by Mark Emery
Maybe you’re a health nut and you could start a nutritional coaching business.
Maybe you love music and you used to play in a band. You could set up an internet based exchange where musicians can offer custom songwriting, commercial licks and jingles and you sell a membership to the musicians to use your exchange.
If you have sales experience there is never a shortage of opportunities in that field and with the internet, affiliate marketing is huge! Go look for products you can promote at clickbank.com as one of many sources. Amazon even has an affiliate program. What market niche do you have a passion for?
Based on what your passion is, all you need to do is ’Find a need and fill it’. And there is your business idea!
You can do some research and find out who is doing something successful in your niche. Find out what they are doing, add your own twist to their proven formula for success, add some new elements to it and make their success, your new core business only you are going to do it better!
I did exactly that back in the states. I was an independent credit repair consultant for a short time in the states and learned the ropes from an existing company I represented which did a good job.
I learned what I could from them and decided to do it myself. I went down to the local office supply story and bought a Do-It-Yourself credit repair forms kit for $10 and modified the letters and instructions to make them my own and of course I improved them. Then I put together a nice little assortment of low cost or no cost benefits and had all of the benefits printed up into a little booklet of coupons and I had my own company: The National Consumer Advocates.
I started selling this benefit package which was contained in a printed booklet. I could take a box of them and head to the nearest trade show or business gathering or public square event and make money wherever I wanted to go!
I started advertising and marketing the memberships and did fairly well with a borrowed idea, some improvements on it, some creativity and added value and I offered something people needed and benefited from. All of this starting from a $10 generic forms kit!
I Just Lit the Fuse and Ran Like Hell!
When I left the states for good, I had my sights set on Costa Rica as mentioned earlier. I basically packed up, got a one-way ticket and took off with no plan whatsoever. I knew what I wanted (out of the corral!) I had a certain amount of cash in savings which would last me maybe 5 or 6 months but that was it!
I had no existing business to generate income. I had no plan or special contacts to help me out. The internet was in its infancy and was nothing compared to what it is now.
I made up my mind that I was leaving and headed to Costa Rica and that was my plan of action. Period.
I’d have to figure what to do from there later on and did so starting from scratch. So I landed in San Jose, got a hotel room, started exploring and I put on my thinking cap with radar turned up to high sensitivity!
I had to figure out how to support myself, my wife and a cute little dog and the fuse was lit. I had about 5 months before my money ran out and the bomb went off.
I had to ask myself, what was my passion? Freedom and Personal Privacy
What was my experience? International living, travel and business in general with some newly acquired skills and knowledge on trusts, trust management and asset protection.
What was a need that people had which needed to be filled? The problem was that Big Brother was spying on everyone and ruining peoples’ lives on a whim whenever they wanted to because they had total control.
That was it! I’d create a membership club which people could join to learn how to live a private life and protect themselves from intrusion or worse. Privacy Club International was born and started growing.
It was created about 3 months into the 5 month fuse and by the time my fuse was burned up, thankfully the bomb never exploded. It was defused as I was then toddling in my new business and it grew from there. I did it with plenty of help and thanks to my silent partner of course!
Key Point Summary: Some people need to have everything in perfect order before they make a move. This is wrong thinking.
Why? Two reasons. Because;
A) Nothing is ever in perfect order. If it is, something changes bringing it all to chaos. And this person then never accomplishes anything because nothing is ever in perfect order for long, if ever, and they never take action as a result. A person of talent knows precisely where he’s going and the result he’s seeking it’s just that the road to get there may not be discovered yet but he’s moving anyway. He is able to think on the fly, make adjustments find the right path if not create a new one which never existed before and then adapt to his conditions to make it work for him knowing that he’ll find the way in the end.
B) This same person in A) is relying entirely on himself to make the perfect plan which is a very poor choice. You’ve seen how I step forward taking action and making ‘crazy’ commitments I shouldn’t make and yet somehow being successful. Is it because I have the Midas touch? Hardly. If I had to rely entirely on myself and my abilities I’d be scared to death. It’s because I have the security and comfort with ultimate faith in my ‘silent partner’. He’s always got my back!
This gives me comfort and confidence to dive head first into this crazy world and expect nothing but the best results, even though there may be a price. Nothing is gained without a price. Nothing is valued without a price.
6
How I became a ‘previous taxpayer’
For some odd reason this topic seems to hold a lot of interest to a big segment of the more ‘productive’ population of the western world.
For a time I was reasonably successful selling health insurance for a large insurance company. One year I earned a very nice little bonus. I worked hard to achieve that and made a lot of sacrifices along the way to get it.
I was a city guy out selling insurance to the farmers and ranchers in Colorado. I’d be out on the lonely county roads busting through snow drifts or wallowing through mud holes in my ‘no clearance’ jet black Firebird TransAm (I loved that car). On more than one occasion I needed to find a truck or tractor to extricate me from a jam. That poor car!
