Asset Protection Attorney, Sebastian Gibson
Asset Protection - Offshore Asset Protection from A California Asset Protection Law Firm
If you’ve been searching for California asset protection lawyers or offshore asset protection attorneys in California and haven’t found the asset protection attorney in which you can be confident when retaining a lawyer for your asset protection, voluntary disclosure, offshore trust protection and family limited partnership matters in California, Sebastian Gibson is the asset protection attorney you’ve been looking for.
California Asset Protection Lawyer
With over thirty years of experience handling international matters, with law degrees in both California and in Great Britain, and years of international experience in London as well as decades of experience in California, California asset protection lawyer Sebastian Gibson brings a wealth of experience to the table and was chosen one of the 2011 Top Lawyers by Palm Springs Life Magazine.
The goal of asset protection by California asset protection attorneys is to make it so difficult for a creditor to gain control of a debtor’s assets, the creditor will either not pursue them or settle with a debtor for a much reduced amount. In order to accomplish this, it will generally require the transfer of the debtor’s assets to legal entities in the U.S. or often to offshore asset protection trusts, depending on whether there are creditor claims already lurking or not.
To protect a debtor’s assets, asset protection requires the debtor transferring ownership of the assets to a legal entity such as an offshore asset protection trust, while retaining their benefits and only a limited control of those assets. A debtor must distance themself from the assets and outright control over them in order to prevent a creditor from being able to gain access to the assets through the debtor.
It’s perfectly legal for U.S. citizens and resident aliens to have foreign bank accounts, foreign trusts and foreign companies. However, they are required to disclose their existence on annual tax forms that must be filed with the U.S. They may transfer assets and withdraw assets from such foreign financial entities, but those transactions must also be reported.
In recent years with the financial crisis and the hundreds of U.S. financial institutions closing their doors, there has been a rush by U.S. citizens to move their money offshore just as they did when they had motives of tax evasion.
Today, international bankers will also tell you that there has been another wave of Americans transferring their money offshore. These Americans are ones who don’t like the policies of President Obama, or who believe that the U.S. government is taking over everything, and for those who feel that the actions of the U.S. government or the IRS impinge on their personal freedoms, some of these taxpayers are undoubtedly seeking to once again evade paying U.S. taxes as well.
Combine this wave of Americans with the availability of the internet and you have an entirely new group of individuals being tricked by hucksters from Nigeria to Panama and their impressive web sites that claim they can provide the asset protection and tax evasion these taxpayers are looking for.
Panicked Americans are nothing new. In the 1970s, U.S. citizens were worried about the U.S. abandoning the gold standard. At various times, Americans were concerned about the Soviet threat, and more recently by the ownership of U.S. treasury instruments by China. The banking crisis has concerned an entirely new group of U.S. citizens, and today the fears of those citizens has increased with the growth of the U.S. debt.
Unless these taxpayers realize that their activities have been monitored and that bank secrecy is a thing of the past, they will be surprised to find out they are on an entirely new list of targets for the IRS to focus their efforts on. As soon as these taxpayers fail to report their newly formed offshore bank accounts, foreign trusts and offshore companies on their tax returns, the IRS will be able to assess penalties or refer these taxpayers for criminal prosecution. Should their actions go unnoticed for more than two years and then be discovered, these taxpayers could find not only that their entire accounts could be owed to the IRS in penalties, but that they may owe additional penalties as well that could wipe out any domestic assets.
In the best scenario, to protect one’s assets today, or what’s left of them, an individual should move them to a jurisdiction that has no sub-prime mortgage situations, where the banking system is on a sound foundation instead of where three to four banks fail each weekend, and where the country you move the assets to is politically, economically and socially stable.
To add additional protection to an individual’s assets, they should be transferred to a country or jurisdiction where the laws have a short statute of limitations, where any case against a debtor must be retried by attorneys who can’t be contingency lawyers, and where the local jurisdiction doesn’t recognize foreign (in this case, U.S.) judgements.
To help ensure that an individual remains tax compliant in the U.S., it is also useful if the banking system is sophisticated and knowledgeable of U.S. tax laws and can provide an account holder with the additional guidance to ensure that the individual remains tax compliant at all times in the U.S. instead of offering suggestions to avoid detection by the IRS such as by the use of calling cards that only serve to attract the attention of U.S. tax authorities.
