Author Topic: Moving to Puerto Rico to avoid income taxes  (Read 3745 times)

Gary123

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Moving to Puerto Rico to avoid income taxes
« on: May 01, 2016, 08:56:04 AM »
Anyone following Puerto Rico's Acts 20 & 22?  Below are two paragraphs from a January 2016 Forbes article explaining them more consicely than I can:

"Act 20, the Export Services Act, offers incentives to certain service businesses, including investment and hedge fund managers, to relocate to Puerto Rico and export their services. It does so by taxing their corporate profits at a flat 4%, while making the dividends paid from profits on exported services 100% tax exempt to individual recipients.

Act 22, the Individual Investors Act, was designed to primarily attract high net worth investors to Puerto Rico by providing complete tax exceptions on dividends, interest and capital gains, so long as the individual is present for at least 183 days a year (half the year) in Puerto Rico."

Many financial advisors have suggested it is too unreliable (since Congress will eventually kill it) as any law enacted by Puerto Rico can be annulled by the U.S. Congress.

Since my net-worth is in real estate and tax deferred IRA's (with early withdrawl 10% penalty) I am wondering if moving to Puerto Rico makes sense.  Of course, the 10% penalty remains but lowering taxes to 4% or less would be a huge incentive.

Has anyone taken a serious look into whether they can move to Puerto Rico to realize capital gains tax free?


bwall

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Re: Moving to Puerto Rico to avoid income taxes
« Reply #2 on: May 01, 2016, 07:47:15 PM »
I moved to PR this week specifically for this purpose.


Reynold

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Re: Moving to Puerto Rico to avoid income taxes
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2016, 02:24:01 PM »
It may not be a bad idea, providing you don't have a lot of friends or family you want to visit regularly (almost certainly more expensive from there).  One cautionary note, I have a co-worker who moved to Greece from England, and had a great life style for a while, because Greece only charged income tax if you worked for a Greek company, which he didn't, and his home country, England, like almost everywhere in the civilized world but the US, only charged income tax if you lived in England.  Net result, he paid no income tax, and they didn't charge property tax on homes owned by foreigners. 

Unfortunately, during the recent Greek fiscal crisis they changed the tax law and imposed a 60% income tax.  They also made it retroactive to the previous year.  And he wanted to move back to England, which has a 50% tax rate, and he said they don't have reciprocity, so he would have owed 110% of his income the year he moved (plus the 60% from the previous year).  They also now have a stiff property tax, so he can't even sell his property, as all the other foreigners who owned "free" property there are also trying to sell. 

Moral of the story, be a little careful about taking major fiscal steps based on tax laws, they can change in very arbitrary ways very suddenly.  Say, isn't Puerto Rico going through a controversial fiscal crisis? :)

Gary123

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Re: Moving to Puerto Rico to avoid income taxes
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2016, 07:27:11 PM »
Thanks for the great example.  It is a great deal but there should probably be another motive for moving to Puerto Rico.