Archive for August 8th, 2008
Friday, August 8th, 2008
The United States has to leave Guantanamo Base, said President Oscar Arias. He thus supported Cuba in the historical complaint for the occupation of Guantanamo Island, located off the southeastern tip of the island nation, by the U.S. armed forces. Dr. Arias said Washington has to return the enclave to Havana, in a goodwill sign towards the normalization of the relations between the two nations. The 1986 Nobel Peace Award added that he had said to Bill Clinton during his first term that the U.S. cannot ask Cuba anything without offering something in exchange. He added that after the events in Guantanamo and the violation of basic human rights at the prison there, it is high time for the enclave to be returned to Cuba.
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
The ministra de Seguridad Pública, Jannina Del Vecchio, blames the problems of insecurity in the country on drugs and declares red alert for consumption of crack.
Del Vecchio is responding to results of a poll by Demoscopía for the Spanish daily, Al Día, which indicated there is an increase in the feeling that the government is doing a “bad” job at solving the security problem. The poll shows that 42.1% polled in July say the government is not handling the security problem well, compared to 31.5% in April, the time when Del Vecchio took over the post from Fernando Berrocal, who was fired. (more…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) – the country’s sole provider of telecommunications – has promised 1.5 million cellular lines next year, as it gears up for the coming of cellular services competition and to meet the growing demands for cellular service. However, there is one problem.
ICE began the tendering process for bidders for the new cellular system called 3G. However, so far only one bidder has shown interest, a Chinese consortium Huadwei Techonologies and at more than double the price estimated by ICE for the system. (more…)
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
The bottom line is you should always conduct business in CR via a corporation. There are definite tax and liability implications. Canadian residents are lucky…any income earned outside of Canada is not taxed by Canada. The US is different, all income, regardless of where it is earned, is taxed. CR and the US do not have a tax treaty, so you will pay the CR government 30% and the US government 35% if the shares are in your name.
If they are in a corporation, not only do you have anonymity from the IRS perspective, but there are some tax strategies that can be implemented through countries that do have tax treaties with the US. And by that I mean if it is taxed in these countries at, say 15%, the US will not tax the income when you bring it home. It’s all very complicated, which is why the world needs tax attorneys. Also, there are some strategies the attorneys can use by treating some of the income as capital gains, etc. to reduce the CR tax to 15 or 20%. We could potentially see a reduction in our tax bill from 65% to 30% by listening to the guys that know how to do this. It’s all legal, but we need the experts to tell us how to do it. This is what rich people do…I’d like to be rich, wouldn’t you?
This is why it is prudent to wait for the tax attorney’s recommendation.
Also, if you buy personal property in CR like a car, you should buy it under a separate corporation. If you get in an accident and you are sued, they sue the corporation. If the corporation has no assets, you lose nothing personally.
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