Friday, January 16, 2015

The perils of being overly tax aggressive

Wow.  

Just wow.

Josh Marshall:
Which brings us back to Roger Ver, variously known as a "Bitcoin entrepreneur" or the "Bitcoin Jesus." Ver is now a citizen of Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. He was so excited about avoiding taxes that as soon as he became a Nevisian he set up yet another start up that would allow you to use bitcoins to buy a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport so you too could avoid US taxes. Alas, it folded after a few months, apparently because the St Kitts government disavowed it.
Unlike Facebook billionaire Eduardo Saverin who renounced his citizenship to avoid US taxes back in 2012, I don't get the impression that Ver is remotely that rich. He may be worth a few or even many millions of dollars. But he does not seem remotely in the category of 100s of millions, let alone billions. In any case, now he wants a visa to return to the US to speak at a Bitcoin conference this weekend in Miami. But the US has repeatedly denied his requests. And he's extremely upset at "the tyrants [who] won't allow me to attend #CES2015, #TNABC or anything in the US."
 This is actually a limitation of trying to become an island unto yourself.  When you cut the cords with everyone else, it isn't shocking that they might actually reciprocate the feeling and cut cords with you.

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