend themselves in a lawsuit. 00:22:29.000 |
And if I were running a firm, I would have to do it exactly the same way 00:22:34.000 |
The only way to do it is to go and do something else, 00:22:36.000 |
which is why the only place where you can come across interesting ideas in finance 00:22:42.000 |
So somebody who publishes a newsletter with investment ideas, et cetera, 00:22:45.000 |
because they are operating there under their ability to speak freely. 00:22:48.000 |
And as long as they don't get involved in the regulated side, 00:22:51.000 |
they can actually present interesting ideas and talk about sexy, tantalizing topics, 00:22:55.000 |
like hopefully I do, like I'm doing here in this show. 00:22:58.000 |
And so you may have an opportunity like that too, 00:23:00.000 |
to move from a regulated industry to a less regulated industry. 00:23:03.000 |
Now, it's not always possible, but you will experience a massive increase 00:23:08.000 |
And what's more important is you'll often experience a massive increase 00:23:15.000 |
One of the things that I've studied that I find so fascinating 00:23:18.000 |
is how if you go from an industry that is heavily regulated 00:23:23.000 |
to one that's less subsidized and less insured, 00:23:27.000 |
So like if I were a doctor, I wouldn't want to be a general practitioner 00:23:33.000 |
I'd want to be a plastic surgeon, something like that, 00:23:35.000 |
where you're in these interesting areas that are kind of on the fringe 00:23:38.000 |
where they're not so regulated as everything else 00:23:45.000 |
It's one of the reasons why it's such an exciting time 00:23:47.000 |
to be involved in the IT space and in the online world 00:23:56.000 |
because the laws are all way, way behind the industry 00:24:00.000 |
and nobody can figure out how to regulate it, 00:24:02.000 |
so people just keep innovating and adapting and innovating and adapting. 00:24:05.000 |
It's an exciting place to work where you don't have to worry so much 00:24:12.000 |
that you move to a place of less government control. 00:24:18.000 |
Now, moving on, I'm going to pivot here at this point in the show 00:24:26.000 |
and I'm going to talk about some ideas that are very uncommon 00:24:33.000 |
and largely these will come under the label of basically being a nomad, 00:24:39.000 |
being a tourist, so that very few governments even touch you. 00:24:43.000 |
And the idea here, this is built upon a theory 00:24:49.000 |
and it has been built on over the last several decades 00:24:52.000 |
by largely libertarians and libertarian thinkers and practitioners. 00:24:57.000 |
But the original theory is called the PT theory, 00:25:03.000 |
but I see applications of it on a domestic basis 00:25:08.000 |
So before I go to domestic, let me go ahead and just introduce the subject 00:25:11.000 |
by talking to you about what flag theory is on an international basis. 00:25:15.000 |
Then we'll talk about how you can apply this domestically 00:25:21.000 |
If you were to go back to, again, to I think it was the 1980s, 00:25:25.000 |
there was a financial advisor named Harry Schultz. 00:25:28.000 |
And Harry Schultz was working on these problems 00:25:33.000 |
"How do I become, how do I live freely in an unfree world?" 00:25:36.000 |
There was a club of people, Harry Brown was in that club, 00:25:43.000 |
And what he came up with was what he called flag theory, 00:25:49.000 |
And his idea on an international basis was to establish three things. 00:26:02.000 |
So flag number one, to be a resident of a country 00:26:13.000 |
that doesn't impose any kind of income taxation. 00:26:16.000 |
You could do it by living in a country that has territorial tax. 00:26:20.000 |
But you want to make sure that you have a residency 00:26:25.000 |
so that they don't tax foreign source income. 00:26:30.000 |
was to have your business in a stable tax haven. 00:26:35.000 |
that was either a low tax or a zero tax country, 00:26:37.000 |
and make sure that all of the business was run through that place. 00:26:41.000 |
And then number three is that you actually live as a tourist 00:26:46.000 |
in another country or in a handful of countries 00:26:55.000 |
I was reading my notes, talking about flag theory. 00:27:01.000 |
Now, these have been changed and expanded over the years. 00:27:10.000 |
who wrote a book, great book, on perpetual called-- 00:27:15.000 |
but he wrote a book called "The Perpetual Traveler," or PT. 00:27:22.000 |
And he expanded his three flags to five flags. 00:27:28.000 |
Flag number one is you have citizenship in a country 00:27:32.000 |
that doesn't tax non-resident income or control your actions. 00:27:38.000 |
And so the idea is that you want to be a citizen of a country 00:27:41.000 |
that's not going to tax you and is going to give you freedom. 00:27:44.000 |
The freedom thing is a bigger thing than it once was. 00:27:48.000 |
It used to be the country would leave you alone 00:27:53.000 |
Americans have all these onerous laws that govern them 00:27:56.000 |
all around the world, even if it's not just taxation. 00:27:59.000 |
Of course, taxation follows them all around the world as well. 00:28:02.000 |
And so you have your passport or citizenship in a country 00:28:08.000 |
The second flag is that you have a legal residence in a tax haven. 00:28:11.000 |
So you have a legal place that you live that's in a tax haven. 00:28:15.000 |
Then you make sure that you have your business 00:28:17.000 |
or you earn money in a tax haven, a different place. 00:28:20.000 |
Make sure that--flag number four is you establish your banking 00:28:23.000 |
and your asset management in a different country 00:28:28.000 |
And then number five is that you have the places 00:28:32.000 |
You know, you could call them your playgrounds 00:28:35.000 |
And hopefully those are places that don't have 00:28:37.000 |
a lot of other high taxes like sales taxes or VAT taxes, etc. 00:28:41.000 |
And so there have been other things that have been added over time, 00:28:44.000 |
other flags such as a flag for your digital assets. 00:28:48.000 |
And you can go and expand the list as much as you want. 00:28:50.000 |
Everything from where do you register your vehicles 00:28:53.000 |
to where do you register your boats, your airplanes, 00:28:58.000 |
And the basic idea is that on an international basis, 00:29:01.000 |
you can choose which country offers you the best of each world. 00:29:10.000 |
And this has become, for me, obsession is too strong 00:29:14.000 |
but an area of significant interest over the last few years. 00:29:17.000 |
And if I were going to--if I were wiped out today 00:29:22.000 |
I would--one of the things I would do is I would establish 00:29:25.000 |
a boutique consulting firm as an international consultant 00:29:29.000 |
on some of these issues. It's just so fascinating. 00:29:37.000 |
and your least cost and you follow all the laws, 00:29:40.000 |
which satisfies my moral problem of following the laws. 00:29:43.000 |
I don't want to break the laws. I want to do everything legally. 00:29:53.000 |
I'll come back to the international aspect in a moment 00:29:55.000 |
and talk about it, some of its--how you do it 00:29:58.000 |
and some of its benefits and some of its shortcomings. 00:30:01.000 |
But before I do that, I want to talk about it on a domestic basis 00:30:06.000 |
that is actually going to leave their country, 00:30:08.000 |
go and get a second passport, live in another place, 00:30:16.000 |
But you can do this domestically to some degree 00:30:18.000 |
if you will pay attention to what you're doing. 00:30:23.000 |
So on a domestic basis, let's say that you're in the United States of America 00:30:28.000 |
Well, you can change from one state to another 00:30:30.000 |
and establish your residence in different states 00:30:32.000 |
depending--move from a low-freedom state to a high-freedom state. 00:30:36.000 |
And one of the great things about this is that there's 00:30:38.000 |
huge freedom of movement within these 50 United States. 00:30:42.000 |
So you can actually very easily leave California 00:30:47.000 |
and move to Texas or leave California and move to Nevada. 00:30:52.000 |
And you need to follow a whole bunch of laws. 00:30:54.000 |
You need to set everything up properly where you're actually going to 00:30:59.000 |
But once you do that, it's not like you can never go into California again. 00:31:03.000 |
You can go back to California. You can visit California. 00:31:09.000 |
You got to make sure you stay away from, for example, 00:31:11.000 |
the things that would trigger taxation in California. 00:31:16.000 |
it's relatively easy to move your business legitimately 00:31:21.000 |
And so there are huge options for this inside the United States 00:31:28.000 |
And because of the ease at which you can cross state lines, 00:31:31.000 |
you don't have to completely sever all of your ties with another state. 00:31:35.000 |
So you should consider what's important to you 00:31:40.000 |
Now, just because you move your residence from one state to another 00:31:43.000 |
doesn't mean you can't spend time in another state. 00:31:45.000 |
So, for example, let's say that you wanted to live in a state 00:31:59.000 |
I'm just talking about things that are important to me-- 00:32:01.000 |
homeschooling laws, gun laws, business laws, etc. 00:32:08.000 |
So there are all kinds of different places you could do this. 00:32:11.000 |
You look first at the states where marijuana is legal. 00:32:14.000 |
But I would look at a state--just an easy one that comes to mind-- 00:32:19.000 |
Possibly you could do Nevada and Colorado as well, 00:32:22.000 |
So maybe you set up your residence in Wyoming 00:32:34.000 |
You run your business out of Cheyenne, Wyoming. 00:32:37.000 |
And that allows you to have tremendous levels of personal freedom. 00:32:40.000 |
That allows you to have low taxes, no state income taxes, 00:32:47.000 |
But then when you want to go skiing on the weekends, 00:32:49.000 |
you just simply drive down to the Western Range, west of Denver. 00:32:59.000 |
And so something like that is just an example of how 00:33:02.000 |
you use the laws of each place and you position yourself 00:33:05.000 |
so that you take advantage of the laws in both places. 00:33:13.000 |
