What is/are the benefit(s) of having a SBA, if one follows U.S. law to the letter with regards to taxes?
My understanding is that the only benefit is privacy - perhaps if you were doing something dodgy with taxes or illegitimate income, and that those benefits aren’t what they used to be.
Cecil Adams mentions some of the advantages of Swiss bank accounts here. One is that when writing a check, you can specify which currency you want it paid in. Also, some such accounts help with the purchase and storage of precious metals. (Although the article is thirty years old, so perhaps banks elsewhere allow these things now as well.)
The original and best purpose was that it was out of reach or enquiry of local authorities. Unlike the USA, there are a lot of countries that are willing to help themselves to a citizen’s wealth if the citizen displeases them.
For US citizens - depend what your goals are. While the Swiss have apparently caved to Uncle Sam over taxes, I suppose if you are worried about court settlements or such that grab your money, having an account offshore might be a safety net.
One can certainly think of ways that one might value privacy, even if you’re not doing anything illegal. Like if you’re part owner of a (legal) brothel in Nevada, but present yourself as an upstanding family man otherwise, you might want to hide your brothel income from prying eyes.
It’s a handy place to stash funds for when the country goes communist and they seize all your assets. Even paranoids have good ideas sometimes.
I’ve heard that the hot new place to stash money overseas is in a trust account in the Cook Islands.
It might also be a way to protect assets from seizure, such as a lawsuit or divorce court.
To keep money in a currency other than dollars (the Swiss Franc is very stable) and to keep metals. it also makes it much easier to deal internationally as US banks are really aware of anything beyond the US border.
I imagine some benefits are the same as for many European banks. I keep money in European banks for the following reasons:
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Higher interest rates - English CDs earned at least 1% more interest than they did in the US at the time. I’m uncertain what the difference is right now to tell the truth. We have an HSBC saver account that gets 8% IIRC.
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ATM access without exchange fees.
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Easy ability to deposit checks in Europe.
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Easy ability to write checks in Europe.
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When tied to European credit cards, no exchange fees when paying bills over there.
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Banking centres where one can conduct financial matters.
The downside is you have to fill out those blasted TD-90-22 forms every year to declare you’re not a terrorist or drug dealer, and you have to pay taxes in two countries. But Turbo Tax actually makes that fairly easy to do.
An 8% return on a savings account?? - I think you’re missing a decimal point!
Nope, 8% on a small amount of money.
You just have to have something like £50,000 to be a Premier; I forget but it tells on the website.
I see, you only get it on the money automatically added monthly (to a certain max) to the account though, no?
Yeah. Even though you only can put a max of £3,000 in it, it more than pays for the extra 5 minutes to fill out the extra US forms and the 15 minutes for the relatively simple UK form.