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A large part of the Anticitizen’s Field Manual has focused on privacy. Digital privacy, financial privacy, and asset diversification. It’s an important part of setting yourself up for a free existence.
Speaking specifically in terms of financial privacy, there’s one critical aspect that many people get wrong. And that relates to what assets or income you can keep private from your government, and what must be declared.
Many people assume that as soon as you have an offshore bank account, offshore company, private assets in a vault, or by receiving income through an anonymous crypto wallet, that these things are “off the books” when to comes to tax. The truth is that most of the time, they are not.
It varies on where you live, but in most cases, you will be required to declare all of your income to the State at tax time, regardless of how “private” you think it may be. In some cases, your country may even require you to declare how much cash or wealth you have saved, in which countries you have it stored, and even possibly the names of the banks or financial institutions that hold it for you.
In simple terms, just because you want to keep it private, it doesn’t mean you’re legally allowed to do so.
Let me give a few examples of how this could work in practice.
Let’s imagine you are a citizen of Australia, but live in Germany as a tax resident.
In this case, Australia wouldn’t consider you a tax resident because you don’t live there. And each year at tax time, you wouldn’t need to declare anything to the Australian government, or tell them about your assets/earnings. However, you would likely be required to declare to Germany your global income, as well as potentially which countries around the world you hold assets in, and any capital gains earned on those assets.
Or, let’s say you’re a citizen of the United States: the only country in the world that really enforced citizenship-based taxation.
No matter where you live in the world, even if you aren’t a habitual tax resident of the US, you are still likely required to declare all your global assets to the United States each year at tax time. This is regardless of whether you have already paid tax on them or not, as the US will likely be taxing you on those again (outside of certain exclusions, like the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion).
Or perhaps you live in Finland, but you were paid for some services in an anonymous cryptocurrency wallet, and made a capital gain on some gold you sold for profit that you held in a vault in Switzerland. In both cases, you would be legally required to declare those incomes to the Finnish government, lest you be found to be hiding assets and/or income from the tax office.
And in most nations, you may also be legally required to declare any shares or percentage ownership in companies, trusts, or other legal entities, regardless of whether they are registered within the borders of your country or not.
As you can see, like tax residency, the issue of asset declaration can be complex, and vary considerably from country to country, and depending on your situation. Like has been mentioned many times in the Anticitizen’s Field Manual, it’s important to seek the right advice about what you might be obligated to declare (and what you can keep private) from your nation or country of tax residence at tax time.
We always advocate staying within the limits of the law, while at the same time, sharing only the information that is absolutely necessary.
If you have to declare earnings and even assets to your government at tax time, many people wonder what is the point of maintaining privacy in this regard at all? If you have to tell them what you earned, why would you need a private crypto wallet, or bank accounts your home government can’t as easily see or access?