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Nick Giambruno is a Senior Editor at Casey Research. He joins the show to tell us about Puerto Rico’s new tax advantages. Giambruno discusses, in detail, the good places to live in Puerto Rico and how easy it is to buy, sell and own real estate in Puerto Rico. Giambruno then defines the basics of internationalization and discusses the investment opportunities in Cypress.

Nick is Doug Casey’s globetrotting protégé and has a long-held passion for internationalization. He has lived in Europe and worked in the Middle East, most recently in Beirut and Dubai, where he covered regional banks and other companies for an investment bank. He is a published author focusing on international diversification strategies that help people reduce their dependence on any one country. This is a strategy that Doug Casey helped pioneer and makes it very difficult for any government to control one’s destiny. In short, Nick’s objective is to help people make the most of their personal freedom and financial opportunity around the world.

Nick is a CFA charterholder and holds a bachelor’s degree in finance, summa cum laude. He is senior editor at Doug Casey’s InternationalMan.com, where he writes about offshore banking, second passports, surviving an economic collapse, offshore trusts and companies, geopolitics, and crisis investing, among other topics. Visit Casey Research at www.caseyresearch.com.

Get Nick Giambruno’s special report titled, “Puerto Rico’s Stunning New Tax Advantages” by clicking here.

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the JetSetter Show, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. Enjoy and learn from a variety of experts on topics ranging from upscale travel at wholesale prices, to retiring overseas, to global real estate and business opportunities, to tax havens and expatriate opportunities. You’ll get great ideas on unique cultures, causes, and cruise vacations. Whether you’re wealthy or just want to live a wealthy lifestyle, the JetSetter Show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the JetSetter Show! This is Jason Hartman, your host, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. I think you’ll enjoy the interview we have for you today, and we will be back with that, in less than 60 seconds, here on the JetSetter Show.

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JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Nick Giambruno to the show! And today, you’re going to hear something that is completely awesome, potentially. He’s a senior editor at Casey Research. We’ve had Doug Casey on my Creating Wealth Show several times. And he’s here to talk today about a topic I learned of a while back, and it is the excellent tax benefits offered by Puerto Rico. You are not going to believe what you hear. Nick, welcome. How are you?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: I’m doing great, Jason. Thanks for having me.

JASON HARTMAN: Good, good. And you’re coming to us from New York City today, is that correct?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes, that’s correct.

JASON HARTMAN: Okay. And my first question to you was, why don’t you live in Puerto Rico. But, some personal issues. This is a pretty phenomenal opportunity, it sounds like. Tell us about the opportunity, and then, of course, I’m going to ask you, Nick, what’s the catch?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah, definitely. Well, first, I would definitely be in Puerto Rico. I’m just ironing out some personal issues with my girlfriend. And then, yeah, in the intermediate term, it’s definitely an option that’s very attractive. In fact, two of my colleagues have moved to Puerto Rico with their families, and have established themselves down there.

JASON HARTMAN: Other than the very high murder rate, I love it.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yeah. Well, that’s probably the number one concern, but that’s actually—yeah, you have to look at the details of that. Because the murder rate—the crime rate is comparable to Memphis, Tennessee, and that’s, they take the area of San Juan as the capital of Puerto Rico, and the big city, and that’s where people always talk about when they’re talking about crime. And you know, the same issues of crime apply to Puerto Rico as they would in any big city in the world, whether it’s Rio, New York City, and so forth. However—

JASON HARTMAN: Well, if you want to get into American crime, I mean, the worst is probably Detroit or Chicago. I mean, you know—

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes.

JASON HARTMAN: Go ahead.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes. So, the point is, is that you wouldn’t take those crime rates for Detroit or Chicago and extrapolate them for Illinois and Michigan. It wouldn’t deter you from say, moving to different parts of Michigan, just because of bad crime in Detroit. And the same is true in Puerto Rico. There are rougher neighborhoods, but there are very nice neighborhoods, in San Juan, and there are very safe areas throughout the island. It’s a big island, too. That’s an important point to stress. This isn’t some tiny Banana Republic in the Caribbean. This is a huge, developed island, and taking the crime statistics for one part of it and stretching it and extrapolating it for the entire island, is just as much a mistake as you would if you did the same thing for Detroit and Michigan as a whole.

JASON HARTMAN: So, first of all, tell us about the tax opportunity, or the opportunity to really have either no or very, very low tax.

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes. Now, to understand how big of an opportunity is, you have to understand how Americans are taxed. Americans are the only nationality, effectively, in the world that are taxes on their worldwide income regardless of where they are a resident. Most—every other nationality in the world—say, Canadians, for instance—they could just move from Canada to, say, the Cayman Islands, which has zero income taxes, zero taxes on basically anything, and operate there in a pretty much tax-free environment. If they became a resident of Cayman Islands. As an American though, it’s different. The US government levies taxes on you no matter where you’re a resident. So, if an American moved to the Cayman Islands, or to Dubai, or to Singapore, they would still have to pay taxes to the American government, and file taxes, no matter where they live, and no matter where they earn their income. So that’s really a unique, unfortunate attribute of being an American. Puerto Rico is different, because it is actually part of the US. And it has a unique status, because it’s not a state, and it’s not a foreign country. It’s what’s known as a commonwealth, or a territory. And the way it’s set up is—and the way it’s existed for over 100 years—is that Puerto Rican residents, they’re all US citizens, but they do not have to pay federal taxes on their Puerto Rican sourced income. They pay taxes on that income to the Puerto Rican government. And this arrangement allows for the Puerto Rican government to offer incentives to Americans who move—mainland Americans who move to Puerto Rico, that no other jurisdiction really can offer.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. That’s fantastic. So, when I first heard about this from an asset protection attorney I was talking with, he said that it was—the tax rate was 6.75%, but you really have to dice that up, and this is why a lot of the hedge fund guys are moving there and so forth. Tell us about—what is the tax rate?

NICK GIAMBRUNO: Yes, sure. So there are two programs here. There’s programs—the first program is geared towards individuals. It’s called the Act 22, the Individual Investors Act. This act reduces capital gains, interest income, and dividend tax rates to zero. Now, there’s a little caveat there, is that that income, investment income, has to be sourced in Puerto Rico. Now, what does that mean? That means, if you have interest, it has to come from a Puerto Rican bank. If you have dividends, it has to come from a Puerto Rican corporation. Now, that on its own is kind of limiting. It’s not—you know, okay, so what, I can get interest free on a CD in a Puerto Rican bank. But the big issue here is capital gains. Because the source of capital gains is determined by where you are. So, you could move to Puerto Rico, you could keep your Fidelity, you could keep your E-Trade, you could trade stocks. And the capital gains on those stocks would count as Puerto Rican sourced income. Therefore applicable to the benefits, which is zero. So, that is where the real benefit is in the investment income.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, so let me just comment on that. First of all, if you invest in the stock market, you’re not likely to actually have any capital gains [LAUGHTER], since Wall Street is the modern version of organized crime, as I like to say. But the insiders in the stock game, the hedge fund managers—I know they’ve been moving to Puerto Rico. I know some of these people that have fallen for Bitcoin, just like the Tulip Bulb Craze—they’ve talked about moving, and maybe some have, I’m sure, to Puerto Rico to cash in their capital gains, whe