An offshore zone is a country, city, district within which foreign companies can make financial transactions with non-residents (other foreign companies) without government intervention.
For states creating favorable conditions for foreign business, the offshore zone is a measure caused by the need to invest in their budget. This industry began to arise 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 rather loyal tax 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 operations in any currency, and to keep records in foreign currency. Because of the benefits provided, offshore countries surged in a wave of people wishing to withdraw their companies. Experts say that it is difficult to calculate the exact number of companies that have been withdrawn because of the anonymity of the business, but there are definitely more than 1 million of them. The list of offshore zones is quite large. But mostly companies are being withdrawn to Panama, the British Virgin Islands and to Ireland.
Income is the sum of taxes paid, registration, re-registration, rental of premises in the area of permanent missions of secretary bureau establishments. A special feature is that offshore companies may be offered to employ the population, create vacant places for local residents. The countries of the offshore zone, as a rule, are states with a 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 of the investment incentive for income tax in 2004, domestic offshores (Yakutia, Kalmykia, etc.) were abolished. The only remaining offshore zone is the Kaliningrad region, which accepts exclusively residents from special zones.
Nowadays, Russia is one of the first places to withdraw money from 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, it is not able to take drastic measures, since offshore companies have become part of the UK economy.
Today, offshore companies are used not only to
optimize taxes, but also in order to hide the true owners. Russia is considering a bill that will identify the true owners of foreign companies so that there is an opportunity to bring them to criminal or administrative liability. Recently, many countries are already fighting offshore zones, but measures to find the final beneficiary are rarely used. Financial institutions value their reputation very much, and therefore will not disclose information about their customers.
Experts believe that the struggle with the owners will not lead to anything good, this will help to ensure that foreign companies begin to withdraw their investments from the country, this will not affect the economy very well. And therefore, it is advised to come up with something alternative to offshore.