Offshore Asset Protection for Affiliate Marketers

Affiliate marketers face unique asset protection, privacy, and tax planning challenges. This article will review your options and point out some of the pitfalls to watch out for. We’re specialists in offshore asset protection for affiliate marketers and can help you to grow your online business in an efficient and compliant manner.

At the end of the day, www.premieroffshore.com, and our lifestyle site www.escapeartist.com, are internet based businesses. I write SEO optimized posts like this one to drive traffic and bring in leads. We’re a remote business with our publishing group based in San Diego and fulfillment in Belize and Panama City.

As the editor and chief marketing guy, I spend my days on the road, tapping away on my laptop. Our in-house attorneys are chained to their desks, but I made sure the marketing team was portable.

We’ve been providing offshore asset protection to affiliate marketers via the web since 2003 and understand the unique needs of your business model. We’re the only firm that provides offshore structures and U.S. tax compliance… at least, the only one in the middle of the market. Our price points are a bit lower than Deloitte, PwC, and E & Y.

• Our offshore protection structures are positioned in the middle of the market. Less than big name CPA firms and higher than offshore incorporation mills that provide no guidance or support.

This post will focus on asset protection for affiliate marketers. As I said above, we also provide tax planning for offshore businesses, as well as for those in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. For more on Puerto Rico, see: Puerto Rico is the Top Offshore Jurisdiction for Americans.

To summarize Puerto Rico, if you move your business to the island, and hire 5 employees, you’ll cut your U.S. tax rate to 4%. To compare that tax deal to moving offshore, see: Puerto Rico Tax Deal vs Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.

The remainder of this article will focus on offshore asset protection. Offshore asset protection for affiliate marketers is generally tax neutral – it should not increase nor decrease your U.S. taxes. It’s meant to keep your transactions private and your cash safe from future civil creditors.

You can combine offshore asset protection with an office or division offshore that helps to manage your worldwide tax obligations. But, your asset protection plan is independent of your international tax plan. Thus, you might start with an offshore asset protection plan for your affiliate marketing business and grow it into a business tax savings plan.

Issues in Asset Protection for Affiliate Marketers

When planning an offshore asset protection structure, affiliate marketers face a number of interesting challenges. For example, the need for privacy and the ability to diversify with  subsidiaries are more urgent than with other business models.

Affiliate marketers value their privacy. For this reason, we created the Panama max privacy structure. We use a Belize LLC as the founder of a Panama foundation and a Panama corporation under the foundation to run the business. We can add corporations from other jurisdictions, as active business subsidiaries of the foundation, where necessary.

For more on our max privacy structure, see: The Bearer Share Company Hack

The Panama foundation provides estate planning and asset protection for your business units… and acts as a holding company to bring them together under one umbrella.

Panama offers great asset protection and banking facilities. The problem is that they have a public registry of ownership. That means the founder of a foundation, along with the shareholders and directors of corporations, are public record. We work around this with a Belize LLC because Belize doesn’t maintain a registry and Panama allows the founder to be a person or a foreign company.

That’s all a fancy way of saying that the Belize LLC maximizes privacy by acting as the founder of your Panama Foundation. When someone searches the Panama registry, all they find is the name of your Belize company.

I believe you’ll find that the Panama foundation is the best choice when planning an asset protection structure for your affiliate marketing business. It’s primary competitor, the offshore trust, is a great tool, but not recommended for managing an active business.

An offshore asset protection trust is the solution for someone who wants to build a nest egg offshore out of the reach of future civil creditors. You can add money managers as trustees and maximize protection with a “protector” in case you (the settlor) come under duress.

That is to say, an international trust is perfect for someone who wants to put cash away for the future. A trust is not the structure to hold an active business where you want to maintain control and maximize privacy.

Many of our clients move a portion of their after tax net profits out of the Panama structure and into an offshore trust. You can combine both for the best of both worlds while diversifying your holdings.

Offshore Merchant Accounts

Specializing in offshore asset protection for affiliate marketers means working with many banks and acquirers around the world. We’re experienced in merchant account issues as described here: How to Get an Offshore Merchant Account.

