Re: "Time to Walk the Walk down the Gang Plank"

[Ryan Lackey <rdl@mit.edu>]

[regarding TC May's comment that it still wasn't practical to live off
of exclusively offshore investment income tax-free, and that advocates
of offshore banking did not even claim it was, but that it might be in
10 years.]

What exactly makes it impractical to live off of the investment income
from off-shore investments exclusively?  I'm kind of broke right now, but
I was assuming that the combination of a set of offshore accounts
and an offshore visa card used to pay for practically everything, as
well as perhaps smuggled in cash and gold/etc. which could be sold outside
of reported channels would be enough to allow you to pay untracededly
for almost everything.  Then, if you did not have a primary residence
in the United States, but rather spent life living in a college dorm
(which is unlikely to flag anything at the IRS, being part of a bill which
is routinely paid by third parties, often from outside of the US), on a
boat registered outside of the US, or visiting places around the country
and world, plus had some plausible way of hiding this extra income of
yours, you could get by reporting only an abusrdly low amount of income
from a part time job or something, and no one would be the wiser.

Then, as your income/assets grew, you could continue to dump money from
off-the-record sources into an offshore account, continue to use the
offshore account for real and untraced purchases, and continue to draw
your small salary to show that you are paying taxes and are just poor.
Then, graduate from university and live the rest of your life vacationing
around the world, or skip the first step if you're smart. (From what I
know of IRS auditing procedures, they'd be remarkably more apt to find
out if someone with a real income's income suddenly fell to $4k/year and
stayed there from $100k+/year with no explanation given than if mine went
from -$30k a year to -$26k/year, so starting when you're broke might be
a decent plan.)

Are there any major obvious holes in this plan?  Now all I need is to
do some useful, crypto-anarchist work and be
paid under the table, perhaps taking a month or two vacation to 
Antigua or someplace in the process.

---
Ryan Lackey
rdl@MIT.EDU
http://mit.edu/rdl/www/