Keep What You Earn: Practical Strategies to Protect Your Assets from Taxes, Lawsuits, and Financial Predators

by Terry Coxon

Book Overview

Some investors pay little or no tax on their income; their wealth grows faster and faster and gives them more cash to spend. Some families hand down large fortunes without paying a gift or estate tax.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812928288
• ISBN13: 9780812928280
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Crown Business
• Length: 357 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

a good first line of defense for people with net worth.

A friend was telling me what happened after his promotion to senior vice president was announced in the newspaper. Dozens of free offers began to come in the mail, such as coupons to use in exclusive clothing stores and free lunches for two at expense-account restaurants. One of the latter was for a restaurant he'd always wanted to visit. So he took the offer and was immediately surprised at how gracious the service was. He and his friend weren't that hungry, so they turned down an appetizer and a cocktail. After they had ordered a meal and told the waiter they would not have room for dessert, the waiter leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, "have some, for goodness sakes. It's all free!" My friend's unwillingness to capitalize on the restaurant's hospitality reminds me of the way some high net worth individuals look at taxes. They figure they owe it to someone to take some of the government's free offers, but not all of them. By "government free offers" I mean the ability of the system to give as well as take away. It doesn't necessarily give tax advantages out of social generosity (although it may seem that way politically sometimes). We simply have a system that can't know what you're doing all the time, and it doesn't want to know, either. Terry Coxon plumbs the principles and pragmatics behind the limits of the system. Planning to avoid taxes depends on knowing the world according to the IRS and the world as it really is, with all the gaps so implied. You should understand baically where tax rules come from and how they are enforced and changed. Investing is another activity where you can get easily sidetracked. You may think that the identity of a particular investment or strategy is of paramount importance. In reality, the only think important in your portfolio is results. Successful investors act on this instinctually. Others tend to get caught up in minutiae. Coxon also emphasizes protecting yourself against lawsuits, where anything you own could be used against you to satisfy a judgment or just scare you into submission. Litigation is not a gentlemen's game, as many losers of lawsuits find out the hard way. To maintain your financial privacy, don't use credit cards and checks routinely. Keep your checking account in another county, and change banks every few years. He also advises the use of a money market fund for checking, "so that no one can dig through your records without digging through the fund's records." The author also advocates tax deferral through the use of mutual funds, deferred annuities, and even types of life insurance. This is where he loses me. Knowing a little about such things seems more dangerous than knowing nothing at all, and the chapters on these subjects are brief. Other tax deferral vehicles are outlined here: deferred-payment sales help you defer capital gains or interest income. A number of acceptable strategies exist to drag your feet abou recognizing gains which can be taxed. Coxon's attitude about re

Find financial privacy and financial protection in the US.

How would you like to be able to use a charge card that is private? I did not know there was such a card, but you can get one! Do you want to protect yourself from being financially destroyed by a simple lawsuit or an out-of-control predatory government agency? This book explains how simple anyone can set up a private foreign bank account. It gives a very good explanation of a protective foreign trust that can protect you, save taxes for you, and even more for your beneficiaries.