" /> JS 67: Puerto Rico Tax Advantages for Real Estate Investors with Nick Giambruno Senior Editor at Casey Research | Jet Setter Show

JS 67: Puerto Rico Tax Advantages for Real Estate Investors with Nick Giambruno Senior Editor at Casey Research

June 6th, 2014 by Jason | Comments Off on JS 67: Puerto Rico Tax Advantages for Real Estate Investors with Nick Giambruno Senior Editor at Casey Research

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Nick Giambruno is a Senior Editor at Casey Research. He joins the show to tell us about Puerto Rico’s new tax advantages. Giambruno discusses, in detail, the good places to live in Puerto Rico and how easy it is to buy, sell and own real estate in Puerto Rico. Giambruno then defines the basics of internationalization and discusses the investment opportunities in Cypress.

Nick is Doug Casey’s globetrotting protégé and has a long-held passion for internationalization. He has lived in Europe and worked in the Middle East, most recently in Beirut and Dubai, where he covered regional banks and other companies for an investment bank. He is a published author focusing on international diversification strategies that help people reduce their dependence on any one country. This is a strategy that Doug Casey helped pioneer and makes it very difficult for any government to control one’s destiny. In short, Nick’s objective is to help people make the most of their personal freedom and financial opportunity around the world.

Nick is a CFA charterholder and holds a bachelor’s degree in finance, summa cum laude. He is senior editor at Doug Casey’s InternationalMan.com, where he writes about offshore banking, second passports, surviving an economic collapse, offshore trusts and companies, geopolitics, and crisis investing, among other topics. Visit Casey Research at www.caseyresearch.com.

Get Nick Giambruno’s special report titled, “Puerto Rico’s Stunning New Tax Advantages” by clicking here.


ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the JetSetter Show, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. Enjoy and learn from a variety of experts on topics ranging from upscale travel at wholesale prices, to retiring overseas, to global real estate and business opportunities, to tax havens and expatriate opportunities. You’ll get great ideas on unique cultures, causes, and cruise vacations. Whether you’re wealthy or just want to live a wealthy lifestyle, the JetSetter Show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the JetSetter Show! This is Jason Hartman, your host, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. I think you’ll enjoy the interview we have for you today, and we will be back with that, in less than 60 seconds, here on the JetSetter Show.

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JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Nick Giambruno to the show! And today, you’re going to hear something that is completely awesome, potentially. He’s a senior editor at Casey Research. We’ve had Doug Casey on my Creating Wealth Show several times. And he’s here to talk today about a topic I learned of a while back, and it is the excellent tax benefits offered by Puerto Rico. You are not going to believe what you hear. Nick, welcome. How are you?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: I’m doing great, Jason. Thanks for having me.

JASON HARTMAN: Good, good. And you’re coming to us from New York City today, is that correct?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes, that’s correct.

JASON HARTMAN: Okay. And my first question to you was, why don’t you live in Puerto Rico. But, some personal issues. This is a pretty phenomenal opportunity, it sounds like. Tell us about the opportunity, and then, of course, I’m going to ask you, Nick, what’s the catch?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah, definitely. Well, first, I would definitely be in Puerto Rico. I’m just ironing out some personal issues with my girlfriend. And then, yeah, in the intermediate term, it’s definitely an option that’s very attractive. In fact, two of my colleagues have moved to Puerto Rico with their families, and have established themselves down there.

JASON HARTMAN: Other than the very high murder rate, I love it.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah. Well, that’s probably the number one concern, but that’s actually—yeah, you have to look at the details of that. Because the murder rate—the crime rate is comparable to Memphis, Tennessee, and that’s, they take the area of San Juan as the capital of Puerto Rico, and the big city, and that’s where people always talk about when they’re talking about crime. And you know, the same issues of crime apply to Puerto Rico as they would in any big city in the world, whether it’s Rio, New York City, and so forth. However—

JASON HARTMAN: Well, if you want to get into American crime, I mean, the worst is probably Detroit or Chicago. I mean, you know—

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes.

JASON HARTMAN: Go ahead.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes. So, the point is, is that you wouldn’t take those crime rates for Detroit or Chicago and extrapolate them for Illinois and Michigan. It wouldn’t deter you from say, moving to different parts of Michigan, just because of bad crime in Detroit. And the same is true in Puerto Rico. There are rougher neighborhoods, but there are very nice neighborhoods, in San Juan, and there are very safe areas throughout the island. It’s a big island, too. That’s an important point to stress. This isn’t some tiny Banana Republic in the Caribbean. This is a huge, developed island, and taking the crime statistics for one part of it and stretching it and extrapolating it for the entire island, is just as much a mistake as you would if you did the same thing for Detroit and Michigan as a whole.

