I recently received a letter from a company with which I have a mutual fund investment.  The letter informed me that the fund was sharply increasing its management fees due…

For more than six years, the Bush administration has secretly tapped into a global database of confidential financial transactions.  Using authority granted under an obscure law called the International Economic…

Nearly 30 years ago, Congress passed a law intended to prevent the U.S. president from wiretapping in the United States without a warrant.  That law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act…

Soo and Jin Chung immigrated to the United States from South Korea to pursue their version of the American dream—to open their own dry cleaning store.  They had no idea…

As I described in yesterday's blog entry, Austria has one of the world's strongest bank secrecy laws.  Critics of bank secrecy laws claim that they help criminals shield illicit gains…

There's no point denying it—banking fees and commissions in Austria—and many other offshore financial centers—are substantially higher than in the United States.  Fortunately, there are some ways to reduce them.…

Nearly every physician practicing in the United States has sworn to uphold the 2,000-year-old Hippocratic Oath.  Among other provisions, a physician taking the oath makes the following pledge: "I will…

In 1970, the United States for the first time imposed reporting requirements for persons moving substantial quantities of cash, or cash equivalents, across a U.S. border.  Current law requires that…

Credit cards (along with debit cards) are a convenient way to avoid carrying large sums of cash to make purchases. Under U.S. law, if a credit card is lost or…

Corporations are the traditional way to limit personal liability in a business.  A corporation has a separate legal personality from its owners, officers, and directors.  This legal personality provides a…

I've warned many times that you should avoid any "instant citizenship and passport" program that doesn't have a solid basis in law. Someone selling you a passport from a country…

E-gold is one of the oldest gold-backed digital currencies around, and certainly one of the most successful. And it's squarely in the sights of the U.S. government. On April 30,…

Wouldn't it be great if you could bank at an institution akin to the "First Bank of Financial Privacy," with your account and transaction records protected from prying eyes? In…

Several weeks ago, I described a proposal in the "Small Business and Work Opportunity Act" to impose an exit tax on U.S. persons who give up U.S. citizenship or long-term…

It’s Happy Hour at the Balas Bar at the Fort Young Hotel in Roseau, Commonwealth of Dominica. I’m sitting here enjoying a glass of Kubuli, the locally brewed beer, and…

Several months ago, 658,000 America Online (AOL) customers received a nasty shock. They discovered that their search engine queries, numbering some 20 million, had been posted online for 10 days in…

Doing business with someone on a watchlist maintained by an obscure Treasury Department bureau could land you in the slammer for up to 30 years. Not to mention subjecting you…

I had to blink twice when I received the news release from Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (http://www.fear.org). In the great state of Indiana, Henry County prosecutors have contracted with a…

It's easy to get lulled into a false sense of security about the asset protection of a US pension plan. After all, O.J. Simpson got to keep his NFL pension,…

With the National Security Agency (NSA) and God knows who else eavesdropping on your telephone calls, there's never been more of a need for effective ways to make your conversations…

For more than 20 years, since the 1986 "tax reform" act, banks, brokerages, credit card companies and just about everyone else has demanded I disclose my Social Security Number (SSN)…

It's open season on offshore financial centers—again. As if ill-conceived laws such as the USA PATRIOT Act weren't enough, three Senators—Carl Levin, Norm Coleman and Barack Obama—have introduced The Stop…

An unwelcome phenomenon Americans may experience throughout the offshore world is a bias against U.S clients. This bias isn't aimed at individual Americans, but is a consequence of the extraordinary…

Until the early 20th century, with a few interruptions for wars and national panics, silver and gold freely circulated in the US. The dollar was "good as gold" and for…

Cash is private. When you spend cash, there's no paper trail. Cash transactions are difficult, if not impossible to trace.  Because it's difficult to track cash transactions, the US government over the…

Fifteen years ago, I came face-to-face with US “civil forfeiture” laws that permit police to seize your property, without accusing you of any crime. In my case, I owned a…

As someone who lived outside the US for more than two years, I gladly took advantage of one of the very few perks that the government provides expat Americans.  I’m…