depending on the specific things that you're concerned about. 00:33:16.000 |
You can apply this at almost every level of your life. 00:33:21.000 |
I've talked a lot about Florida as being a place of 00:33:24.000 |
tremendous benefits from an asset protection standpoint. 00:33:30.000 |
Well, you move to Florida and you set up all of your residence in Florida. 00:33:33.000 |
But one of your frustrations is that you don't like 00:33:36.000 |
the weather in Florida during the summertime. 00:33:39.000 |
Lots of people don't like the weather in Florida in the summertime. 00:33:42.000 |
You can set up your weather in Florida and still have a second house 00:33:45.000 |
in another place, or set up your residence in Florida, 00:33:48.000 |
get all the benefits of the Florida asset protection laws 00:33:54.000 |
And your summer house is simply in the Hamptons or out in the Rockies 00:34:06.000 |
which is why I'm being a little bit slow on details 00:34:10.000 |
You need to read the laws of every place that you're considering going. 00:34:18.000 |
But you can set your life up, and there's no requirement 00:34:23.000 |
in order for you to be a resident of the state of Florida. 00:34:26.000 |
And so the opportunities all around the United States 00:34:42.000 |
but you might go ahead and bank with a little small-town bank 00:34:44.000 |
in the middle of Oklahoma if you believe that that gives you some benefit. 00:34:48.000 |
Now, you don't get many benefits in things that are federalized 00:34:51.000 |
and things that are affected by federal law, such as banking. 00:34:57.000 |
These days, with all of the elimination of banking privacy, 00:35:00.000 |
it's not nearly as compelling as it once was. 00:35:03.000 |
Now, using this thinking, you have a lot of opportunities. 00:35:09.000 |
There's a reason why you'll always see a lot of supercars 00:35:11.000 |
and big, expensive RVs registered in Montana. 00:35:14.000 |
And so you can just simply register your vehicles in Montana, 00:35:16.000 |
even whether you are or are not a resident of Montana yourself. 00:35:22.000 |
You can look at almost every level of your life, 00:35:24.000 |
and you can choose the jurisdiction that is best for you. 00:35:30.000 |
and experience major levels, major increases in personal freedom. 00:35:36.000 |
So consider the specific issues that are important to you, 00:35:39.000 |
the specific legal issues, the specific financial issues, 00:35:43.000 |
and then do some research to see if there's a state that would serve you best 00:35:47.000 |
in terms of providing freedom for you on the issues that matter most to you. 00:35:55.000 |
Some people will have issues that are important enough to them 00:35:58.000 |
where they need to move to a state where those issues are protected, 00:36:05.000 |
We all prioritize the specific things that are most important to us. 00:36:10.000 |
and pick and choose what offers you the best solution. 00:36:14.000 |
And a lot of times you can align the financial issues 00:36:18.000 |
There's no reason at all--let's say that you're a resident of the state of Illinois. 00:36:28.000 |
Why should you sit in the state of Illinois with a state-level estate tax 00:36:32.000 |
when you can leave the state of Illinois and move your residency to another state 00:36:35.000 |
and then just come back and visit Illinois on occasion? 00:36:40.000 |
So when you move, one of the things that is important 00:36:43.000 |
is you need to make sure that you follow all the laws. 00:36:47.000 |
And you need to think very carefully about the legal case 00:36:50.000 |
that you would have to make if you were ever hauled in front of a judge 00:36:56.000 |
This is especially important if you're moving for financial reasons, 00:37:03.000 |
The states of California--and because of this freedom that people have, 00:37:09.000 |
people know that--the states know that people can come and go 00:37:13.000 |
And if you're a big target, you will be targeted by some of the states 00:37:19.000 |
Right now the states of California and New York are incredibly aggressive 00:37:24.000 |
about pursuing people who have, in theory, ended their domicile in their state 00:37:30.000 |
But in reality, that state is not quite so sure. 00:37:33.000 |
And so, especially if you're moving from California or New York, 00:37:36.000 |
you need to make sure that you follow all of the rules 00:37:40.000 |
and that you establish a very, very strong case 00:37:46.000 |
So let me give you just a couple minutes of advice. 00:37:48.000 |
If you're pursuing this, especially from a financial perspective, 00:37:51.000 |
let's assume that you want to do something like move from California 00:37:54.000 |
to Nevada or to Texas, or you want to move from New York to Florida 00:38:00.000 |
or to Tennessee or to, I don't know, New Hampshire, something like that. 00:38:05.000 |
You need to think carefully about the fact pattern 00:38:08.000 |
and make sure that the fact pattern is bulletproof 00:38:17.000 |
The first thing you want to do is you want to research the laws in your state 00:38:23.000 |
to understand what that state considers to be a sign of your domicile in that state. 00:38:29.000 |
So all little things matter usually, like in California, 00:38:35.000 |
And then the size of each home is going to determine whether you have a domicile, 00:38:40.000 |
whether it's a residential address or an office address. 00:38:43.000 |
You can--it is possible for you to own a home in California 00:38:47.000 |
and not be considered to be domiciled in California. 00:38:50.000 |
But if you own a home in California, it would be a really good idea 00:38:55.000 |
if you have a house outside of California that's at least of equivalent size 00:39:08.000 |
So let's say you're going to have a house in Las Vegas. 00:39:10.000 |
You should have a nice house in Las Vegas and then maintain a smaller house in California, 00:39:18.000 |
Then the California house would just be considered your vacation home. 00:39:21.000 |
So you got to think carefully about all those little decisions. 00:39:26.000 |
You want to be careful about serving as an officer or an employee of a business. 00:39:30.000 |
You want to think about where your children go to school. 00:39:32.000 |
You want to count the number of days that you're in a certain state. 00:39:37.000 |
So the domicile is one of the most compelling factors, 00:39:40.000 |
the number of days that you're actually in California 00:39:42.000 |
compared to the number of days that you're in other places. 00:39:45.000 |
In theory, you could arrange so that you could spend all your time in California 00:39:49.000 |
and not be domiciled there, but that would be really dangerous. 00:39:59.000 |
Then one of the other things that you want to consider 00:40:02.000 |
is even just things like tracking those kinds of things. 00:40:05.000 |
There'd be a big difference if you have a long history of electronic transactions, 00:40:10.000 |
credit card purchases, et cetera, that show you being in California every single day 00:40:16.000 |
versus no financial transactions showing you in California 00:40:19.000 |
but numerous financial transactions showing you in another place. 00:40:23.000 |
Things like driving records can be a big deal versus flying. 00:40:27.000 |
All of those kinds of things can be put into a court of law. 00:40:30.000 |
So if you're trying to escape a place, you need to think carefully about all of the evidence 00:40:34.000 |
and arrange your activities in such a way that you follow the law 00:40:38.000 |
and are ending all of your connections and then move 00:40:42.000 |
and make sure that all of the facts meet that as well. 00:40:45.000 |
So if you're going to move from California to end your California residency, 00:40:50.000 |
That's going to involve changing your driver's license, 00:40:52.000 |
changing your voter registration, changing your vehicle registration, 00:40:56.000 |
changing the billing addresses on all of your accounts. 00:40:59.000 |
If you have any California-specific banks, you close your California banks 00:41:02.000 |
and you move those to a Texas bank account or a national account 00:41:06.000 |
and you change all your address information on your accounts. 00:41:09.000 |
You go and you end your relationship with your family doctor or dentist in California 00:41:13.000 |
and you establish a new doctor or dentist in Texas. 00:41:16.000 |
You change your professional membership association 00:41:19.000 |
so that you're no longer a member of the California board of blah, blah, blah, 00:41:25.000 |
Change your phone number, although this is, I think, less of a big deal in the world of cell phones, 00:41:29.000 |
but you should have a phone number that's in Texas and change that on all your records. 00:41:33.000 |
Change what community organizations you're involved in. 00:41:37.000 |
Move your membership from the San Francisco Rotary to the Dallas Rotary, 00:41:41.000 |
volunteer organizations, church memberships, et cetera, country club memberships. 00:41:45.000 |
Move and close all your safety deposit boxes or PO boxes. 00:41:53.000 |
Then what will happen is you have now a long chain of evidence, 00:41:57.000 |
and in California the way it is, you file your final non-resident tax return, 00:42:01.000 |
and you have a long chain of evidence that shows that you're gone from the state. 00:42:05.000 |
Then make sure that if you ever set foot in the state again that there is minimal evidence of you ever being there 00:42:09.000 |
and that you have minimal interaction with businesses or boards or anything in the state. 00:42:13.000 |
That's the basic process of moving from one state to another, 00:42:17.000 |
but if there's a big price tag on it and you stand to save substantial money, 00:42:21.000 |
especially if you're moving from California and/or New York, things like that, 00:42:25.000 |
you want to make sure that you do it all the way and that you're very, very careful. 00:42:29.000 |
Now, this leads me to, when I talk about spending time, 00:42:33.000 |
this leads me to the concept of nomadism or basically continual travel, 00:42:37.000 |
which is one of the most interesting ways to lower the authority 00:42:41.000 |