JASON HARTMAN: So, first of all, tell us about the tax opportunity, or the opportunity to really have either no or very, very low tax.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes. Now, to understand how big of an opportunity is, you have to understand how Americans are taxed. Americans are the only nationality, effectively, in the world that are taxes on their worldwide income regardless of where they are a resident. Most—every other nationality in the world—say, Canadians, for instance—they could just move from Canada to, say, the Cayman Islands, which has zero income taxes, zero taxes on basically anything, and operate there in a pretty much tax-free environment. If they became a resident of Cayman Islands. As an American though, it’s different. The US government levies taxes on you no matter where you’re a resident. So, if an American moved to the Cayman Islands, or to Dubai, or to Singapore, they would still have to pay taxes to the American government, and file taxes, no matter where they live, and no matter where they earn their income. So that’s really a unique, unfortunate attribute of being an American. Puerto Rico is different, because it is actually part of the US. And it has a unique status, because it’s not a state, and it’s not a foreign country. It’s what’s known as a commonwealth, or a territory. And the way it’s set up is—and the way it’s existed for over 100 years—is that Puerto Rican residents, they’re all US citizens, but they do not have to pay federal taxes on their Puerto Rican sourced income. They pay taxes on that income to the Puerto Rican government. And this arrangement allows for the Puerto Rican government to offer incentives to Americans who move—mainland Americans who move to Puerto Rico, that no other jurisdiction really can offer.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. That’s fantastic. So, when I first heard about this from an asset protection attorney I was talking with, he said that it was—the tax rate was 6.75%, but you really have to dice that up, and this is why a lot of the hedge fund guys are moving there and so forth. Tell us about—what is the tax rate?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes, sure. So there are two programs here. There’s programs—the first program is geared towards individuals. It’s called the Act 22, the Individual Investors Act. This act reduces capital gains, interest income, and dividend tax rates to zero. Now, there’s a little caveat there, is that that income, investment income, has to be sourced in Puerto Rico. Now, what does that mean? That means, if you have interest, it has to come from a Puerto Rican bank. If you have dividends, it has to come from a Puerto Rican corporation. Now, that on its own is kind of limiting. It’s not—you know, okay, so what, I can get interest free on a CD in a Puerto Rican bank. But the big issue here is capital gains. Because the source of capital gains is determined by where you are. So, you could move to Puerto Rico, you could keep your Fidelity, you could keep your E-Trade, you could trade stocks. And the capital gains on those stocks would count as Puerto Rican sourced income. Therefore applicable to the benefits, which is zero. So, that is where the real benefit is in the investment income.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, so let me just comment on that. First of all, if you invest in the stock market, you’re not likely to actually have any capital gains [LAUGHTER], since Wall Street is the modern version of organized crime, as I like to say. But the insiders in the stock game, the hedge fund managers—I know they’ve been moving to Puerto Rico. I know some of these people that have fallen for Bitcoin, just like the Tulip Bulb Craze—they’ve talked about moving, and maybe some have, I’m sure, to Puerto Rico to cash in their capital gains, when Bitcoin was at 1200, and now it’s at less than 500 I believe. So, that’s all over the board. I suppose you could do this with real estate too. I don’t know though. Maybe real estate’s a little different. The nice thing about real estate, it’s so tax favored, you can just 1031 exchange it all your life, and then pass it on to your heirs, and the basis steps up to market value at the time of your death. So, that makes it incredibly favored. But say you want to cash out of some real estate, and you don’t want to do an exchange. Is that treated differently, because real estate is sort of a local type of physical asset?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes—that’s something that—it depends where the real estate is located, and individual circumstances in the case of real estate. Now, also, the tax benefits for the individuals and the capital gains—it doesn’t just apply to the stock market. It can apply to literally anything. If you have gold coins, if you have a private business located in the US. Pretty much anything. Real estate is kind of a special case, and most of the time it applies, but you’re gonna have to work that out with an attorney—at tax professional who looks at the whole picture of your tax circumstances—

JASON HARTMAN: And I’m just gonna take a stab here, and you know, I always have to make the disclaimer, I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a tax advisor. But, I’m kind of thinking there might be a way around that. If the real estate is held in an entity, and maybe, maybe, depends where the entity is based or incorporated, I don’t know. Just a thought.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes. That’s a possibility. Let me give you an example. You know how I just told you about how dividends and interests—the benefits are kind of limiting? There actually is a strategy to sort of resource your dividend and your interest income. So, for example, what you would do is you would form a mutual fund in Puerto Rico. You would have the mutual fund own stocks in the US and bonds in the US, and get that interest and that dividend. But then the mutual fund could pay you a dividend, and that would kind of resource the investment income as Puerto Rican sourced income. That’s a possible strategy. That doesn’t work for everybody, but if you have somebody set it up, it can work.