For example, many of our clients run multiple MIDs and require subsidiaries from a variety of jurisdictions to hold those accounts.  This allows them to maximize privacy, diversify risk, and build systems that spread chargebacks among their portfolio.

To support this requirement from affiliate marketers, we’ve built a network of agents around the world. We can incorporate subsidiaries in a different countries quickly and at a reasonable cost.

We also understand that subsidiaries must be formed in countries which are acceptable to your processor. For this reason, we have U.K., Hong  Kong, E.U., Caribbean, and Panama solutions. We also advise on U.S. accounts for companies in Puerto Rico.

• A comapny incorporated in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico can open bank accounts at just about any U.S. bank.

Another option for a business with no office or employees in the United States, is to form a subsidiary in the U.S. That subsidiary will hold only bank and merchant accounts and pass profits to the parent company.

This solution is recommended for entities with no U.S. source income. You will likely need a U.S. person to open the account… it’s become difficult for foreign persons to open U.S. accounts… and nearly impossible for non-U.S. persons without U.S. credit scores to get a low cost merchant account.

Why Hire a U.S. Provider?

Internet marketers know how to outsource. How to leverage low cost labor around the world to get things done. Why should you pay U.S. prices for your international tax or offshore asset protection plan?

Simple: only a U.S. expert can build an offshore asset protection structure that’s U.S. compliant.

When you outsource  your offshore structure, you will get answers to your questions and solutions based solely on the laws of that country. For example, contact an offshore trust promoter in Cook Islands and they’ll answer inquires based on Cook Island law.

But, when you’re a U.S. citizen, your compliance risk and liability from lawsuits is in the United States. Thus, the focus should be on how the laws of your asset protection jurisdiction interact with those of your home country.

Since this is a post on asset protection for affiliate marketers, here’s a tech example…

You, the IT professional, can outsource website design because you’re an expert in website design. You know exactly what you want to accomplish and how to get there. You write the text and manage the process from start to finish.

What if you weren’t an expert in design or SEO issues? Should you hire someone to quarterback the project or should you outsource? Knowing what you know now, would you have gone it alone or hired someone to guide you in those early days?

You’d hire a quarterback because you don’t know what you don’t know. As an an expert, you understand how complex a major design or redesign can be. You know that a layperson will likely screw it up terribly, putting the entire project at risk.

This knowledge has come over years in the industry. Through trial and error, you know where the pitfalls are. You know how to drive traffic and optimize your sites. You know what works and what doesn’t.

I have a friend who’s new to the online world. He was tasked to redesign a 10 year old website with 15,000 pages and a solid Google reputation. The owners of the site didn’t want to spend any money, so he was on his own and outsourced design.

While updating the site, he thought it would be a good idea to restructure the URLs. To create a few different categories and make the permalinks more descriptive.  Yeh, he decided to change the URL structure and break the thousands of inbound links for an authoritative site… the links that gave the domain much of its “reputation.”

As an internet professional, you know what a bad idea it is to change the URL structure of an authoritative website with years of history. But my friend had no idea what he didn’t know. Had he hired a quarterback, the expert would have stopped him from falling in this obvious trap.

It’s the same when planning an offshore asset protection structure. You need someone to manage the process and keep you in compliance. Outsource and the promoter will tell you what you want to hear (sure, we can restructure your URLs). Hire an expert and they will tell you “no,” when you need to hear it!

For example, when you want to use a nominee singor on your offshore bank account, you need to hear no. When you, a U.S. resident with no employees offshore, want to setup a company to hold foreign profits and only pay U.S. tax when you bring the money into the U.S., you need to hear hell no!

As with internet marketing, there are many risks in going it alone. Unlike online risks, the penalties for getting out of compliance or using an offshore structure incorrectly can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties or even land you in jail. The U.S. government has become extremely hostile to non-compliant offshore structures and you must have an expert in your corner to keep you from becoming a target.

The world of offshore is ever changing, complex, and fraught with risks you can’t see. We can guide you the maze and quarterback your offshore structure, all with a focus on your internet based business.

I hope you’ve found this article on asset protection for affiliate marketers to be helpful. For more information, please contact me at info@premieroffshore.com or call (619) 483-1708 for a confidential consultation.