and jurisdiction of a government on top of your affairs. 00:42:49.000 |
Something that's important to me as an outspoken homeschooler 00:42:53.000 |
is something like homeschooling. And so let's pretend that I live in Florida, 00:43:01.000 |
I have a legal address in Florida that I live at. Florida allows for nomad residency. 00:43:05.000 |
So pretend that I'm filed as a nomad resident of Florida or Texas, 00:43:09.000 |
but I actually live in an RV and I travel around the United States continually. 00:43:13.000 |
And I'm spending significant amounts of time in different states. 00:43:17.000 |
I'm three months in this state, three months in that state, etc., 00:43:21.000 |
and I'm traveling on a continual basis. Think about something like homeschooling 00:43:25.000 |
and interacting with the truant officer in the local county. 00:43:33.000 |
that I would come to the attention of somebody in that local county and have to interact 00:43:37.000 |
with somebody where they try to take control of my children? 00:43:41.000 |
Now, this is not nearly as much of an issue as it once was, but it used to be a big, big deal. 00:43:45.000 |
I still know many homeschoolers from some states, and especially people 00:43:49.000 |
who homeschooled a decade or two decades ago, that would never let their children 00:43:53.000 |
out of the house during the daytime because it had to face the government investigating them 00:43:57.000 |
for why are your children not in a government school? So they would never go shopping during the 00:44:05.000 |
park during the daytime. They would only do those things in the evening and make sure that all of their 00:44:09.000 |
schooling activities were inside of their home because they were worried about coming to control 00:44:13.000 |
of the government authorities. Where would be the impact of that 00:44:17.000 |
if you were traveling? Now let's move to taxation. Let's 00:44:21.000 |
assume that you have your business set up in the state of Texas. You have a Texas LLC. 00:44:25.000 |
You run your business through the state of Texas, but you as an individual are traveling. 00:44:29.000 |
And you like to spend a couple months in the state of New York taking some 00:44:33.000 |
shows. You like to spend a couple months in the state of California, etc. You're traveling. 00:44:37.000 |
But you just have a couple months here and there. How is it that the 00:44:41.000 |
taxing authorities would ever be involved in your affairs? 00:44:45.000 |
The only way the taxing authorities would be involved in your affairs is if you opened a branch and started 00:44:49.000 |
doing business in their state. There's no way, if you open a physical business, there's no way 00:44:53.000 |
to avoid taxation in a state when you open a physical branch and start doing 00:44:57.000 |
business in somebody's state. But if you've chosen a business friendly 00:45:01.000 |
climate, you now have the ability to spend time in a state 00:45:09.000 |
And so if you're interested in freedom, one of the best ways that you 00:45:13.000 |
can be free is by having, in some studies, a moving lifestyle. 00:45:17.000 |
And it's one of the reasons why I tested living in an 00:45:21.000 |
RV traveling around the United States. Because I was interested to see what would be the level of 00:45:25.000 |
freedom in that situation. Now you can make a fair argument that it's 00:45:29.000 |
not perfect. You can make an argument that you're kind of sort of vulnerable 00:45:33.000 |
as a traveler because you're not a local. And I think that's true. 00:45:37.000 |
If there's a hurricane coming through or there's a national crisis or a disaster, they're only going to let local residents 00:45:41.000 |
in. So it's possible to say that as a traveler there are places and times 00:45:45.000 |
that that's not advantageous. But in general, in my opinion, 00:45:49.000 |
one of the very best ways to minimize the amount of 00:45:53.000 |
control that governments have over your affairs is 00:45:57.000 |
simply to be a traveler. To be someone who's just passing through. 00:46:01.000 |
Because as long as you're not breaking any laws, 00:46:05.000 |
there's very little reason for government officials 00:46:09.000 |
to have any contact with you. So for people who 00:46:13.000 |
care about personal freedom, you should consider 00:46:17.000 |
very seriously if some kind of traveling lifestyle is 00:46:21.000 |
ideal for you. Now one of the problems of course is income. But let's pretend 00:46:25.000 |
that you're financially independent or you have an income or you have your own business. Pretend it's 00:46:29.000 |
something very simple. You're a writer. You're a freelance writer. Well you can 00:46:33.000 |
come and go with relative freedom and you have very little interaction 00:46:37.000 |
with really anybody. And so it's one of the best 00:46:41.000 |
ways to increase your personal freedom. Now that lifestyle may or may not appeal to 00:46:45.000 |
you. It does not appeal to most people. And I understand that. 00:46:49.000 |
But if we're talking about the theoretical construct, I hope you see how 00:46:53.000 |
moving around and just simply being a traveler who's just passing through 00:46:57.000 |
dramatically increases your level of personal freedom. 00:47:01.000 |
Because you have no claws that anybody can get in. You have nothing that 00:47:05.000 |
really anybody can get their claws into. Living in an RV, could your 00:47:09.000 |
RV be impounded? Yeah. But if you follow the traffic laws and there's no reason to be brought 00:47:13.000 |
to anybody's attention and you're a law-abiding citizen, there's no warrant out 00:47:17.000 |
for your arrest. You're not committing any heinous crimes. 00:47:21.000 |
Where's the interaction? You're pretty much left alone 00:47:25.000 |
to come and go as you please, to do as you like. You don't give 00:47:29.000 |
the government those nexuses, nexi, nexi, those 00:47:33.000 |
points of connection, points of control. If you buy real estate in a 00:47:37.000 |
place, now all of a sudden you're subject to the local taxing authority. 00:47:41.000 |
If you open a business in a place that has a physical presence, well now you're subject to the local 00:47:45.000 |
taxing authority and to the wage board and to the OSHA 00:47:49.000 |
inspectors, etc. But if you're just passing through as a nomad 00:47:53.000 |
living lightly, you have the ability to float through fairly freely. 00:47:57.000 |
And as long as you're not creating trouble, you're not 00:48:01.000 |
causing problems with anybody, you're pretty much going to be left alone. Well now let's pivot 00:48:05.000 |
to the international perspective. What I just described was largely from a domestic 00:48:09.000 |
perspective, but the beauty of the theory of PT theory, or flag theory, 00:48:13.000 |
is that the same exact thing can be applied on an international 00:48:17.000 |
basis. And this is also something that I've tested and I've been fascinated 00:48:21.000 |
by. And I'm here to tell you that from a freedom 00:48:25.000 |
perspective, I'm convinced that Schultz was correct. 00:48:29.000 |
That the best way that I can come up with for those who want 00:48:41.000 |
what Hill talked about in PT, what other theorists have gone on 00:48:49.000 |
I'm going to talk about personal freedom for a moment, but then I'm also going to talk 00:48:53.000 |
about finances, because both of these are important. Some people 00:48:57.000 |
care more about freedom and taxation is not kind of a non-issue. But taxation 00:49:01.000 |
really is a big issue for many people. And it's also something that 00:49:05.000 |
is elegantly solved with the PT theory. PT, I don't think 00:49:09.000 |
I said it earlier, PT is some initials that are often used to apply to different things. 00:49:13.000 |
It stands for perpetual traveler, or permanent tourist, 00:49:17.000 |
or just passing through, or prior taxpayer. There's a bunch 00:49:21.000 |
of things that that word PT goes for. It's kind of a little acronym that's used 00:49:25.000 |
in the club of people who care about this, usually libertarian-oriented people. 00:49:29.000 |
And most people will know PT theory, but because of its unwieldiness 00:49:33.000 |
and its difficulty to explain, then it often goes under the banner of 00:49:37.000 |
flag theory as well. A little bit more of a common name and a little bit easier to 00:49:41.000 |
explain. So let's talk about it from the perspective of a freedom thought. 00:49:45.000 |
Remember my example from the United States, where I talked about you want to do 00:49:49.000 |
something that, you want to engage in an activity that is 00:49:53.000 |
prohibited where you are, but you want to do it without risking legal trouble. 00:49:57.000 |
So I used the example of marijuana. Another good example would be something like 00:50:01.000 |
gambling, where it used to be that gambling was highly restricted in 00:50:05.000 |
most states. Today, now there's pretty much, in almost all the states, you can 00:50:09.000 |
find a place to gamble. But the same basic principle occurs, that if you want to gamble 00:50:13.000 |
legally, you know the old days, you go to Las Vegas, and gambling was legal in Las Vegas 00:50:17.000 |
so you did it there. Similar thing with marijuana, or perhaps 00:50:21.000 |
prostitution. You want to engage a prostitute. Well, if you engage a prostitute in your hometown 00:50:29.000 |
sting operation with the local vice squad and having your 00:50:37.000 |
Whereas if you want to engage a prostitute legally, you go to a 00:50:41.000 |
place where prostitution is legal. Only a few places in the United States, but 00:50:45.000 |
internationally it's fairly easy to do. I can't for the life of me understand why 00:50:49.000 |
somebody would hire a prostitute in Florida when 00:50:53.000 |
they could just get on an airplane and go to Costa Rica. When I was in college, I used to 00:50:57.000 |
in Costa Rica, when I was in college, I used to work in 00:51:01.000 |
hotel lobbies and hotel bars because I could get good Wi-Fi and I 00:51:05.000 |
enjoyed the atmosphere. So I would go and just take my laptop and do my work there. 00:51:13.000 |
men coming in with their Costa Rican escorts. They had a whole 00:51:17.000 |
