[regarding TC May's comment that it still wasn't practical to live off of exclusively offshore investment income tax-free, and that advocates of offshore banking did not even claim it was, but that it might be in 10 years.] What exactly makes it impractical to live off of the investment income from off-shore investments exclusively? I'm kind of broke right now, but I was assuming that the combination of a set of offshore accounts and an offshore visa card used to pay for practically everything, as well as perhaps smuggled in cash and gold/etc. which could be sold outside of reported channels would be enough to allow you to pay untracededly for almost everything. Then, if you did not have a primary residence in the United States, but rather spent life living in a college dorm (which is unlikely to flag anything at the IRS, being part of a bill which is routinely paid by third parties, often from outside of the US), on a boat registered outside of the US, or visiting places around the country and world, plus had some plausible way of hiding this extra income of yours, you could get by reporting only an abusrdly low amount of income from a part time job or something, and no one would be the wiser. Then, as your income/assets grew, you could continue to dump money from off-the-record sources into an offshore account, continue to use the offshore account for real and untraced purchases, and continue to draw your small salary to show that you are paying taxes and are just poor. Then, graduate from university and live the rest of your life vacationing around the world, or skip the first step if you're smart. (From what I know of IRS auditing procedures, they'd be remarkably more apt to find out if someone with a real income's income suddenly fell to $4k/year and stayed there from $100k+/year with no explanation given than if mine went from -$30k a year to -$26k/year, so starting when you're broke might be a decent plan.) Are there any major obvious holes in this plan? Now all I need is to do some useful, crypto-anarchist work and be paid under the table, perhaps taking a month or two vacation to Antigua or someplace in the process. --- Ryan Lackey rdl@MIT.EDU http://mit.edu/rdl/www/