Although I've never had any of my entities "leaked", as if they were secret anyway, these leaks are mana from heaven as these are client lists you can POACH and offer better services for cheaper.
I've been using OTONOMOS for some time for incorporation and offshore entity management, which stores some client signatures on a blockchain, but behind the scenes they still defer to more antiquated registrars.
The costs of forming offshore entities are perpetuated by the expensive lawyers, registered agents and incompetent government representatives in these tiny jurisdictions. (For what its worth, even most United States are pretty incompetent at these administrative processes. Really only a few financial centers and a few exceptions have it all streamlined.)
These are scale problems primarily.
Also, American citizens should note that it isn't as simple as making a HOLDING company to avoid US taxes, unless you were just going to try to be NON-compliant and not tell anyone which will be a losing battle. There is a way, but it isn't simple.
For American citizens, offshore company's primary benefit are:
- protect trade secrets or initiate transactions without showing your hand to the market
- to deter creditors (as long as they aren't the US Government) as it raises the bar for them to find those assets and sue it and get a judgement and collect on that judgement
- segregated assets. Some jurisdictions offer entity structures which are very immature in the United States or haven't caught on yet. The Series LLC exists in a handful of US states but may lack case law, Segregated Portfolio Companies exist in other places like the British Virgin Islands and may have more case law or better statutory conditions.
- deal with more international clientele. Many times there are parallel US laws specifically for offshore clientele. For investors its the difference between Reg D and Reg S, I had one other example but I forgot it.
1960s era Congress already created CFC, PFIC, FBSCI, FBHCI laws which ensures that compliant Americans can't have passive offshore companies to defer taxes indefinitely. You looked like you were on to an original idea but your grandparents already thought of it. What you suggested still requires your non-compliance and the opposite of perfectly legal.
Those laws put your offshore earnings from US connected entities right back on your US personal income tax.
Most of these regulations are undermined by not having a passive holding company but an offshore company with additional business operations.
The theory being that the company would be funded on that margin and by knowing the cost to set it up and the rate of return from the marginal cost, you could put together a plan to build it and grow it.
A non-US citizen could set up a corporation in a zero tax jurisdiction and allow partners to come in and keep diluting their share as long as it remains over 50% .... or a few other stipulations when it got over a certain number of members. but then adding additional property to this gets murky, and the non-US majority beneficiary has claims on the direction of all the property.
If you are functionally able to control it then then US courts will undermine it anyway and levy a big tax bill on you.
This is not a joke, it is a serious suggestion. The issue here is governments and regulatory capture where the wealthy have insured these tax avoidance schemes can work and the governments allow it because they can still get enough taxes from people who aren't wealthy enough to play the game. If we can create a startup that lets everyone avoid taxes the system will be threatened and it will force the governments of the world to fix this or to run out of money.