system for it. They sign them in and out of the hotel, a whole system structured for 00:51:21.000 |
it. But the point is that it's a legal activity in Costa Rica. 00:51:25.000 |
It's not a legal activity in the United States. And so those men from a legal 00:51:29.000 |
perspective were behaving very intelligently by 00:51:33.000 |
going to a place where their desired activity is legal 00:51:37.000 |
instead of trying to commit those acts illicitly in a place 00:51:41.000 |
where that activity is illegal. So if you look at the world and you think about anything 00:51:45.000 |
that you want to do, you can usually find a jurisdiction in the world 00:51:49.000 |
where that activity is legally sanctioned, almost anything. 00:51:53.000 |
Perhaps you live in a dry country, a Muslim country where 00:51:57.000 |
there's no drinking. Well, if you want to drink, you go to a place where there's not a dry country 00:52:01.000 |
and you can drink legally. A good example of this would have been back during the Prohibition era 00:52:05.000 |
in the United States. You may have ran a significant risk if you 00:52:09.000 |
stayed in the United States and you wanted to be a drinker. Well, 00:52:13.000 |
Prohibition, that was a major legal risk and a personal risk. 00:52:17.000 |
Whereas if you simply got on a boat and moved 00:52:21.000 |
to almost any country in the world, but moved to France as some people 00:52:25.000 |
did, you could live happily in Paris, France and enjoy your drinking 00:52:29.000 |
lifestyle right in Paris, France. If you want to drive fast, drive 00:52:33.000 |
fast cars at extremely high rates of speed. You can of course go to a racetrack 00:52:37.000 |
and do it on a racetrack or a race course, but it's not legal or safe to do 00:52:41.000 |
in the United States. By safe, I'm not talking about physical safety, I just mean 00:52:45.000 |
it's a major legal risk. To get caught driving down the highway at 145 miles 00:52:49.000 |
an hour is a big deal. But if you go to Germany and you are 00:52:53.000 |
driving on the Autobahn, then you're engaging in that exact same activity 00:53:01.000 |
If you want to homeschool your children, well, if you live in Germany 00:53:05.000 |
or you live in Sweden, you can't. And it's a major, major 00:53:09.000 |
you can't do it. It's a major risk, but you can leave Germany 00:53:13.000 |
and go to another place. You can leave Sweden and move 00:53:17.000 |
to Finland, right? And be a next door neighbor, but you're moving under the jurisdiction 00:53:21.000 |
of another place. And so this is, this whole concept of 00:53:25.000 |
moving from one place to another is a really strong concept. 00:53:29.000 |
It really does have a lot of real life freedom associated with it. 00:53:33.000 |
But if you want the actual best level of freedom, where you 00:53:37.000 |
really want to be let alone, you want to go back to that model of being a tourist, 00:53:41.000 |
just passing through, as Hill wrote about. Because 00:53:45.000 |
most countries will treat tourists in their country far better 00:53:57.000 |
Now, it is possible that you might not be granted 00:54:05.000 |
that you get from being a citizen of a country is that that country 00:54:09.000 |
cannot refuse to let you in. If you're an American citizen, 00:54:13.000 |
you can show up at a border of the United States of America. You can show up without 00:54:17.000 |
a passport. You can show up without any identification. And in time, 00:54:21.000 |
you'll figure out a way to prove that you're a citizen. But if you can prove that you're a citizen, 00:54:29.000 |
basic right of citizenship, is the right to live in a certain place. 00:54:33.000 |
So if you're an American citizen and you want to travel to Germany, 00:54:37.000 |
the German government has no legal requirement to let you in. 00:54:41.000 |
But as a matter of practice, of course, generally, most 00:54:45.000 |
American citizens could easily get on a plane to Germany. And unless you are a wanted 00:54:49.000 |
felon, an international criminal of some kind, 00:54:53.000 |
or alleged to be an international criminal, you're generally going to be able to get into Germany. 00:54:57.000 |
And they'll give you a visa to come on in and spend your time in Germany and the rest 00:55:01.000 |
of the Schengen area without a problem. Well, as a tourist, you get 00:55:05.000 |
a lot of benefits that a lot of other people don't get. You get the 00:55:13.000 |
go largely wherever you want throughout the country. You'll get treated 00:55:17.000 |
well. Generally, people will be hospitable towards you. Government officials 00:55:21.000 |
are not going to get involved in your business. You can go and rent a house on 00:55:25.000 |
Airbnb. You can go and you can stay in a hotel. And the taxman's not going to 00:55:29.000 |
come looking for you. The truant officers at the local government school are not going to come and try 00:55:33.000 |
to pick up your kids. You're just largely ignored. You're largely left alone. 00:55:37.000 |
Tourists in some places are granted even extra privileges 00:55:41.000 |
where the police will look to sideways over some of the activities that are being 00:55:45.000 |
engaged in, depending on the culture. Sometimes tourists would be treated more harshly. 00:55:49.000 |
But in some places, tourists get benefits that the locals would never get. They get 00:55:53.000 |
treated with kid gloves versus a heavy iron fist in some places. 00:55:57.000 |
And so as a tourist, you can largely come and go as you like. 00:56:01.000 |
Sometimes even from a tax perspective. No government's going to charge a tourist 00:56:05.000 |
who is passing through. No government's going to charge that tourist 00:56:09.000 |
income taxes. But even better, when you buy something in a country that has 00:56:13.000 |
heavy VAT taxes, you can often apply to have those VAT taxes 00:56:17.000 |
refunded when you're leaving. And they'll even give you the sales taxes, the VAT taxes, back 00:56:21.000 |
when you leave their zone. So you can often save money. 00:56:29.000 |
with your ability to live as a tourist, it doesn't necessarily even mean that you have to stay in hotels all the time. 00:56:33.000 |
For example, there are many places in the world, not all, some country, 00:56:37.000 |
every country has different laws. Some laws you have to be a citizen to own property, or you 00:56:41.000 |
have to have a business deal with a local person. But there are 00:56:45.000 |
many places around the world where you can own a house, but you still just come and go 00:56:49.000 |
from that country on a tourist visa, and you're largely left alone. 00:56:53.000 |
Now, this opens up to you a tremendous level of personal freedom. 00:56:57.000 |
And is really a neat option if you want to have 00:57:01.000 |
minimal interface with government agents, because 00:57:05.000 |
you'll largely be left alone. It also opens up some interesting 00:57:13.000 |
Now, I didn't lead with tax, because this series is not 00:57:17.000 |
specifically related to tax. It led with freedom. And I was curious 00:57:21.000 |
about the levels of freedom. But as I've traveled internationally, I've done this for the last year, 00:57:25.000 |
and I've become convinced that it is true. That 00:57:29.000 |
as a tourist, you can live more freely than most 00:57:33.000 |
people. You'll largely get ignored by the governments, 00:57:37.000 |
you won't generally, no one's going to come after you for breaking the laws, 00:57:41.000 |
and sometimes you'll get treated more lightly than a local resident 00:57:49.000 |
we're not talking about someone who's committing heinous crimes. 00:57:57.000 |
doing anything that's shady. We're just talking about 00:58:01.000 |
honest, law-abiding, moral people, who are simply 00:58:05.000 |
living their life. And if you're in that situation, you can 00:58:09.000 |
really do well. And I use this, the most important one, 00:58:13.000 |
the best example I can come up with is something like homeschooling. 00:58:17.000 |
Now, I understand that's not a big deal for many people, but it is a big deal 00:58:21.000 |
legally, because as so many governments around the world have engaged in compulsory education 00:58:25.000 |
laws, it's been a major restriction of freedom. And I consider that to be the right to 00:58:29.000 |
educate your children and teach your children as you want to. I consider it to be one of the most 00:58:33.000 |
fundamental, inviolable human rights possible. But many governments around the world 00:58:37.000 |
don't agree with me. And so, let's pretend that you're from 00:58:41.000 |
one of those governments. You're from Germany. Well, you can leave Germany, 00:58:49.000 |
you went and you spent some time in Canada. If you didn't want to just move to 00:58:53.000 |
another place, you could go and you could spend three months in Canada in the summertime, 00:58:57.000 |
move down, spend three months in the United States, spend three months in Mexico, 00:59:01.000 |
fly back to Germany for three months, and in all that time, you could homeschool 00:59:05.000 |
your children as you see fit. Because you're basically removing yourself from 00:59:13.000 |
Now, that's not the lifestyle that most people will 00:59:17.000 |
go for. If you go back to, what are they, the Rameke family, 00:59:29.000 |
prosecuted them for homeschooling. And I think that they were granted political 00:59:33.000 |
asylum in the United States where they were able to homeschool peacefully in the United States. 00:59:37.000 |
And their case went all the way to the German Supreme Court where they lost. 00:59:41.000 |
But they were able to leave and go to another jurisdiction. 00:59:45.000 |
So that's just an example of moving. But that family is probably never going to go back to Germany. 00:59:49.000 |
At least not going to go back while they have minor children because their children would be stolen from them by the government again. 00:59:53.000 |
Whereas if they just go and travel as a tourist, they can still simply come and go 01:00:01.000 |
freedom associated with that. And that's an important thing for some people. 01:00:05.000 |
Not for most people. Most people wouldn't be willing to do the nomad lifestyle. But it is 01:00:21.000 |