Clients seeking the advice of asset protection lawyers should not expect either the asset protection attorney to participate in helping to hide the client’s assets in any manner pre-litigation nor in any phase of litigation. Our asset protection lawyers will not represent a client who we know intends to lie under penalty of perjury or attempt to hide their assets in any manner. Clients need to realize that assets cannot be hidden from the IRS, from litigants, creditors or from professional investigators. A client may protect their assets offshore, but they must still pay their proper taxes and meet all reporting requirements of their home country.
Additionally, asset protection attorneys must determine if a client has any claims against him or her that have matured to the extent that a transfer of assets will constitute a fraudulent transfer or conveyance, such that some asset protection strategies such as a family limited partnership in the U.S. will not be advisable and transfer to an offshore asset protection trust is essential.
Today, there is a new category of people seeking asset protection. In the past, most people seeking to protect their assets were worried about creditors. Over the past two or three years, many people were worried about their assets were worried about the U.S. banking system and the international monetary system in general collapsing. Today, there is an entirely new category of individuals who want to protect their money from the U.S. government. To this category of individuals, the last thing they want to hear is that they need to be tax compliant.
For the individual worried that the U.S. government is going to take all of their assets, an asset protection lawyer has to make it crystal clear that if the individual attempts to hide their assets and avoids reporting their foreign bank accounts to the IRS, their worst fears will come true. It is only by being tax compliant that they will be able to keep their assets. Whether they want to utilize domestic asset protection or offshore asset protection (which for the most part, is more popular and safer), it’s up to them.
Asset protection is document intensive, extremely expensive and is not for the general practice attorney. It is even more dangerous for the individual with a little bit of knowledge to buy asset protection documents off the shelf from department store type legal outfits online or to pick a foreign jurisdiction for offshore asset protection by blindly choosing whatever spot their finger lands on a spinning globe. The use of asset protection lawyers is essential.
Asset protection in an era of tax-compliancy requires strategies based upon an assumption that judgement creditors and litigants will have the same access to a taxpayer’s information as the IRS. Taxpayers who think that they can hide their assets from judgment creditors while being tax compliant with U.S. tax authorities are mistaken. A taxpayer who correctly discloses information on their U.S. tax returns about foreign bank accounts and offshore asset trusts, as they must, will have to make that information available to litigants and judgment creditors who can obtain access to the taxpayer’s tax returns by means of the issuance of subpoenas.
Only by remaining tax compliant can asset protection strategies be helpful to a client seeking a long term strategy that will not only preserve their wealth but also provide legal entities for an individual to hand their assets down to the next generation. In this time of financial uncertainty and risk, future generations will need what you can provide them, more than ever in a future without medicare or social security.
At the law firm of Sebastian Gibson, our asset protection attorneys can provide you with the asset protection legal advice to help you set up domestic and offshore asset protection trusts, tonavigate and obey the onerous and complicated IRS rules and regulations requiring extensive reporting of foreign assets, accounts, financial entities and transactions and to protect your assets.
In compliance with IRS requirements, we must advise you that any U.S. federal tax advice contained in this informational article is not intended to be used nor is it published in order for it to be used and you may not use it for the purpose of avoiding penalties or fines under the Internal Revenue Code. It is not intended to be used nor is it being published in order to promote, market or recommend any specific transaction, tax-related matter or estate planning tax scheme to any party.
California Asset Protection Attorney, Sebastian Gibson
Sought out to be a writer for California’s two largest and most prestigious legal newspapers, California asset protection attorney Sebastian Gibson’s articles have been published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal and the San Francisco Daily Journal. Today thousands and thousands of people visit this website and his blogs monthly for useful advice and thousands more follow him on Twitter for his humor.
One of the best asset protection attorneys for people in California to follow for his humor and wit, one of the funniest California asset protection lawyers as well as one of the top humorous California asset protection attorneys people follow on Twitter, California asset protection attorney Sebastian Gibson has been called "brilliant," "hilariously funny" and a "legend."
It matters more than you think who you call for your asset protection and other legal matters. When it matters most, call California asset protection lawyer Sebastian Gibson. When it’s time to hire a California asset protection attorney, hire a legend.
