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Uruguay & International Tax Planning | Montevideo US International Tax Lawyer & Attorney

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Hello and welcome to Sherayzen Video Blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.

Today, I’m in Montevideo, Uruguay and I’ve come here because I have a number of meetings with Uruguayan attorneys here. This is a wonderful nation and a wonderful city. It’s very small-scale European compared to Buenos Aires, for example which feels more like a large European city.

I’d like to begin this series of Montevideo with a discussion of what place Uruguay has in the international tax system. Uruguay is very well known for its adherence to a territorial system of taxation, which is very different from that of the United States.

People here on most of their income, only pay taxes on certain worldwide passive income for local residents, unless you’re a newcomer. In this case the Uruguayan government gives you 11 years of tax-free dividends, interest and other types of income that come from outside of Uruguay, if you become a Uruguayan tax resident with certain exceptions for passive income but overall Uruguay is a territorial system of taxation and as such, offers tremendous opportunities for US taxpayers to properly utilize the Uruguayan tax system to minimize their tax burden in the United States including for US taxpayers who wish to surrender their US tax residency and US taxpayers who wish to give up their US citizenship.

In addition to that, the territorial system of taxation with respect to Uruguayan corporations, is also a very valuable asset for US international tax planning. Overall Uruguay, while it’s a small country, has considerable influence – enough to draw the attention of the European Union which has been pressuring Uruguay to change its system and in fact, the Uruguayan government has made a commitment to modify its territorial system of taxation when it comes to IP (intellectual property) income. The details of this commitment are not yet known. What the final law will look like, is not yet known and so as of today, Uruguay continues to be a very attractive place in terms of US international tax planning.

In the next blog, I will continue talking about Uruguay and US international tax reporting requirements.

Thank you for watching, until the next time.

Building IRS Audit Defense Strategy | International Tax Lawyer & Attorney San Antonio

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Hello and welcome to Sherayzen Video Blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.

Today, I’m continuing a series of blogs from San Antonio, Texas. This series of blogs is pretty much devoted to IRS audits, specifically IRS audits of foreign assets and foreign income.

In this blog, I would like to discuss an issue that should concern you in every IRS audit. How should your defense be structured? Of course, I’m not going to be talking about the details of that strategy; that’s impossible because every strategy has to be based on facts of that particular case. It has to be adapted to the particulars of each case; I’m just talking about what the general plan would be and how you choose your strategy.

There are three most important points when choosing a plan of defense in an IRS audit:

  • The first one, I’ve already mentioned, whatever the plan is, it has to be based on the facts of the case – very important. It should not be an abstract plan of defense; it should be one that is based specifically on your facts and circumstances.
  • The second point is that it should be based on the documentation that you have or may be able to get, because ultimately, in the IRS audit, the party that can produce documents to prove its point is the one that will prevail on that point unless the evidence is unconvincing or fraudulant of course. I want to take this opportunity to say that you should never, never ever submit fraudulant documentation to the IRS. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that you cannot produce documentation, that is you can get testimony from a third party or parties about an event that happened. For example, if there was a repair or major repair done to a building that you owned, then you can go to the contractor and get a statement from the contractor that the major repair was done, this is how much was paid to me for doing this and this and this work. Of course, if the builder has the original invoices, even better.
  • Point number three is that whatever the strategy is that you choose must be logical and should be presented in the form of a story about what had happened. Basically, if your story does not make sense, it’s not a good strategy. Strategy must be logical and based on the facts of the case – a logical sequence of events – very important.

If you’re being audited by the IRS, and you would like to secure professional help with respect to your IRS audit, you can call me at (952) 500-8159 or you can email me at [email protected]

Thank you for watching, until the next time.

FBAR Compliance in San Antonio | FBAR International Tax Lawyer San Antonio Texas

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Hello and welcome to Sherayzen Video Blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.

Today, I’m continuing a series of blogs from San Antonio, Texas and this series of blogs is devoted to IRS audits, how they happen, when they happen and what way is the best way in dealing with them.

In the previous blog, I discussed how one should behave with respect to IRS agents. In this blog I’d like to discuss a slightly different issue and step away a little bit directly from litigation and talk about San Antonio’s specific issues. In particular, I want to talk about FBAR compliance for San Antonians: FBAR, the report of foreign bank and financial accounts is one of the most important information returns that one has to file with respect to his foreign bank and financial accounts, specifically with respect to his financial interest in or signatory authority over foreign bank and financial accounts.

In this case, we’re talking about foreign accounts which are located outside of the United States of course. When we are talking about FBAR compliance, with respect to San Antonians, you have to understand what countries are most likely to be involved in FBAR compliance. What I’m talking about is specifically with respect to San Antonians. From my experience here, most of the San Antonians, who have to file FBARs, have assets in Mexico, Spain and/or Germany. In reality, you sometimes get people from all over the world; there are people from Sri Lanka, for example. There are also people from England, people from Italy, Colombia and so basically while Spain, Germany and Mexico are the major countries involved in FBAR compliance, these are not the only countries. It is very important to be in compliance with your FBAR requirements; I cannot stress this enough. We’re talking about humongous penalties in case of FBAR noncompliance; penalties that may extend to actual jail time depending on the circumstances of the (your) case.