you really truly can live a very lightly taxed life and lifestyle 01:00:25.000 |
if you're willing to do this. And you can do this in many places 01:00:29.000 |
from many different perspectives. There are different planning wrinkles 01:00:37.000 |
resident. What they call a US person. Versus if you're not a US 01:00:41.000 |
citizen or a US resident. So let me give you a good 01:00:45.000 |
example that I think would... a good example. 01:00:49.000 |
Let's pretend that you are that German. You're a German citizen. 01:00:53.000 |
German national living in Germany. But you decide that 01:00:57.000 |
number one you have a lot of money. You're going to make a lot of money. And you want a much more tax 01:01:05.000 |
tax efficient lifestyle. And you want a really good 01:01:09.000 |
sorry I'm stumbling over my words. You want a free and a 01:01:13.000 |
low tax lifestyle. Well you could do something very simple. Such as 01:01:17.000 |
purchasing a citizenship from St. Kitts and Nevis. 01:01:21.000 |
So you go. You apply to purchase citizenship for St. 01:01:25.000 |
Kitts and Nevis. St. Kitts and Nevis has the benefit of selling a passport. 01:01:29.000 |
I think it's something like $100,000. Usually most of the Caribbean countries are around 01:01:33.000 |
$100,000. So they'll sell you a passport. Sell you a citizenship for St. Kitts and Nevis. 01:01:37.000 |
That gives you the ability to legally move to St. Kitts and Nevis. Which is a 01:01:41.000 |
beautiful tropical island. St. Kitts and Nevis also has the benefit of being 01:01:45.000 |
an income tax free place. So you can live in St. 01:01:49.000 |
Kitts and Nevis and pay no income taxes on your business. Hopefully you have 01:01:53.000 |
a business that is digital or that you can manage from afar. But because 01:01:57.000 |
it's a lot harder to manage a factory if you got to be there every day. You can't do this kind of planning in that situation. 01:02:01.000 |
But you have that option. So you buy a passport from St. Kitts and Nevis. 01:02:05.000 |
A citizenship. You move to St. Kitts and Nevis. You want a place to hold 01:02:09.000 |
your money. So that by the way, that was step flag one of the five flag 01:02:13.000 |
theory. You have a passport or citizenship in a country that does not tax non-resident 01:02:17.000 |
income or control your actions. Let me talk for a moment about controlling 01:02:21.000 |
your actions. There are two basic levels of control that a government can 01:02:29.000 |
The other is what the government can actually enforce. And so the 01:02:33.000 |
law is one thing you want to read the law and as to my knowledge St. Kitts and Nevis 01:02:37.000 |
doesn't have any onerous laws where they try to control your actions, you know, excessively. 01:02:45.000 |
St. Kitts and Nevis is a tiny little island nation that does not have 01:02:49.000 |
a global reach. So there's a very big difference versus 01:02:53.000 |
being a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis versus being a citizen of say 01:02:57.000 |
these United States. The United States has a global 01:03:01.000 |
reach as a global superpower. They basically control the 01:03:05.000 |
entire world and force everyone to March to the beat of the drum. And if not, 01:03:09.000 |
they impose sanctions on everybody. And so if you are a US citizen, 01:03:13.000 |
you do have the ability of that country to largely follow you all around the world 01:03:17.000 |
and control your actions. They'll prosecute you for a law that you've broken the 01:03:21.000 |
prosecute for noncompliance with all the banking disclosure laws, whatever you want. But 01:03:29.000 |
then first there's the law and then there's also the effective control of that law. 01:03:33.000 |
And then the other thing is with laws, just because the laws on the books doesn't mean 01:03:37.000 |
that if you change your circumstances that you are somehow violating that law. 01:03:41.000 |
So example that I'm reason I use Germany would be something like homeschooling, 01:03:45.000 |
which is important to me may not be important to you. Again, you choose what's important to you. It's important to me. However, 01:03:49.000 |
if I were a German citizen who had money and or who had a business 01:03:53.000 |
I could move to St. Kitts and Nevis and though the law in Germany doesn't 01:03:57.000 |
allow me to homeschool in Germany. I don't see how that law could 01:04:01.000 |
possibly be applied just because I happen to be a German citizen nonresident in 01:04:05.000 |
Germany. Now their jurisdiction over me fails because they have no jurisdiction 01:04:09.000 |
over my personal body. So I've moved to St. Kitts and Nevis. I set up a 01:04:13.000 |
life on St. Kitts and Nevis. That was flag one passport or citizenship in a country 01:04:17.000 |
that does not tax nonresident income or control your actions. 01:04:21.000 |
I guess also sorry that was resident to flag to which is legal residents 01:04:25.000 |
in a tax Haven. You have a legal residence in a tax Haven. It's not a very well-known tax Haven, but is a tax 01:04:29.000 |
Haven legal residence in a tax Haven passport or citizenship in a 01:04:33.000 |
country that does not tax nonresident income or control your actions was number one. You're from Germany, 01:04:37.000 |
but also you have a St. Kitts citizenship. Now number three, you have a business 01:04:41.000 |
base and a salary earning in a tax Haven. So in a situation like this, let's 01:04:45.000 |
say that you run an online company and import export company and online company 01:04:49.000 |
and Amazon business or writing business a podcast something like that. Well, you 01:04:53.000 |
could set up your business in a place like Panama, right? 01:04:57.000 |
Panama is a tech tax Haven. You can set up a Panama 01:05:01.000 |
IBC. There's many options around the world. You can do this in many places, but you could set 01:05:05.000 |
it up in Panama and have a perfectly good place for you to set up your business banking set 01:05:09.000 |
up your business operations and fairly close enough to St. Kitts and Nevis for 01:05:13.000 |
you to get back and forth to Panama. Then number four is you need an offshore 01:05:17.000 |
bank account in a country with stable banking. Well in this situation for this 01:05:21.000 |
scenario, one of your best solutions would be the United States. The United 01:05:25.000 |
States is one of the world's biggest tax Havens in the world and one 01:05:29.000 |
of the world's biggest banking tax Havens. Most people especially those who live in 01:05:33.000 |
the United States don't know about that. Don't think about that. But this is an example 01:05:41.000 |
borders far better than it treats residents in its borders. 01:05:53.000 |
laws and regulations that make it easy to start a business form a company 01:06:05.000 |
huge level of privacy. For example, the United States is one 01:06:09.000 |
of the most important countries in the world that does not 01:06:13.000 |
participate in the what's the not fat cut the 01:06:21.000 |
CRS the CRS reporting standards that most countries in the world 01:06:25.000 |
participate in the United States doesn't participate. The United States has a completely separate system called 01:06:29.000 |
fat cut foreign account tax compliance Act that tells any business any bank 01:06:33.000 |
anywhere in the world is going to do business with US citizens that they have to report to the United States government 01:06:37.000 |
all of the actions of those banks are of those 01:06:41.000 |
citizens, but the United States doesn't doesn't participate 01:06:45.000 |
in CRS, which is the world's version of fat cut, but basically 01:06:49.000 |
all the rest of the world economy is getting together and trying to impose similar banking 01:06:53.000 |
bank information sharing laws. So the United States has from offers 01:06:57.000 |
foreigners tremendous privacy tremendous tax reduction 01:07:01.000 |
and really advanced asset protection laws. And so 01:07:05.000 |
you can set up in a couple different ways. You can set up 01:07:09.000 |
a banking account bank accounts investment accounts 01:07:13.000 |
Etc in the United States. Now you can also run your business through the United States. You can set 01:07:17.000 |
up a US LLC. You can do all of your business in the United States and you 01:07:21.000 |
can structure that in a way as long as you don't have physical presence in the United States with your business operations. 01:07:25.000 |
You can structure that in such a way that you pay no US 01:07:29.000 |
income taxes on your business income and then on your banking 01:07:33.000 |
and investments you pay no no taxes on those. And so as long as you're 01:07:37.000 |
not a resident of the United States, you're in good shape. But if you become a resident 01:07:41.000 |
United States now all of a sudden all those benefits the United States go out the door. 01:07:45.000 |
So that would be an example of using a country 01:07:49.000 |
a very an excellent country for financial management to help you 01:07:53.000 |
set things up for your for your business. And so 01:07:57.000 |
that would be your fourth flag and then number five. Let's is of Hills 01:08:01.000 |
five flags. You have a playground where you spend your money preferably with no sales tax or VAT 01:08:05.000 |
maybe you you know, you like spending time in 01:08:09.000 |
St. Kitts and Nevis and it gives you a stable home base, but it's a little Island you get a little bit of 01:08:13.000 |
Island fever. And so you want to go and spend time elsewhere where you can go and spend 01:08:17.000 |
time anywhere else in the world that will let you in here. It's a major 01:08:21.000 |
benefit to have a strong passport. It's really tough to be a PT 01:08:25.000 |
if you only have one passport and if it's from say 01:08:29.000 |
Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen, these are really 01:08:33.000 |
difficult places because you got to have visas for the whole world and you're viewed very suspiciously. 01:08:37.000 |
But if you've got a German passport, you have one of the world's greatest passports and you pretty 01:08:41.000 |
much come and go as you please with with very modest visa requirements. 01:08:45.000 |
So perhaps you want to go to Canada and you really like Canada 01:08:49.000 |
