ARTICLES
WHAT IS AEOI AND HOW TO AVOID IT?
10 May, 2019
AEOI is an international standard developed by the OECD and G20 which let the participating countries’ citizens’ bank account data to be exchanged automatically to the countries’ tax authorities. “Automatically” means that your financial data is shared with your home country’s tax authority without any data access authorization required, not on a case-by-case basis like in the past.
The above means that if your plan is to hide your assets and evade taxes, you’ll be doomed, sooner or later. Unfortunately, those who want to protect their assets legally also impacted by the data transparency procedure.
What if you just want access all the benefits — mainly asset protection — offered by offshore jurisdictions, legally, but don’t want to expose your assets to your home country’s government and competitors alike for one reason or another? Are there any ways to do it?
Fortunately, there are. And these are not so-called ‘loopholes’ or ‘hidden tactics’ — people with different asset sizes have done them, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, too.
1. Bank in Non-AEOI jurisdiction
AEOI requires jurisdictions to exchange information with each other automatically. What kind of information that’s exchanged? The Bank account holders’ information. This means that if you’re setting up an offshore bank account with a banking institution in a non-AEOI jurisdiction, then your data wouldn’t be exchanged.
2. Establish an offshore company
Concerning #1 above, you can also avoid AEOI by forming an offshore company in a non-AEOI jurisdiction, or in a jurisdiction that offers certain exceptions.
As setting up a company and banking in a non-AEOI jurisdiction like the Autonomous Island of Moheli, within the Union of Comoros.
CG bank in Moheli confirms that we will not share business trading account information with account holders’ local governments.
Of course, you can establish your company in any offshore jurisdictions you like, but if you want to avoid AEOI, then your company’s bank account must be located in non-AEOI jurisdiction.
3. Relocate to an offshore jurisdiction
Relocating to a jurisdiction with sounder financial system — and lower in taxes, of course — sounds good on paper, but in practice, it’s a challenging process.
There are immigration regulations to closely follow, not mentioning the need for you to understand local tax laws.
If you want to learn more about AEOI or any other issues related to offshore structures, contact us.