If you would like to learn more about FBAR compliance and you are a resident of San Antonio, call me at (952) 500-8159 or email me at [email protected]

Thank you for watching, until the next time.

Strategy and Behavior During IRS Audit | International Tax Audit Attorney San Antonio Texas

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Hello and welcome to Sherayzen Video Blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.

Today, I’m continuing my series of blogs from San Antonio, Texas. In the previous blog, I discussed the importance of full disclosure of facts to your international tax attorney after you receive your IRS letter and after you contact your attorney or retain your attorney with respect to this audit.

In this blog, I would like to discuss the importance of proper behavior with respect to IRS agents. There is an absolutely erroneous opinion which is being propagated by unsavory characters (let’s put it this way) that the best strategy in an IRS audit is to be aggressive against the IRS and deny everything, do not sign anything, basically no matter what the facts of your circumstances are, be as hostile to the IRS as possible.

This is absolutely wrong; I cannot tell you how wrong this is. The IRS has tremendous powers to find out about your case to enforce the law against you and to basically punish you for being noncooperative during their investigation and in most cases, but I would say in all cases but as an attorney, I cannot say ‘in all cases’, in the vast majority of cases, let’s put it this way. In the vast majority of cases, the best strategy is the one that is adapted to the facts of the case. In the vast majority of these cases, the strategy is one of cooperation, honesty, disclosure but strong defense of your position. Ethical defense. Logical defense. Defense that does not offend the IRS personally but the one that states your position in the logical, legally, justified way.

You want to have a cordial relationship with the IRS agent. You want the IRS agent to understand that you are not a criminal; that you are not a person who lies. You want them to trust you with respect to what you tell them. They want to trust your ability to deliver on what you promised to deliver.

The strategy that is based on lying to the IRS, hiding from the IRS, swearing at the IRS, fighting them at every point whether it is necessary or not necessary is completely wrong. This is not to say that your defense should not be strong, of course, you must always strongly defend your position as long as it is a justifiable position. There are certain points that sometimes are better to be conceded and explained. The defense of your case will be based on a strategy, not on hostility to the IRS, because hostility to the IRS is usually a counterproductive way to conduct and IRS audit. As I’ve said: cordial, polite but a strong defense; you will have your position, you will have your facts and this position and these facts should form the basis of your defense against the IRS.

If you would like to learn more about an IRS audit, and if you’d like to secure my help with respect to your defense in an IRS audit, you can call me at (952) 500-8159 or you can email me at [email protected]

You can call me at (952) 500-8159 or you can email me at [email protected]

Thank you for watching, until the next time.

IRS Audit Preparation With Annual Tax Compliance | IRS International Tax Audit Lawyer San Antonio

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Hello and welcome to Sherayzen Video Blog. My name is Eugene Sherayzen and I’m an international tax attorney and owner of Sherayzen Law Office, Ltd.

Today, I’m continuing my series of blogs from San Antonio, Texas. In this series of blogs, I discuss issues related to IRS audits. In the previous video, I mentioned that the Inflation Reduction Act provided a humongous sum of money to the IRS to hire new IRS agents to conduct field audits. In fact the IRS said that it has plans to increase its staff by 40,000 people; this is an enormous amount of people. This means that the capacity of the IRS to audit US taxpayers is going to increase manifold.

In the previous video, I also mentioned that it is important for taxpayers to start preparing for an IRS audit before it actually happens. What does it mean to be preparing for an IRS audit? First of all, the preparation for an IRS audit must begin before a tax return is ever submitted, meaning that all tax positions that you are taking should be well documented and even better, if they’re not only documented but also disclosed to the IRS. That is do not take a position, with respect to a tax issue and not disclose it to the IRS. If the IRS later disagrees with you, they may think that you actually did it intentionally or tried to hide something. In this case, in order to avoid this issue, it is better to basically disclose it in a small statement saying, for example, “based on the IRC section internal revenue code, we’re taking the position that this and this and this must happen”. That’s it; a small statement, you don’t have to provide a huge analysis, just disclose it to the IRS either as an IRS audit at that point, the IRS cannot claim willfulness in your approach as long as your position is reasonable of course, based to a degree on certain facts.

Preparation for an IRS audit must happen already when the tax return is being prepared and submitted to the IRS; that’s the first stage.

The second stage is to get supporting documentation, organize it and that means not only getting the bank statements or statements from your broker but it also means getting the statements from third parties in support for your position – that’s the second stage of preparation.

The final stage of the preparation for an IRS audit involves saving all of that information; that is very important. Many people think that once they have prepared everything and put everything together, that it is enough. In reality, there may be years before an IRS audit happens and if you do not have this information, you will not be able to prove to the IRS that you once had it. Please make sure that you safeguard the information related to a possible audit.

In the next video, I will discuss how an IRS audit begins.

Thank you for watching, until the next time.