So when I filed my taxes that year (back when I was young and foolish) the IRS came back and wanted a more than healthy share of my bonus. I said, ‘Sorry! You didn’t work for it, I did!’
That started me on the path of seeking knowledge and truth and I started studying the law with the help of some groups who specialized in that area. Once I learned the truth in 1990, I have never filed another 1040 in my life. Why? Because I don’t have to! It’s pretty simple.
Legal Tax Avoidance
An investor with a substantial income from his stocks and bonds who is from from Canada would normally be obliged to pay almost half of his earnings to the Canadian government. He could choose to reduce his tax burden in the most common, but ill-advised way, which is to hire a tax accountant to explore all the loopholes, allowances, deductions, deferments and tax free exchanges. But this is ill advised.
It’s expensive first of all. Secondly, when push comes to shove your accountant works for the state and not you. Loyalty? Think again. Thirdly, one mistake and you are in tax accounting hell if not jail! These are not attractive options.
Tax violations are only civil violations in many countries. But Canada, the UK and the United States have made tax evasion into a criminal offense, resulting in what are in effect, ‘debtors prisons’ for those who don’t tow the line and who don’t know any better. It would be far more sensible for this Canadian investor to break free and become a PT.
By merely moving abroad and establishing a legally recognized residence and domicile in a ‘tax friendly country’, this Canadian investor would be able to legally avoid handing over half of his income to the bureau-rats. He would then also be free to roam the world as he des
ired, provided he did not remain anywhere outside of his new tax friendly home long enough to be considered resident there for tax purposes.
Thus, the PT legally avoids all income taxes without resorting to fraud, because it is not necessary. A PT who is properly situated need never file tax returns, government required disclosure forms or any other paperwork.
What do I mean when I say ‘tax friendly country’? This would be any country which does not tax its people on ‘foreign earned income’. Panama is currently one example of many countries which are like this. If your money is earned out of the country and stays out of the country, it’s tax free as far as they are concerned! Most of the world operates this way. It’s called a ‘territorial tax system’.
Countries with “territorial” tax systems only tax residents on income earned within the borders of the country. Foreign earned income and foreign-source investment income is generally not taxed. Just to name a few countries with territorial tax systems would include: Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Panama, Seychelles, Singapore, Taiwan.
Some countries have no personal income tax at all. (They rely on consumption taxes, import tariffs, property taxes, etc, although some do have payroll taxes on domestic salaries). An incomplete list of countries with no general income tax include: Andorra, Anguilla, Bahamas, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Monaco, Nevis, Turks and Caicos Islands, United Arab Emirates, Vanuatu.
Bad news for U.S. Citizens…You are taxed no matter where your income comes from! If you get a job as a Sherpa in Mongolia and you don’t report the Mongolian tögrög which you earned, you are technically a criminal. The U.S. passport is deemed the most expensive passport in the world to have for just this reason alone.
But have no worries if you hold that expensive USA passport. Keeping the IRS at arms length is as easy at taking candy from a baby (although I would never suggest to take candy from a baby!)
The IRS mafia collections racket is a system of distraint based on fraudulent inducement to volunteer. This is perpetuated by the willful ignorance of its victims which is created in a climate of fear and intimidation to cover up the ‘bluff’.
This is not the time or place to get into details on this but if this subject interests you, you definitely need to read volume #2 in the ONE FREEMANS WAR book series:
HOW I BEAT SATAN…AND THE IRS!
It’s a quick, easy and fun read and it doesn’t get bogged down in eye glazing legal technical analysis. Get it if you want quick hard facts which you can verify for yourself. For perhaps the first time ever you will see the fraud as clear as day!
If you ever have dreams of being a ‘Previous Taxpayer’ you have to start thinking for yourself and with a little bit of study your tax accountant will be paying ‘you’ for lessons!
WARNING: If you’re going to put your life in the hands of your attorney and accountant to do your thinking for you, this isn’t going to work for you. You need to think for yourself. You need to understand that as well intentioned good people as these professional types might be, they are trained by ‘the corporate farm managers’ to keep the cattle in the barnyard and producing milk! I don’t think I need to explain that.
So let’s wrap this section up with some key questions people ask and you can explore the answers on your own to trigger your own thought process.
Q: So Mark, are you saying you don’t pay your taxes?
A: Hell no I’m not saying that! I pay a lot of taxes. I pay taxes on nearly every thing I do, nearly every transaction I make. I just don’t file any 1040 form and I surely don’t pay any income taxes.
Q: Why not?
A: Simple. Because I’m not required to. I’m not a ‘Taxpayer’ by definition.
Q: How do you manage that?
A: Simple. I don’t have any ‘income’. If someone doesn’t have any reportable ‘income’ they’re not a ‘Taxpayer’ and are not required to file.
Q: So if you have no income, how do you live?