JASON HARTMAN: Very interesting. Okay. And how hard is it to start your own mutual fund?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Well, it doesn’t have to be that hard. It can just have one shareholder, and it—you know, it’s gonna take some cost, some talk—talking to a lawyer, and you know, tax professional, so maybe for a small scale it’s not really worth it. But if you’re doing larger scale, and you’re a high net worth individual, or you’re managing money, it could be worth it. Now, the other aspect to the tax advantages are for businesses. Certain businesses—these are for service businesses. Now, what they do is that Puerto Rico has offered companies who perform exported services. Namely, if you’re in Puerto Rico, and you perform a service for somebody outside of Puerto Rico, say like a consultant or writer, with clients outside of Puerto Rico, they reduce your effective corporate income taxing—excuse me, corporate tax rate—to 4%. In some cases 3%.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, well, I was going to say, most people listening probably have some sort of online business. And they’re in that kind of a situation, I guess.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Well, that’s perfect for them then.

JASON HARTMAN: Right, okay. So, basically, your online business, you move to Puerto Rico personally, and how much time do you have to actually spend there? Is it 181 days per year, or something?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Well, there’s a couple of ways to meet this requirement. Generally speaking, yes, you have to be there around 183 days a year.

JASON HARTMAN: Oh, 183?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah. However—days leaving and days entering Puerto Rico count towards that 183 day total. However, if you spend more—if you spend more time outside of the US and Puerto Rico—say for example, if you lived in Argentina, Switzerland, and Nicaragua, you split your time between those countries, all you would have to do was spend 90 days outside of the US—excuse me, 90 days maximum in the US. So, there are other ways to meet this requirement than just spending 183 days in Puerto Rico.

JASON HARTMAN: Explain that a little more, if you would. So, you can’t spend more than 90 days in the US, first of all, right?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: If—yes. If you also—first of all, Puerto Rico has to be—you know, genuinely has to be your main home. The IRS has a different number of objective and subjective metrics it looks when making that determination, and you really don’t want to leave any room for ambiguity. But that said, if you travel a lot, you can—you don’t have to spend 183 days in Puerto Rico. It just has to be your main residence, in terms of you know, where you keep your car, where your kids go to school, where your spouse lives. But you could also spend time in other countries. It just has—Puerto Rico has to be the main one.

JASON HARTMAN: Alright. Now, you started off by talking about the individual program.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes.

JASON HARTMAN: Did we complete the thought there? Just summarize it for us, if you would.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes. The individual program, it’s called Act 22, the Individual Investors Act, and this reduced the investment income tax to zero, for certain types of investment income that can be sourced to Puerto Rico. You can do that method that I described early with the mutual fund to transform non-Puerto Rican dividend and interest income into Puerto Rican sourced income, but where the main benefit is for most people in that individual part, is with capital gains. And it’s—capital gains can be, you know, on stocks that you trade on your brokerage account, it can be with gold coins, it can be with collectibles, it can be with basically anything. So that is where the main benefit of the Individual Investor Act is, is that it can basically reduce your capital gains to zero. So, Eduardo Saverin, he would have been much better off—well, the option didn’t exist back then, but he would have been much better off, if the option existed, to go to Puerto Rico.

JASON HARTMAN: Very interesting. Okay. Now, I suppose, since you segmented that, that’s the individual program.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes.

JASON HARTMAN: What is the corporate program? Is that the next thing you were going to say?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah, the corporate program, we were describing that a little bit—that’s where you have a business—it has to be a service business, it can’t be a manufacturing, or anything like that. it has to be a service business, and it’s a pretty broad latitude on what a service business can be. It can be for researchers, it can be for people who manage other people’s money, it can be for engineering—it can be for a lot of things. It can be for radio shows. Basically, if you’re doing something in Puerto Rico, and your client is outside of Puerto Rico, you can qualify for a 4% corporate tax rate.

