Lewis Horowitz was quoted in an April 7 The Wall Street Journal Money Beat blog post titled “Panama Papers: A History of Tax Evasion From Ancient Rome to the French Revolution to 19th-Century New Jersey.” The post discussed the Panama Papers, a leaked set of more than 11 million confidential documents from the world’s fourth largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca, that provide detailed information about offshore tax regimes. The post also addressed U.S. tax havens and how in some states, such as Oregon, you can be a director of a company without having to disclose your name.
A resident of the state of Washington, as a director, could launch an Oregon company to buy a yacht, thereby side-stepping Washington’s 10 percent sales tax with no easy way for the state to detect the dodge, says Lewis Horowitz, an attorney at Lane Powell in Seattle.