A: Let’s start by understanding the legal definition of ‘income’ I make sure that I don’t have income. However, I do get compensated for my services and I do have access to resources and cash flow for various purposes. Again, the law is very specific: cash flow is not necessarily ‘income’ by legal definition and the courts have supported this time and again. Most people have no idea what ‘income’ really is. Again, I follow the law.
Q: So how do you achieve that?
A: It’s very simple and there are many ways to do it. The key is to learn to ‘Live like a King while being a Pauper on Paper’. This is what we teach to members at the Lighthouse Law Club.
Q: Aren’t you afraid of getting into trouble?
A: If I were afraid of getting into trouble do you think I’d be writing books, doing videos, speaking in public international conferences and teaching the law to as many people as I can possibly reach? I’m a student of the law. I follow the law. I teach others to follow the law and learn it well enough to be free forever!
I have positioned myself as a ‘Previous Taxpayer’ so that I can enrich the world with 100% of the talent, skills, invention, creativity and all the blessings God has given me.
This allows me to pay cash for my cars, and travel as I like. I have no debt and move about freely. I keep what I make and I share it with the needy .
So who is morally correct here? Someone like me who contributes his energy to the world in a positive way? Or someone who dutifully ‘pays his fair share’ to war hawks, liars, thieves and baby killers who wish to enslave him?
Think about it.
Need I say more?
“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”
- Jean Baptiste Colbert
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How I became ‘prepared thoroughly’
I’m a gun lover. I love guns not only for the obvious benefits and uses for self defense but for recreational use also. My dad was an avid hunter and I’ve been handling guns since I was 7 years old.
As a kid I always had ‘BB’ guns and pellet guns and have been plinking tin cans since I can remember. I learned to handle a .22 pistol at an early age and since we were hunters I had my own 20 gauge pump shotgun since I was 10. My dad and I had our own clay pigeon thrower and would spend hours trying to knock them out of the sky in pieces. At one point I was getting pretty good at it.
I’ll never forget the shot of a lifetime my dad made. We lived in the country for a time and had a lot of bats flying around at dusk in summertime. Just for fun, he took out a .22 pistol to see what he could do and damn, if he didn’t nail one with a pistol shot and knock it dead out of the air. That’s a nearly impossible shot. It’s difficult enough to hit a standing target with a pistol but a bat darting around like a fly at dusk? Wow!
So, fast forward and I’m now living in my new home in Costa Rica. At the time I had a collection of guns which were still back in the states.
I had a couple of M1-A1 .30 caliber (7.62 mm) carbines which I loved. I had the ‘Paratrooper’ version which is a lightweight, easy to use semi-automatic rifle which was a
standard for the U.S. military during World War II, the Korean War and well into the Vietnam War.
With those I also had a Chinese made SKS. The SKS was originally a Soviet semi-automatic carbine chambered for the same 7.62 x 39 round. The SKS is popular on the civilian surplus market as a hunting and marksmanship semi-automatic rifle. Its simplicity, durability and accuracy made it popular and it was relatively inexpensive to purchase. It used steel cased 7.62×39mm ammunition which is one of the least expensive center fire cartridges available. I picked mine up at a gun show for not much more than $100 and later bought another one just for the value.
I’ll never forget taking my first shot on the target range with it. It packed a serious punch!
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With my little ‘babies’ of course I had a collection of 20 and 30 round banana clips to complement the carbines which were all interchangeable. Along the way I had acquired some ‘novelty items’ such as tracer rounds, armor piercing rounds and some fun stuff like that.
So here we are now having made the move to Costa Rica and I had to ask myself the question, “What am I going to do with my guns?” I did some investigation with customs and the airlines and found out that all I needed to do was to put them in a locked case, mark the case, declare them appropriately and there’d be no problem bringing them in to Costa Rica by commercial airline. So that was the plan.
My wife at the time, was planning a singular visit back to Oklahoma to visit family and she agreed to manage it for me while she was there. Great! I was all set.
As part of the preparation and packing process she was trying to remove the cartridges which were loaded in the banana clips. However, the springs in the clips were quite strong and this process was hurting her fingers. So she stopped emptying the clips thinking that she’d have her son finish the job for her later.
She got everything packed up ready for the trip back to Costa Rica. The rifles were locked in their cases and declared to the airline at check-in. She took the clips in her carry-on luggage.
It wasn’t until she was seated in mid-flight when she broke out into a cold sweat! She had just remembered that she never finished removing the cartridges from the clips and she was on board an international flight with a half dozen 20 and 30 round banana clips fully loaded and some with armor piercing military rounds! (This was around the year 2000 before 9/11 and TSA) .
So she arrives at San Jose International airport fearful for what might happen to her, she picks up the rifles and reluctantly heads toward the customs checkpoint. By nothing short of a miracle, nobody was manning the luggage scanner so she just walked right through customs fully armed and loaded with enough armament to hold off a SWAT team!