Posted on 08/09/2023 6:04:46 PM PDT by The_Media_never_lie
What is a Shell Corporation? A shell corporation is a business that is formed that has no actual business operations. They are mostly created for money laundering or sometimes for parking early startup funds. They do not employ anyone or provide any services.
Shell corporations are created in tax havens to avoid paying taxes and to hide the identity of the owner. If an individual is involved in an illegal activity, a shell corporation can be a platform to hide money. A shell corporation can be opened by opening a bank account and buying real estate in a tax haven.
(Excerpt) Read more at corporatefinanceinstitute.com ...
At first I thought they were talking about Shell Oil companies.
Shell corporations are so 2010. Bitcoin for bribes nowadays. Untraceable.
Regular people have reasons for using them, along with trusts, to also have a more private life.
Thank you for posting it.
I had an idea what a Shell Corporation is, but it was good to see it spelled out.
Timely, too.
You are welcome.
I never knew exactly why someone might legitimately open a shell corporation. Most Americans also do not know about them.
Well first of all it’s not a proper noun and isn’t capitalized lest it be confused with the Dutch oil and gas corporation of the same name.
Used to be like Esso?
Contrary to popular belief, Bitcoin transactions can be traced via the metadata available it the public ledger.
No. Bitcoin keeps a record of every transaction. It's called a Blockchain and is essential to the way it works. People have been successfully prosecuted using this information.
Look into Nevada corporations. My accountant told me about Nevada corporations 20 something years ago.
Shell oil Corporation is the only oil company one that sells 94 octane on the street.
>Regular people have reasons for using them, along with trusts, to also have a more private life.<
It is the best way to buy property in Honduras. It costs about $1500 to set up but allows you, as a gringo, to own more than one property.
Other advantages are the ease of selling the property later and probate. It’s a very simple legal procedure to transfer the shares...much easier than transferring the deed.
EC
Bitcoin is very traceable. The IRS is very good at tracking that stuff.
I bought and sold a bunch of Bitcoin between 2013 and 2017. I was audited. The IRS ended up accounting for every single transaction, where and when it happened, and where it came from and where it went.
The transactions you have with stock brokers are standardized and reporting is usually automated. Not so with Bitcoin and other “alt coins.”
I would joke with the auditor about how much fun it was going to be to audit all of these college kids who made $100k in “Dogecoin.”
The whole audit took almost 4 years…but they were thorough and complete. Anyone thinking Bitcoin is anonymous or untraceable is very mistaken. Bribes and criminal activities are best kept to wrinkled C notes.
[I bought and sold a bunch of Bitcoin between 2013 and 2017. I was audited. The IRS ended up accounting for every single transaction, where and when it happened, and where it came from and where it went.]
Wow. But I must admit, I’m not surprised.
What you said later, yeah, all those twenty-somethings that are out there buying Ferraris and Lamborghinis with Bitcoin money - I expect they’ll be selling them because they’ll get some sort of a giant tax bill after dropping $80,000 on a car.
Back when I made the most money I ever made I had fun paying off a $26,000 note on my Ford Explorer. 0.9% - ah those were the days. I made decent money for my area. But those days are long gone, sadly. The 2008 crash really came at a bad time for me. Here I was trying to look for a new job and had just gotten worthless experience (for the most part) at my previous employer.
The worst programming language ever, though I did learn a bit more about HTML and XML (IIRC).
If I had just been current on my old AS/400 and IBM mainframe skills, well, a lot of things would have been much different.
[Anyone thinking Bitcoin is anonymous or untraceable is very mistaken.]
I always thought so, too. I would kinda laugh at that notion, sarcastically, every time I saw that claim online. If it’s electronic and financial, it’s being tracked. At least that’s my basic assumption.
And yet the games I played on my (now crashed, won’t boot) cellphone were ALWAYS running ads for Bitcoin. Plus many obvious foreigners wanting to deposit money into your bank account - for just playing a game, of course.
WHAT could possibly go wrong with giving them your bank’s routing number and bank account number??
The absolute scary thing about the college kids and their windfalls is that most of them are under their parent’s returns. If that went unreported...that will impact the household.
In addition, some kid making $30k on their own should report that on their FAFSA. There goes your financial aid!
Of course there are not millions of those kids—but I am sure there are a few thousand of them.
When my audit started, it was the first “crypto” audit my examiner did. Some of their understandings of how crypto worked were straight from some articles written by old fools who did not comprehend how this worked. They would ask a question or make an assumption...and I would laugh at their ineptness.
Fast forward a couple of years and they got pretty sharp. The IRS is a pain in the butt, but they don’t hire stupid people. They learned fast and knew what to ask and how to look at stuff.
In the end, after four nightmarish years, it cost me a couple thousand dollars (mostly interest.). Criminal stuff was never on the table because it was clear this was new territory for everyone. The good news is that I have an iron clad basis for my assets...and shouldn’t face that process again. (I stopped “trading” and just let it sit now. )
I didn’t make as much last year as the year before and surprisingly got a small refund (though most of what was withheld went to taxes).
I was surprised that a decent portion of my early SS wasn’t taxed. It’s a rather tricky formula to do on paper (not that difficult though) - fortunately I was able to rely on Turbo Tax and, as expected, they had it programmed in.
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