JASON HARTMAN: So, what is the best way to approach this, then? If someone wants to take advantage of the Puerto Rico opportunity, which is pretty incredible, because you don’t have to relinquish your citizenship, you can be a US citizen, you know, you can still, I guess sort of live in the United States, if you consider Puerto Rico the United States, which legally it is. But, I mean, anybody can set up entities. It’s pretty easy to do all that stuff. Do you have sort of a best practices for this?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Well, we do, and it’s not necessarily—Puerto Rico, it can be—it’s pretty simple, the benefits, looking at the benefits. But how it applies to everybody in their individual cases, can kind of be complex. So what we did, is we put together a pretty comprehensive report on this topic. You can find more about that on InternationalMan.com. Like I mentioned, two of my colleagues have—you know, we’re not speaking from theory here. Two individuals from our company have gone through and done this process, and we’re looking at further options with our company too. So, we’ve done this, we’re on the ground there, and we know the people who grant these tax benefits, and we know the law firms and the tax accountants and so forth. So, we have an on the ground presence there. So I would recommend, if you want further details, to check out that report. And you can find it at InternationalMan.com.

JASON HARTMAN: Okay, cool. Well, what other details can you give us here, though? We’ve got a little bit more time. I mean, you know, how about, best places to live within Puerto Rico? I mean, we talked about how the big city is crime infested, like most big cities. But, where are the expats living? Where are the American expats?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah. Well, it’s not all of—San Juan is the capital, the big city, and not all of San Juan is crime infested. There actually are some very beautiful areas in San Juan. In fact, one of my colleagues lives in San Juan. The area is called Condado; it’s right by the beach, so, it’s an upscale area, but you know, you can find condos—the price varies so much, but you can find it from, you know, basically $150,000 up. And you’re a couple of blocks away from the beach. So, Condado, and Old San Juan is another interesting area of San Juan. So, Condado, old San Juan, and the greater San Juan area. Outside of San Juan, there’s some other places too, if you’re a really high end individual, you can look at a place called Durado. It’s a gated community. This is where Peter Schiff is moving eventually. Peter Schiff, I didn’t mention. He’s moved his asset management business to Puerto Rico, and he himself will move to the island at some point in the future, but he’s bought a place in what’s known as Durado. It’s a gated community, it’s a little bit to the west of San Juan, the capital.

JASON HARTMAN: How much does that cost, to live there? I mean, you know, do you know what Peter Schiff bought? It’s an interesting point. Peter Schiff is, of course, very anti-tax. His father, Irwin Schiff, I believe is still in prison, as a tax protestor?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: He is, yes.

JASON HARTMAN: That’s a lot of conviction. To, you know, be willing to give up your freedom—taxes aren’t that bad. They’re bad, but they’re not that bad. So, what did he buy? Do you know what he paid for his place?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: His condo? I’m not sure. It was a multimillion dollar condo, I’m not sure the exact price. But it’s definitely higher end. If you’re looking in Durado, you’re looking at a couple million dollars, I would assume. I don’t know exactly what Peter paid for it. Excuse me, I meant Durado. Durado is the top shelf area, if you’re looking for, you know, gated communities in Puerto Rico. There’s a number of gated communities in Puerto Rico. My other colleague, Alex Daley, lives in a community called Palmas del Mar. It’s—he describes it as just as nice as—pretty much as nice as Durado, but it’s a fraction of the price. And that’s in—it’s kind of in the southeast part of the island. So, that’s another place people could look at too. Palmas del Mar, is what it’s called.