and so you go and you spend depending on whether you want to spend summers or winters you go and you 01:08:53.000 |
spend your summers and your winter or your winters in Canada and you put together a little tour 01:08:57.000 |
where you go and you spend several months in Canada. Then you go and you spend 01:09:01.000 |
winters in Mexico and then you go back to the island you spend time on the island 01:09:05.000 |
and the reason for this moving the reason for kind of the moving around as a 01:09:09.000 |
tourist is that you experience high levels of 01:09:13.000 |
personal freedom, but you're spending partial amounts of time in countries where you are not 01:09:17.000 |
a you're not a resident and this is important for 01:09:21.000 |
taxation. Now you can do this with residencies and here's where it does get a little complex because 01:09:25.000 |
you got to deal with the laws of every of every place. You can do this with residencies. You can do it with houses. 01:09:29.000 |
You could have a house in St. Kitts and Nevis if you wanted to or you could 01:09:33.000 |
just have a St. Kitts and Nevis passport and have a house in Bogota 01:09:37.000 |
have a house in wherever you want. You could do this all around the world in different 01:09:41.000 |
regions of the world, but you can set your life up in such a way that 01:09:45.000 |
you have a stable life. You have legal protections and you can 01:09:49.000 |
basically eliminate your income taxes on your 01:09:53.000 |
life and on your business by becoming a non-resident of your high tax place 01:09:57.000 |
and becoming a tax resident somewhere else. Now you can do this with a lot of paperwork 01:10:01.000 |
or you can do this with minimal paperwork and the requirements of paperwork depend upon 01:10:05.000 |
your specific place. It's easier to become a non-resident 01:10:09.000 |
of certain places, non-tax resident of certain places than others. Some 01:10:13.000 |
citizenships continually want you to be able to demonstrate your tax resident status of 01:10:17.000 |
another place and so sometimes you have to go through and officially set up a tax 01:10:21.000 |
resident status. Sometimes you don't. One of the simplest things 01:10:25.000 |
in this regard is for US citizens. Now US citizens 01:10:29.000 |
have the distinct disadvantage of never being free from 01:10:33.000 |
the US tax authorities because US citizens are taxed 01:10:37.000 |
based upon citizenship, not based upon residency. You have 01:10:41.000 |
to pay taxes on your worldwide income no matter where in the world you live, but 01:10:45.000 |
because that exists, you actually, if your income is lower 01:10:53.000 |
strategy with more freedom than somebody say from Germany or 01:10:57.000 |
from Canada because the German or the Canadian has to 01:11:01.000 |
genuinely set up a residence in a tax haven and 01:11:05.000 |
then they have to provide, basically end all of their 01:11:13.000 |
So let's say the German were there. One of the things you want to do is you want to 01:11:17.000 |
close any German bank accounts. You want to close German credit cards. You don't 01:11:21.000 |
want to have connections to the country. The only connection you want to have to that country is a passport and 01:11:25.000 |
a citizenship. That allows you to come back if you ever want to, but you don't want to give 01:11:29.000 |
the government any ammunition for saying, "No, look, you really 01:11:33.000 |
are a resident even though you're not here most of the time." This goes back to, remember 01:11:37.000 |
why I spent time talking about how to end your residency in California and move to another state. 01:11:41.000 |
Same thing applies on an international basis. Now the benefit for US Americans 01:11:45.000 |
is that US Americans can keep everything in the United States. You can 01:11:49.000 |
keep your bank accounts in the United States. You can keep your businesses in the United States. You can keep 01:11:53.000 |
everything in the United States, but if you'll physically move your presence outside of the 01:11:57.000 |
United States, then you can take advantage of the 01:12:01.000 |
laws that will help you from a tax perspective. Most importantly, the foreign 01:12:05.000 |
earned income exclusion, the foreign housing deduction, 01:12:13.000 |
two, of course, are based upon your being outside of the United States most of the time. 01:12:17.000 |
As long as you are following the strict days test for 01:12:21.000 |
qualifying for the foreign earned income exclusion, you have the ability 01:12:25.000 |
to do that whether you have a residency visa anywhere in the world or not. So a US 01:12:29.000 |
American can just simply keep everything in the United States, but leave 01:12:33.000 |
the country physically, spend several months in Thailand, spend 01:12:37.000 |
some time in Malaysia, spend some time in South America, etc., 01:12:41.000 |
and just move around as they want, and largely sever much 01:12:45.000 |
of the laws that apply to them and take advantage of the tax breaks 01:12:49.000 |
they do get. Now, that's not the ultimate solution, and if I could change 01:12:53.000 |
the United States from being a citizenship based taxation system to a residence 01:12:57.000 |
based taxation system, I would. I would certainly do that. 01:13:01.000 |
But I just want to point out that there are some benefits to the 01:13:05.000 |
US system that makes things a little bit cleaner for US Americans who want 01:13:09.000 |
to travel and go abroad than the challenges that residents of other 01:13:21.000 |
many, many ways to do it. Now, there are downsides to this system. 01:13:29.000 |
Many people just simply don't want to travel a lot. Well, if you don't want to travel 01:13:33.000 |
a lot, there are options. But the most important thing is to choose a place to live 01:13:37.000 |
that provides you with low taxes and high freedom. 01:13:41.000 |
It's hard to come up with those places, but they do exist. 01:13:45.000 |
So, the classic solution is if you were living in the United Kingdom 01:13:49.000 |
and you wanted to move to a tax haven, well, you can go and set up residence 01:13:57.000 |
Now, you've got to spend time there, you've got to be there, but you could do that. And you could eliminate 01:14:01.000 |
your taxes in England, or Jersey, or some other place that's 01:14:05.000 |
close to home. Of course, the UK is a great tax haven for people from 01:14:09.000 |
all around the world who move to the UK under their non-domiciled status. 01:14:13.000 |
So, the UK is a tremendous tax haven for people. So, you can, depending on where 01:14:17.000 |
you're coming from, where you're going, and what you're doing, and what paperwork you 01:14:21.000 |
have, and what you don't have, etc. There are ways to set this up all around the world. But 01:14:25.000 |
you can just genuinely move to a place and stay there. And that can be 01:14:29.000 |
a very tax efficient thing to do if you choose the right jurisdiction. 01:14:33.000 |
But here's where there will be a lot of benefits to a place with no income 01:14:37.000 |
taxes, of which there are some, and/or a place with territorial 01:14:41.000 |
taxes. So, today's classic option of no income tax 01:14:45.000 |
of a modern city would be Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. 01:14:49.000 |
If you move to Dubai, no income taxes. And so, if you want to live in Dubai, you can just 01:14:53.000 |
simply go from where you are, move to Dubai, and you won't have any income taxes. 01:14:57.000 |
You don't have to trot around the world, moving all the time. You can just simply 01:15:01.000 |
move there. But Dubai comes with the disadvantages of some 01:15:05.000 |
other laws that might affect you. And there aren't a lot of truly 01:15:09.000 |
no income tax places. And so, many people want to spend time in other 01:15:13.000 |
places. And so, the point is simply to say that you can do this with this 01:15:17.000 |
nomad strategy as well. Different countries have different laws of 01:15:21.000 |
what triggers tax residency. But it's usually based upon the amount of time 01:15:25.000 |
that you are there, and then your engagement with the 01:15:29.000 |
country. So, if you have your business in a place 01:15:33.000 |
that you don't spend any time, and if you have your assets in another place that you don't spend 01:15:37.000 |
any time, then you're providing a very thin financial profile 01:15:45.000 |
minimizing your exposure to the risks in that country. 01:15:49.000 |
But it's not perfect. And so, you've got to consider what strategy would 01:15:53.000 |
work for you and what strategy would not work for you. I guess I would 01:15:57.000 |
be remiss if I didn't also point out to you that there are tremendous 01:16:01.000 |
benefits from, or potential benefits from the perspective of 01:16:05.000 |
asset protection planning with this kind of lifestyle as well. 01:16:13.000 |
Asset protection plan is a little tricky because you've got to figure out what risk am I actually worried about, and then 01:16:17.000 |
what's my strategy to protect it. There are many strong strategies that you can implement 01:16:21.000 |
inside of the United States, as I've talked about. 01:16:25.000 |
And I think that sometimes asset protection planning is oversold. It's very expensive 01:16:29.000 |
and people just kind of got this exotic allure, and 01:16:33.000 |
it's got to be worth it. But at the end of the day, just like the old 01:16:37.000 |
pirates who stashed their gold on a forgotten desert island and then went 01:16:41.000 |
somewhere else, at the end of the day, if you can get back to your gold on that desert island 01:16:45.000 |
and make sure that nobody found it in the meantime, you protected your assets. 01:16:49.000 |
And the same thing is still possible in today's world. Because the only thing 01:16:53.000 |
that a government really respects is another government, 01:16:57.000 |
and by using the government, each of them, for what they're good at, you have 01:17:01.000 |
the ability to position things in a place where they're protected. And so this is why 01:17:05.000 |
they're a resident, their jurisdictions, that their point of competition is to protect 01:17:09.000 |
