Don't Mess With Taxes

If you watched the Colbert Report last night, you caught his "commercial" for the 2006 Colbert Cruise. The theme this year: taxes, specifically visiting the islands where you can hide your income from the IRS.

Normally, I'd put the link to and/or the video itself in here, but the clip is not working over at Comedy Central. Not funny guys! You can try it yourself here; maybe they'll eventually be able to make it work.

In reality, though, looking for offshore tax havens is usually not a good idea. You might recall from this earlier post, Congress took a look this summer at the proliferation of abusive tax havens. Trust me. Uncle Sam is getting tired of these schemes and is cracking down.

To reinforce that message comes Offshore Tax Scams & Myths, a Web page compiled by a CPA and a tax lawyer in an effort to debunk the many lingering misconceptions about, in their words, "tax havens, foreign trusts, foreign corporations and an assortment of dubious arrangements outside the U.S."

There you'll find two dozen links to tax avoidance "opportunities" that could get you a booked into Club Fed instead of Club Med.

(Thanks to taxalicious for the offshore tip.)