JASON HARTMAN: And what else should people know about this? I mean, just start looking for real estate, and plan to move there, and you know, you can travel elsewhere, and what happens? Do you have to do anything, or you still file a tax return, right? And your taxes are just massively reduced?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: It depends. I mean, if you can structure your affairs so 100% of your income comes from Puerto Rican sources, you do not have to file a federal tax return. So, for example, Puerto Ricans are US citizens. They’re—you know, they can come and work on the mainland. But Puerto Ricans that have lived in Puerto Ricans their whole life—they don’t have to file a tax return to the IRS. They file it to the Puerto Rican authorities. So you’ll have to file it to the Puerto Rican authorities. But if you can structure your affairs where you’re a Puerto Rican resident, and 100% of your income is derived from Puerto Rican sources, and you don’t have to file a federal tax return—of course, caveat, I’m not a tax professional. But generally speaking, you don’t. But you should, of course, have a tax professional look at your situation before you do all this stuff. One thing to consider too is, these—a lot of people are worried about how the US government could react if they see a lot of people doing this. They think, oh, they could just turn it off overnight, you know, find some way to close this loop—and it’s not a loophole, but they could find some way to adjust the language in the law that would nullify the tax incentives. Now, it’s very possible they could do that. However, they also would face a cost. Because the fact of the matter is that these programs are helping Puerto Rico with its financial situation. And if they stopped, it would be more likely that the US would have to come in with some sort of bailout, or even more financial aid to the island. So that’s one important thing to consider; that if the US federal government sought to end these benefits, they might be shooting themselves in the foot, because it might come back to bite them in the form of a bailout.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, you know, I was going to ask you, why would the IRS allow this? They’re just losing their shirt! But in the big picture, with the government’s business plan, you can sort of see why it could make sense for them. Because they’re getting another problem solved, right? Not having to do a bailout.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah. And it’s—that’s true. And it’s important to emphasize that, this arrangement with Puerto Rico has existed for almost 100 years. Not these specific tax benefits. These specific tax benefits are a couple of years old. The framework in which the tax benefits work, though, have existed for about 100 years. So, this is nothing new to the federal government. That they know that Puerto Rico can structure these tax incentives in that way. So that’s not a huge surprise to them. So yeah, that is one reason why they might not decide to end these benefits. Another reason is that it would fundamentally change the nature of the relationship with the US and Puerto Rico. If the US changed this, it would undermine the commonwealth status of the island. Now, that could also happen if Puerto Rico became the 51st state. But this is, you know, we don’t see this issue being pushed. It’s languished for decades, and we don’t see anything imminently or on the horizon that would cause Puerto Rico to become the 51st state. Because if it did, yes, the tax benefits would go away in that case too.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, then they could have a situation where they have low or no state income tax, as, you know, Wyoming, Texas, Florida, Washington state, and others have. But of course, you’d be subject to the federal tax. This is just an amazing opportunity to basically get out of paying the federal tax, isn’t it?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes. It’s really—short of renunciation and death, it’s the only way.

JASON HARTMAN: Wow. That’s just amazing. That is just amazing. Now, some people have asked me about the US Virgin Islands, saying that they offer the same types of tax benefits that are available in Puerto Rico. True, or false?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Well, sort of. It’s comparing apples to oranges. US Virgin Islands—first of all, you have to understand that the Puerto Rico decision is not just a tax decision, it’s not just an investment decision. It’s a lifestyle decision, because you have to go and you have to live there for a certain number of days. And living in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands is completely different. Puerto Rico is much bigger, much more developed, much more infrastructure, and so forth. With that being said, the benefits in the Virgin Islands typically were geared towards wealthy, very high net worth individuals that can structure these complex partnership or foundation type structures. So, it really wasn’t within reach of say, your average business owner—or service business owner, or average individual. Puerto Rico’s benefits are within reach of those people. That’s the difference.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, they’re pretty easy to do. Okay, good. Well, anything else you want the listeners to know, Nick? Give out your website one more time.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah, sure. It’s InternationalMan.com. And, you know, we have a couple of articles that might be of interest. I interviewed Peter Schiff about his move to Puerto Rico, and the move of his company to Puerto Rico. But one thing I’d like to add, is that the way these benefits are set up, is that they’re set up as a contract that you have with the Puerto Rican government. Sort of like a private decree that they give you. And once you obtain this private decree, the benefits are valid for about 20 years. So that protects you from changes in the Puerto Rican government. So it’s like, if the Puerto Rican government changed tomorrow and said, hey, we’re going to cut off these tax benefits—you know, they could, but they could cut them off only to new people. If you have already obtained your private decree, which is a legally enforceable contract, then it’s—you’re pretty much set. You have tax certainty, which is a pretty interesting notion, because who knows what the tax rates are going to be tomorrow in the US? You don’t know. But if you go to Puerto Rico and you get a private decree, you will know what your tax rates are going to be. It’ll be zero, and in some cases 4%. So, that certainty is a big deal.

JASON HARTMAN: Is there a time limit on that? That decree?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah, 20 years. Once you obtain the decree, they’ll ask for 20 years.