money. And they make their economy in some places based upon 01:17:21.000 |
a lot of other things that could be talked about. You could talk about this in terms of 01:17:25.000 |
intergenerational trust planning, etc. These topics 01:17:29.000 |
are complicated based upon your citizenship. I'm very familiar 01:17:37.000 |
laws are pretty onerous on some of these things. 01:17:41.000 |
But there are ways to get around it. So if you have a huge fortune, one of the things 01:17:45.000 |
that you can do, if you have the right family structure, and if you have 01:17:49.000 |
somebody in the family who's willing to become a non-American, is you can 01:17:57.000 |
tax haven where it'll be managed. And if you have someone 01:18:01.000 |
in the family who's willing to, either who originally 01:18:05.000 |
is not a US citizen, or who's willing to renounce their US citizenship, that person 01:18:09.000 |
could be the manager, the trustee of the family trust, and all the rest of the 01:18:13.000 |
Americans can be beneficiaries of that trust. And this is 01:18:17.000 |
as bulletproof as it gets, from an asset protection standpoint, and 01:18:21.000 |
from completely tax-free. You can have that trust sit 01:18:25.000 |
in that tax haven, and instead of the intense 01:18:29.000 |
trust taxation rates in the United States, it can have a trust taxation rate of zero. 01:18:33.000 |
You just simply have your legal fees for the management, the attorneys, etc., who are 01:18:37.000 |
involved, which with a large enough estate are relatively negligible. 01:18:41.000 |
So there are many ways to use these laws to structure things well. 01:18:45.000 |
Internationalization is not always the best solution. Sometimes it adds more 01:18:49.000 |
complication, and many people just say, "It's interesting, Joshua, from a theoretical perspective, 01:18:53.000 |
but I'm not interested," which totally makes sense. But from a theoretical 01:18:57.000 |
perspective, if you care about freedom, I don't know of 01:19:05.000 |
freedom than following the tenets of PT theory, of 01:19:09.000 |
flag theory. I've tested it, I've done it, I wasn't sure until I 01:19:13.000 |
had done it, but I really do think it provides you with a maximum level 01:19:21.000 |
with tremendous opportunities, and it can be tremendously fun as well 01:19:29.000 |
articulated it as clearly as I want to. I feel like I've struggled a little 01:19:33.000 |
bit to make it clear, so I hope that I've clearly communicated it. 01:19:41.000 |
one of the only ways that you can get that is to have a competing government, 01:19:45.000 |
and to use that competing government. I really 01:19:49.000 |
don't know of any other way to accomplish it. 01:19:53.000 |
At the risk of belaboring the point, let me just give 01:19:57.000 |
one more thing to you from that scenario that I explained of the German 01:20:05.000 |
living on St. Kitts, which is a tax haven, and then spending time around the world. Let's say that 01:20:09.000 |
that German citizen establishes an American credit card account, 01:20:13.000 |
and so they have an American Amex, and maybe they have one, 01:20:17.000 |
no foreign transaction fees, etc., and that's just what they use 01:20:25.000 |
as a US citizen, have that same American Express card, 01:20:29.000 |
and I live in the United States, etc., I basically have no financial privacy 01:20:33.000 |
for that. Yeah, there are some financial privacy laws that protect me from 01:20:37.000 |
other people, but I have no privacy from a government perspective. 01:20:41.000 |
Warrant, whatever, comes into play. All those transactions 01:20:45.000 |
can be investigated. Now, as long as I, most people 01:20:49.000 |
it's not a big deal. Obviously, I'm a law-abiding citizen. I started with that. 01:20:53.000 |
I have no reason to come onto the radar of the government authorities, and so it should be 01:20:57.000 |
fairly simple for me to maintain my privacy, and it's not that big of a deal. 01:21:01.000 |
But for the German, it might be more interesting, because 01:21:05.000 |
since he doesn't live in the United States, he doesn't really have any connection with 01:21:09.000 |
US laws or law enforcement officers, and so, for what 01:21:13.000 |
reason, he's following all the laws, doesn't have to file any tax returns, doesn't 01:21:17.000 |
have to interact with US people really at all, and so what reason 01:21:21.000 |
would there be for a financial, for an officer of the government 01:21:25.000 |
to be investigating his affairs in the United States? Really, almost no reason. 01:21:29.000 |
But now, let's say that that same German is spending time in Brazil, 01:21:33.000 |
and for some reason, and he just simply pays with everything with his US 01:21:37.000 |
credit card for all of his Brazilian transactions, but now the Brazilian government 01:21:41.000 |
takes an interest in him and wants to investigate him for some reason. We don't know why. 01:21:45.000 |
Well, in order for them to do that, they would have to contact the United States of America 01:21:49.000 |
and get the US government's participation in investigating that man's 01:21:53.000 |
accounts, because everything's just through the US-based American Express, 01:21:57.000 |
which, certainly, if he's an international fugitive or an international 01:22:01.000 |
criminal, would happen, which is why I don't be a criminal. But 01:22:05.000 |
just for the day-to-day stuff that you might come across 01:22:09.000 |
some corrupt government officer who's trying to look into your affairs, 01:22:13.000 |
it brings in a level of privacy, a privacy shield that is really significant. 01:22:17.000 |
And so, when you have governments that have different jurisdictions, 01:22:21.000 |
and you choose a place like the United States for his asset 01:22:25.000 |
haven, because it's got good privacy laws and a stable economy 01:22:29.000 |
and a stable banking system, etc., he has much more personal 01:22:33.000 |
privacy in his affairs. And now, let's say that 01:22:37.000 |
he gets sued by somebody in Brazil, well, how is that 01:22:41.000 |
lawyer going to be able to smoke out all of his assets when they're hidden 01:22:45.000 |
through his systems in the United States and around the world? 01:22:49.000 |
It's just not possible, in the same way it is if everything were in Brazil. 01:22:57.000 |
I'm not belaboring it too much, that when you look at it and you recognize 01:23:01.000 |
that governments don't respect individuals, but they do respect other governments, 01:23:05.000 |
then the way for you to attain freedom is not to become a freedom fighter against the government. 01:23:09.000 |
That's a good way to get locked up or shot. But the way is just simply go to 01:23:13.000 |
another jurisdiction and use that other government jurisdiction for what works for you. 01:23:17.000 |
And now, for that government to gain access to something 01:23:21.000 |
that the other government has, they have to talk government to government. 01:23:25.000 |
And while that does happen, you've got to have done something 01:23:37.000 |
requires you to have committed a pretty serious crime, which is not the area that you're 01:23:41.000 |
involved in. I guess if you are involved in that, then you want to make sure that you're doing businesses 01:23:45.000 |
with governments that hate each other, that aren't going to cooperate with one another. 01:23:49.000 |
It's one thing if you say, "I'm going to go and do something with Canada, 01:23:53.000 |
but I'm a US citizen." Well, of course, Canada and the United States have a very tight relationship. 01:23:57.000 |
But you can go to Russia, and the United States and Russia don't have nearly as 01:24:01.000 |
tight of a relationship, or the United States and China. And so depending on what you need, 01:24:05.000 |
maybe that's where you choose to plant your flags. 01:24:09.000 |
These ideas are not perfect. I wish the perfect utopia country existed, 01:24:13.000 |
where you could just move there and everything would be great. I wish it existed. I haven't found it. 01:24:17.000 |
Just like I wish the perfect state existed. Well, I haven't found it. It's all a trade-off. 01:24:21.000 |
And so you pick and choose based upon what's best for you. And I think the majority 01:24:25.000 |
of people are not so dissatisfied with where they live, where they need to integrate any of these 01:24:33.000 |
I like the freedom that I have with it. I enjoy it. Is it necessary? 01:24:37.000 |
No. I could move back to Florida and I think be 01:24:41.000 |
perfectly fine. I really could. I'm not doing anything that is illegal in 01:24:45.000 |
Florida. I'm not engaging in anything. I'm a pretty boring 01:24:49.000 |
guy. I like the ideas, but I don't do anything where any of this stuff really matters. 01:24:53.000 |
So I could probably move back to Florida and do perfectly 01:24:57.000 |
fine. And you probably aren't going to move. But at least if you're aware of it, it is nice 01:25:01.000 |
to know about the things that are possible. And if you are an intensely freedom-oriented 01:25:09.000 |
than this. There are other solutions for freedom, 01:25:13.000 |
and this is not perfect. You could take this idea and you could take it up a notch. For example, 01:25:17.000 |
living on a sailboat. If you live on an ocean-going, blue-water sailboat, 01:25:21.000 |
you have a huge degree of freedom. You've kind of put together this traveling thing with 01:25:25.000 |
international mobility and you can move around the world. But 01:25:29.000 |
every one of these things comes with drawbacks. Just like the Nomad Strategy comes with the drawback 01:25:33.000 |
of not making it as easy to be part of a local community, 01:25:37.000 |
so does the sailing thing. You can be part of the sailing community, but you don't have quite as much 01:25:41.000 |
of a local community as you do if you have houses in a certain 01:25:45.000 |
place. You certainly have far less interaction with the government. You can pick up anchor and go 01:25:49.000 |
anytime you want, but it's not perfect. There isn't anything 01:25:53.000 |
perfect. You could have more freedom if you engaged 01:25:57.000 |
in a self-sufficient lifestyle, lived on a farm. But that's not perfect 01:26:01.000 |
