How To Protect Assets, Avoid Taxes And Get Lauded As A Philanthropist Like Mark Zuckerberg

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook posted a “Letter To Our Daughter” stating that he would give 99% of his Facebook shares to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative “to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation.”

The New York Times, perhaps the most economically ignorant tabloid in the world, headlined, “Mark Zuckerberg Vows to Donate 99% of His Facebook Shares for Charity.”

Countless people across the webisphere lauded Zuckerberg as a caring philanthropist who was just giving 99% of his wealth away.

In many ways what he did was philanthropic but not for the reasons that the great majority of people think.

Before we tell you why, here is what he did. He put 99% of his assets into a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) controlled by himself.

It’s a smart move on many levels. He protects his assets from legal attacks (which are rampant and out-of-control in the US). He also gains tax benefits in that any gains made by the LLC are treated differently from his personal gains. Depending on how it is structured (details aren’t clear) he may even be able to write-off any “donations” to the trust for a massive tax-break. And, he also deftly avoids the estate tax (aka. death tax – yes you even get taxed for dying in the US) for his daughter, which at 40% should mean a net-savings to his daughter of over $20 billion if she is the recipient of the LLC upon her parent’s passing.

This is why it is philanthropic. Philanthropy is defined as ” goodwill to fellow members of the human race; especially : active effort to promote human welfare.” And by shielding his assets he is helping to protect his assets. Those assets, or capital, can then be used to invest. Savings (capital) and investment are the only way to create a wealthier, and healthier society.

As well, by shielding tens-of-billions of dollars from tax (aka. extortion/theft) he is keeping a large amount of money out of the hands of the largest terrorist organization in the world today, the US government. This literally saves lives. The total cost of the Iraq occupation (based on the lies of WMDs that no one has been held responsible for to date), since 2003 is estimated at $2 trillion. The total amount of civilian men, women and children who have been killed since that time is estimated at around 150,000. That is a total cost of about $13.3 million per person killed in Iraq. By keeping $20 billion out of the hands of the US government and the Department of Offense, Zuckerberg could have, or will, save 1,500 lives.

Admittedly, saving only 1,500 out of 150,000 lives is not a massive amount. But to each of those 1,500 who won’t be killed by drones at wedding parties or in “shock and awe” terrorist attacks it means a lot!

Getting back to the New York Times, and the economically-ignorant who read it, they think the “philanthropic” part is that Zuckerberg is giving his money to “charity”.

They are so clueless about how the wealthy (and even not-so-wealthy) can tax-shelter their assets via LLCs and Trusts, as people like Warren Buffet, did, they think that by Mark Zuckerberg doing this that he is “giving his money away”.

In fact, by giving to the great majority of large charities you are destroying capital. Not to mention, when you give to things like the American Cancer Society (ACS) you are actually giving them more resources by which to keep cures from the public… as the ACS has it in its every interest to ensure no cure is ever found (plenty already have been found and shut down in the US as my interview with Rick Simpson of Phoenix Tears discusses).

If Zuckerberg wants a better world for humanity then he should continue to invest his funds to create more wealth. And that appears to be what he is doing. You can argue on whether many of his ideas on what the problems of the world are, are correct or not… and I would certainly disagree with a number of them… but he intends to invest in technology… which is a great thing for the most part.

USING LLCs TO SHIELD ASSETS AND MINIMIZE TAXES

Almost any wealthy person uses LLCs and offshore trusts to shield their assets and to gain tax advantages. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Mitt Romney and countless others.

The big difference between today and decades ago is that even the not-so-wealthy can afford to use these same practices to gain the same advantages now. An offshore LLC can be as little as a few thousand dollars and you can minimize taxes, gain confidentiality and protect your assets from lawsuits or government seizure.

And, it’s all legal.

I suggest, if you are interested in gaining these benefits, that you contact TDV Offshore which offers a wide variety of jurisdictions and easy set-up that doesn’t require travel.

Of course, if you don’t know anything about offshore incorporation or banking you’ll need to do some learning. We can help you with that as a subscriber to The Dollar Vigilante (Subscribe here – last month we featured an excellent way to get incorporated, banking and even residency in Costa Rica, as one example).

Or, if you’d like to learn more and speak one-on-one with a number of experts we’ll be hosting the TDV Internationalization and Investment Summit on February 18th, 2016, in Acapulco, Mexico as an adjunct to the world’s largest anarcho-capitalist conference, Anarchapulco.

And if you structure your assets with an offshore LLC or Trust to minimize taxes and secure your assets you get the added benefit of being able to tell everyone how philanthropic you are… like Mark Zuckerberg.

Originally Appeared At The Dollar Vigilante