JASON HARTMAN: Wow. Get out of your big tax burden for two decades. That’s just amazing. And when you talked about the number of days, and so forth, is that within a calendar year, like within a tax year? Or, you know, say for example someone is hearing this now, and they’re thinking, okay, part of the year has passed. I’m gonna do this next week. It’s such an incredible deal, it’s such an incredible opportunity. What do they do? Would it be available to—is it like a trailing 12 months, or is it a calendar year, that helps you qualify?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: No, usually it’s the tax year. But here’s how it works too. For an individual, I’ll give you the example, Louis James, my colleague—he writes about junior mining stocks in the precious metals market. He moved—he moved to Puerto Rico on January 1st of this year. Now, the day that you move to Puerto Rico, that’s the day that your cost basis is set for that point on. You have zero capital gains tax. So, the day you move, is when that cost basis is reset. It’s not the day that you obtain residency; it’s the day that you change what’s known as your tax home. So once Puerto Rico becomes your tax home, which for most people is the day that you move, that’s when your cost basis is set. And from that point on, you don’t pay any capital gains tax.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. Awesome. Well, Nick, thank you so much for telling about this really just an amazing opportunity, and I’d encourage people to look into it more, and you can find that on Nick’s website, and get that special report. Do you want to mention a price for that report, by the way, Nick?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah, the report is $199. But it’s also been verified by one of the most prominent law firms, the facts of it, and the whole report have been given the stamp of approval by one of the most prominent law firms in Puerto Rico. It’s been reviewed by government officials, it’s been reviewed by a lot of professionals. So, this is verified information that comes from the experience that I have in researching this topic, and that my two colleagues have in actually implementing these incentives for themselves. So, it’s information I don’t think you can really find anywhere else, and if you’re serious about this option, it will definitely save you time and money when you have to talk to a tax professional or an accountant, that you’ll know exactly what you need to do.

JASON HARTMAN: That’s actually one more thing I was going to ask you. Sorry to sort of make this ending sort of played out.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: No, no worries!

JASON HARTMAN: But if someone gets your report, they read it, they still have questions, where do they go, you know? I don’t know that my CPA is an expert on this type of thing. I don’t know that my attorneys are experts on this type of thing. Any particular—I know there are certainly attorneys and CPAs that specialize in internationalization, but did you want to mention any of those now?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Oh, certainly. Because this—in our report, we list our trusted professional resources that we have personally used and personally vetted. So we do provide references to lawyers, to tax accountants, who are familiar with this, because this is a very specialized area. And 99.9% of people in these fields, you know, don’t really know about Puerto Rico. That’s why it’s important—and those in Puerto Rico don’t know about the US side of the law. So it’s very important to know, and find individuals, professionals, who are familiar, not only with the US side of things, but with the Puerto Rico side of things. And that’s not an easy thing to do. And that’s what we’ve listed in our report, and these are people that we’ve worked with, and we can vouch for, that they provided value, and they know what they’re talking about.

JASON HARTMAN: And I assume that there’s no asset protection benefit with Puerto Rico, you know, since it is a US territory. You’ll lower your tax rate, but creditor wise, and things like that, those courts will all recognize US judgments, all those banks will, and so forth, right?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes. That’s true. But the flip side to that is that your private decree, and your private contract of those tax benefits, those are also protected by that same court system, so this is not just like some Banana Republic that can shred up contracts. This court system works within the US court system. So when you get those private benefits enshrined in that decree, it’s really backed up by that court system. But that being said, you certainly don’t have to keep your money in Puerto Rico. If I was living in Puerto Rico, I’d keep my money in a safe offshore bank account, say in Hong Kong, or Singapore, or within a trust, a Cook Islands trust. There’s no need for you to live in Puerto Rico and then also keep your money in Puerto Rico. You can generate your income pretty much tax-free in Puerto Rico, and then move that income, move that money wherever you see fit.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. Well, very interesting opportunity. Nick, thanks for telling us about it.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah, any time, Jason.

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ANNOUNCER: What’s great about the shows you’ll find on www.jasonhartman.com is that if you want to learn more about investing in real estate in different markets, there’s a show for that! If you want to learn 17 ways rich people think and act differently, there’s a show for that! If you want to know how to get paid to borrow, there’s a show for that! And if you’d like to know why Amsterdam doesn’t take dollars, or why pools are for fools, there are even shows for that. Yep! There’s a show for just about anything. Only from www.jasonhartman.com. Or type in Jason Hartman in the iTunes store!

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ANNOUNCER: This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com, or email [email protected]. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for any individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network, Inc. exclusively.

Transcribed by David

The Jetsetter Show Team

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