Asian investors can minimize the tax hit on property purchases but good advice and a lot of paperwork is needed.
Maury Golbert of Berdon LLP (New York, New York, USA), was recently featured in an article on Barons.
If you live in Hong Kong and want to buy a home in Palo Alto for your daughter while she goes to Stanford University, you have a lot more to think about than finding a nice neighborhood. That's because buying U.S. property places you squarely in the U.S. tax system, adding big costs to your purchase.
That's hardly surprising news if you're from the U.S., but it's a shock to lots of non-U.S. residents. "If you are coming from a low-tax or no-tax jurisdiction, that is not the opening question ...it comes up as an after-thought," says Maury Golbert, chair of the real estate services group at Berdon, a New York accounting firm. "That's a dangerous proposition for a number of reasons."
