Given the fiscal crises many states — federal as well as provincial — are facing, it is only a matter of time before more politicians turn their pecuniary focus on private savings (since there is no such thing as public savings these days). The Eurozone finance minister Jerome Dijsselbloem said that the Cyprus deal will serve as a template or model for future bank restructurings. Argentina and Hungary have already moved to nationalize private pensions, and there have been rumblings about a mixing of private and public pension funds in the United States.

Consider the following tale.

You are on a romantic cruise in the Caribbean with your wife of 40 years.  For the past year you had been saving up your money to be able to present her with a very special anniversary gift.

Half way through the Cruise, on the night of your anniversary, the cruise ship anchored off the Island of Martinique, at the dinner table, the time is right for you to hand her this exquisite gift.

Slightly nervous yourself, you reach into your pocket to present your wife with this perfect, up until now, secret gift, and you notice another couple, about the same age as you and your wife involved in a similar ritual but this gentleman is already handing the gift to his wife when...

For people considering moving assets offshore, the new withholding tax under FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) which was scheduled to go into effect January 1, 2013 was a major planning milestone. That deadline, however has now been pushed back to January 1, 2014 to give foreign banks more time to comply with their new disclosure responsibilities.

Another, perhaps even more insidious deadline, however, is the pending expiration of the Bush tax cut "extensions". The Bush tax cuts were initially scheduled to expire December 31, 2010. In the last few days before the end of 2010, the tax cuts were extended for two years.

Many Hemispheres readers are already heavily invested in gold and silver.  They are looking for diversification but would like to stay in hard assets and even more specifically, metals.    Fortunately, there is a new, valuable asset class that you can physically own in your own name, (trust or LLC) touch and see, take delivery of, or store off-shore in allocated, segregated fashion, reselling directly into the industrial market when you liquidate or when the stockpile is sold in its entirety at full mature value.

These are the rare and strategic metals that are now used in 80% of all products today.

“The secret ingredient of almost everything!”

The upcoming elections in the United States will cost you dearly.  No matter who wins, tax increases are certain.  By allowing the “Bush era” tax cuts to expire each party will blame the other for inaction.   But your taxes will go up.

If you have assets of as little as $1,000,000 these changes will have a huge impact, possibly increasing your taxes by as mush as 50%.   You stand to lose as much as half your net worth.   Do you really want to let the Uncle Sam take half of everything you’ve worked so hard to earn and save?

One of the most important reasons that people decide to protect assets abroad is to find strong jurisdictions that resist or eliminate many of the traditional threats against wealth. Yet compliance with US laws and regulations has never been more important than today. That begs the question: is it possible to do both? The simple answer is "yes".
 
 Regulatory compliance for foreign based structures and assets held abroad has increased over the past years. Just some of the forms that need to be filed include:
 
 A) The Report for holding a foreign bank account with more than $10,000 commonly referred to as the FBAR. This is an annual form required to be
 filed with the US Treasury.
 

Frequently at seminars and in consultations with clients, people will ask me why they should consider international asset protection and estate planning. Won’t it cost a lot? Won’t I become the subject of IRS scrutiny? Can’t I accomplish all the same things with domestic planning? This is some of the common refrain.

To me, international planning is all about addressing jurisdictional systemic risk.  What do I mean by that?  Well, most people would agree that we live in a country where litigation has become the national pastime.  If someone is not happy with someone else, whether a customer, business partner, patient or spouse, they turn to litigation as the answer.

Many investors continue to look for investment opportunities throughout the worldwide marketplace.

So often a client walks through my door to discuss trusts, corporations, family limited partnerships and/or other structures designed to protect their wealth. Structures are very important, but structures alone cannot do the job in a one-size-fits-all approach to asset protection. While an international trust may be just what the doctor ordered for protecting a surgeon's life savings, the same structure will do very little to help a commercial real estate developer operating in litigious North America.

The structure is only part of the equation, while the investment class is the other part. You need to put both parts of the puzzle together in a coherent fashion to truly protect and grow your wealth.

In the waning days of 2010 President Obama and the United States Congress agreed to a variety of compromise tax measures designed to “extend” the Bush Era tax cuts.  Tax rates were largely maintained at the current levels through December 31, 2012 at which time they are once again set to revert to their old (higher) levels.