An offshore zone is a country, city, region within which foreign companies can make financial transactions with non-residents (other foreign companies) without government intervention.
For states that create favorable conditions for foreign business, an offshore zone is a measure caused by the need to invest in their budget. This industry began to emerge with the advent of independent states, with a lack of capital in them. To attract money, offshore companies began to offer foreign companies to register their business and receive tax and other benefits.
Offshore zone is an attractive platform for many companies. First of all, by the fact that a fairly loyal tax payment package is offered on its territory, there is no control over foreign exchange transactions, it is possible to have accounts in several countries and conduct transactions in any currency, keep records in foreign currency. Because of the benefits provided, a wave of people wishing to withdraw their companies poured into the countries of the offshore zone. Experts say that it is difficult to calculate the exact number of withdrawn companies due to anonymitybusiness, but there are definitely more than 1 million of them. The list of offshore zones is quite large. But mostly companies are moving to Panama, the British Virgin Islands and Ireland.
Income is made up of taxes paid, registration, re-registration, rent of premises in the zone of permanent representations of secretarial bureaus. Another feature is that offshore companies can be offered to employ the population, create vacancies for local residents. Offshore countries, as a rule, are states with low development of domestic production, receiving most of the budget revenue from non-residents (foreigners).
In Russia, there are practically no offshore zones. After the abolition in 2004 of the investment benefit on income tax, domestic offshore companies (Yakutia, Kalmykia, etc.) were abolished. The only remaining offshore zone is the Kaliningrad region, which only accepts residents from special zones.
In our time, Russia is one of the first places in the withdrawal of money outside the country, but it does not create offshore zones. If we talk about the UK, where the main outflow of money goes, the country's leadership understands that today it is necessary to fight offshore zones, but, unfortunately, they are unable to take drastic measures, since offshores have become part of the UK economy.
Today, offshore companies are used not only to optimize taxes, but also to hide the true owners. Russia is considering a bill that will identifyreal owners of foreign companies so that they can be held criminally or administratively liable. Recently, many countries have been fighting against offshore zones, but very rarely measures are taken to find the ultimate beneficiary. Financial institutions value their reputation very much, therefore they will not disclose information about their clients.
Specialists believe that the fight against the owners will not lead to anything good, it will be possible to ensure that foreign companies begin to withdraw their investments from the country, this will not have a very good effect on the economy. And so they advise to come up with something alternative to offshore.