either. Everything has drawbacks. So, what I would 01:26:09.000 |
you need. Think about some of the strategies that I've talked about. If you want to vote, vote. 01:26:13.000 |
If you want to organize for change, do that. Consider moving to a place that has 01:26:17.000 |
more freedom and has more of the freedom that you want. Consider 01:26:21.000 |
moving and just spending time in places that offer the things that you want without 01:26:25.000 |
necessarily moving there. Consider doing that both nationally 01:26:33.000 |
mean to sound like I'm backing off from the power of these ideas. 01:26:41.000 |
back off from them, but I do want to be practical and recognize that most 01:26:45.000 |
people seem to be pretty well situated where they live and they're 01:26:49.000 |
just not interested in pursuing these things. But, if you want to have freedom 01:26:53.000 |
from government control, this is one of the best ways to 01:26:57.000 |
do it. So, what I would recommend to you is at the very least 01:27:01.000 |
you consider the ideas, research them, and at the very least have a plan B. 01:27:09.000 |
more powerful concepts for most people. The idea being you're going to live where you 01:27:17.000 |
keep a fairly normal life. But, if something really bad 01:27:25.000 |
There's an apocryphal story told about a Chinese 01:27:37.000 |
junk," right, the Chinese boat, "keep a fast boat in the harbor 01:27:49.000 |
version of it is always keep a way to escape, always keep a second set of 01:27:53.000 |
identity papers ready to go, and always keep some money so that you can restart 01:28:01.000 |
Much of my audience is from the United States, from Canada, and 01:28:05.000 |
U.S. Americans don't usually think much about this stuff 01:28:09.000 |
because U.S. Americans are generally trained to think that the United States, you know, 01:28:13.000 |
land of the free, home of the brave, and the last bastion of freedom. If 01:28:17.000 |
freedom dies here, then it's not to be found on Earth. Well, 01:28:21.000 |
I don't buy any of that stuff anymore, but it takes time to come to 01:28:29.000 |
are waking up and saying, "Well, maybe it was true, but it seems 01:28:37.000 |
Many U.S. Americans are coming to the realization that other people around the world have had 01:28:41.000 |
for a long time. I've talked to lots of people from other places, and they know their governments can 01:28:45.000 |
collapse. They know that all of a sudden a war can break out, and then somebody tries to 01:28:53.000 |
their money can become worthless, and they take steps to plan 01:28:57.000 |
accordingly. An international lifestyle, dual citizenship, keeping 01:29:01.000 |
money offshore, is much more common in many other cultures 01:29:05.000 |
than it is in the U.S. American culture. In the U.S. American culture, some people 01:29:09.000 |
think you're a traitor if you think that there's some other options in the world 01:29:13.000 |
that work for you other than doing everything in the United States. 01:29:17.000 |
I don't buy that. I think that having a plan B really is powerful. 01:29:21.000 |
I think you should have a fast junk waiting for you in the harbor, 01:29:25.000 |
whether that's an actual boat, whether it's a credit card, 01:29:29.000 |
a plane ticket, whether it's a way to get offshore. 01:29:33.000 |
Who knows? I think you should have a second set of papers, another passport 01:29:37.000 |
for another country. One of the most egregious things that the United States has done now 01:29:41.000 |
is a couple years ago they passed a new law where the United States government 01:29:45.000 |
if they allege that you owe them more than $50,000 in unpaid taxes, 01:29:49.000 |
they will contact the State Department and cancel your passport. 01:30:09.000 |
I think that's crazy. But that's the law of the land now. 01:30:13.000 |
It's not that hard for many people who were involved 01:30:17.000 |
in significant business operations to get into a $50,000 dispute with the IRS. 01:30:21.000 |
Even if you're doing everything right. I had a client of mine who had his passport 01:30:25.000 |
canceled. And the guy had done everything right. But 01:30:29.000 |
for the United States to say that you can't travel 01:30:33.000 |
because we think you owe us more than $50,000 and we think you might 01:30:37.000 |
skip away to some foreign land. I mean it's the utter antithesis of 01:30:41.000 |
"land of the free". It's obnoxious. Even worse with child 01:30:45.000 |
support. If you owe more than $2,500 in arrears on child 01:30:49.000 |
support, they'll cancel your passport. And on the one hand, you 01:30:53.000 |
can certainly understand why those laws exist and why 01:30:57.000 |
they get political favor. You want parents to pay for their 01:31:05.000 |
as they're owed. I believe you should follow the law and pay your debts. 01:31:09.000 |
That's the morally right thing to do. But to say that you're going to 01:31:13.000 |
cancel my travel privileges, so-called "privileges", 01:31:17.000 |
is insane. The entire modern system is crazy. 01:31:21.000 |
I don't even like the passport system. It's a very modern 01:31:25.000 |
system. It was an invention of the socialists to say that we should have 01:31:29.000 |
passports and identity papers and have these national borders. Well now it's been 01:31:33.000 |
co-opted by the Republicans. We're going to build a wall. It's crazy. 01:31:41.000 |
And so it does no good, in my opinion, to pine for the world 01:31:45.000 |
that once was when you didn't need a stack of identity papers. As I see it, you've got to 01:31:49.000 |
just deal with the world that is and figure out the best way through it 01:31:53.000 |
and find the best places. And so having a Plan B is, in my 01:31:57.000 |
consideration, an incredibly valuable part of your planning. 01:32:01.000 |
So that's my concept for you as I go. I'll tell you that 01:32:05.000 |
I have an entire course called "How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis" 01:32:09.000 |
and I cover a lot of this stuff in that course. If you are interested in 01:32:13.000 |
having a Plan B with a special focus on an economic crisis, 01:32:17.000 |
I would really commend my course to you. I have had nothing but good feedback on it. 01:32:21.000 |
I've had one return on that course. It's one of my most popular 01:32:25.000 |
courses. I've had nothing but good feedback on it. I've had tons of people who 01:32:29.000 |
have said, just told me about the action that they took because of it. 01:32:33.000 |
I've had tons of stories. People who've gone through it have talked to me about how 01:32:37.000 |
this happened with my parents in Venezuela and this happened with 01:32:41.000 |
my ancestors here and this other thing that happened there. But basically 01:32:45.000 |
having the ability to get out of the place that there's a crisis genuinely could 01:32:49.000 |
save your life. I think of things like war and forced 01:32:53.000 |
conscription, aka a draft, military drafts and things like that. 01:33:01.000 |
is one of the most important things that you could do. So think carefully about it 01:33:05.000 |
and make sure that you have a Plan B. What I teach in that course is a very simple Plan B. 01:33:13.000 |
all of the, you know, have a bunch of papers and second passports, etc. 01:33:17.000 |
I teach one of the simplest versions of a Plan B, which is simply to have a handful 01:33:21.000 |
of credit cards with high credit limits that you can use to buy a plane ticket and a passport. 01:33:25.000 |
And if you can show up at the airport with a passport and a handful of plane tickets, you can set your life up 01:33:33.000 |
Now, it helps a lot more if you have some money offshore. I go through how to do that. 01:33:37.000 |
There's a lot more to it, but really that's powerful. 01:33:41.000 |
One of the things that I changed my mind on about actually 01:33:45.000 |
testing this stuff for myself is I used to think that you needed 01:33:49.000 |
to have a bunch of papers, you needed to have residence permits, you needed 01:33:53.000 |
to have all kinds of stuff established. I've come to believe that it's not 01:33:57.000 |
strictly necessary. And I've actually had people that I've recommended, "No, don't bother." 01:34:01.000 |
Because genuinely as a tourist in today's world, if you have a cell phone 01:34:05.000 |
that'll work, you can show up in another country, you can catch an Uber from the airport, 01:34:09.000 |
you can rent an apartment on Airbnb, everything can go to your credit cards. You've got a great system 01:34:13.000 |
that will generally work in the vast majority of situations. 01:34:17.000 |
It's far easier to be a permanent tourist now than it was 20 years ago 01:34:21.000 |
with the increasing interconnectedness of the world. But you still do need a plan. 01:34:25.000 |
So I'd encourage you, if this is thought-provoking to you, go by 01:34:29.000 |
RadicalPersonalFinance.com/store and take my "How to Survive and Thrive 01:34:33.000 |
During the Coming Economic Crisis" class. It's the best bet of a really good 01:34:37.000 |
foundation to set up a plan B. "How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis" 01:34:41.000 |
at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/store. In addition, if you're interested 01:34:45.000 |
in consulting with me, I'm probably not the world's best expert on this, 01:34:49.000 |
but I've got a pretty darn good level of expertise at this point. 01:34:53.000 |
I'm kind of an obsessive researcher, and so I can at least 01:34:57.000 |
point you in the right direction, and I'm not nearly as expensive as some of the fancy lawyers 01:35:01.000 |
in this space as well. So if you're interested in personal consultations on any of the stuff 01:35:05.000 |
that I've talked about here, how to eliminate your taxes legally, 01:35:09.000 |
how to set any of this stuff up, even among different states, I've done a lot of consulting 01:35:13.000 |
on some of these areas as well. So email me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, 01:35:17.000 |
and I'll get you details on how to set up a consulting business with me. 01:35:21.000 |
joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, and I'll be back with you very soon