In 2015, Katie Anaina realized she wasn’t happy with how the money worked. The idea: take her assets and go elsewhere.
Company Offers Passport to Shun Bitcoin Taxes. Plan B Passport offers passports to citizens in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. To travelers seeking exemption from tax payments on bitcoin (BTC) gains.
The company’s owner, Katie Anania, was recently interviewed by the CNBC news network. The Russian-born entrepreneur said, during the talk, that through this initiative, she seeks to offer customers a way to a second travel document to one of these seven countries considered tax havens. Those are St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Vanuatu, Grenada, St. Lucia, and Portugal.
The entrepreneur explains that those states apply a favorable tax regime to non-resident citizens based on legal purposes. All are exempt from capital gains tax on cryptocurrency holdings, she stresses.
I was smart enough to imagine that $200 in bitcoin will be worth $100K in the future. I don’t think the government should take 40% of that. Katie Anania, founder of Plan B Passport
Ananina claims she has met several bitcoiners who believe obtaining a second passport is “mandatory” to avoid paying taxes on cryptocurrency gains. The company processes this passport with each government’s social programs for residency or citizenship by investment.
On the latter, Ernest Marai, a jurist at the international law firm Andersen, indicates that, for example, on the island of St. Lucia, to obtain a passport, you must invest between $100,000 (donation), $250,000 (government bonds) or $300,000 (real estate).
Ananina, expanding on this, gave details that serve to know his company’s business model. “It is a contribution to the country’s sustainable growth fund. So, clients donate $100,000 or $150,000, plus some due diligence fees, government fees, and then $20,000 for my legal fees.”
The owner of Plan B Passport does not rule out that her clients in the United States are considering discarding their American citizenship. In the U.S., the IRS considers bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies’ property. So, their holders are taxed as if they were stocks or real estate.
Katie Ananina: a bitcoin maximalist
On her Twitter profile, Ananina describes herself as a bitcoiner fond of music and sailing, among other things. Renowned developer Vijay Boyapati describes her, on that social network, as “a bitcoin maximalist who wants to help people move to where they are treated better, instead of being treated like cattle raised with taxes.”
This week I’m following @KatieTheRussian, whose awesome story I read about this week. Katie is a #Bitcoin maximalist and wants to help people move to where they’re treated best, rather than being treated like cattle to be tax farmed. Follow Katie and read about her amazing story! pic.twitter.com/ow2N85BmnD
— Vijay Boyapati (@real_vijay) July 13, 2021
According to the semblance published by CNBC about the owner of Plan B Passport, she was born in Chelyabinsk, Russia. She was a professional sailor and, in 2016, settled in the United States.
Ananina practices “international arbitrage“: if a government affects her way of life, she goes somewhere else that is more favorable. As she told CNBC, in early 2015, she resided for two months in Spain, apropos of her participation in the competition for the Russian sailing team. At that time, she observed a 50% devaluation of the ruble.
About that situation, the businesswoman says: “My professor of Macroeconomics was not able to explain that to me. There was no way I could run my math and figure out what had happened. I realized I wasn’t happy about how money worked.”
Then she learned about the cryptocurrency developed by Satoshi Nakamoto and became. She says, “a faithful bitcoin preacher.” For her, being a maximalist “is not just about believing in a currency” but is a lifestyle. For example, she practices “international arbitrage,” which means ditching any government’s rules over your actions and finances and going to the place that suits you best at any given moment.
“If the authorities start affecting me, I will take all and go somewhere else,” Ananina maintains. Government interference was the fuse that ignited her creativity to find her own company to help others crystallize the idea she had in mind: take her assets and go elsewhere.