In the past decade, hundreds of billions of dollars have poured out of traditional offshore jurisdictions such as Switzerlandand Jersey, and into a small number of American states: Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming – and, above all, South Dakota.  Those of us who cannot vote in South Dakota elections have little hope of changing its laws. That is why so many super-rich people are choosing South Dakota, which has created the most potent force-field money can buy – a South Dakotan trust. If an ordinary person puts money in the bank, the government taxes what little interest it earns. Even if that money is protected from taxes by an ISA, you can still lose it through divorce or legal proceedings.  A South Dakotan trust changes all that: it protects assets from claims from ex-spouses, disgruntled business partners, creditors, litigious clients and pretty much anyone else. It won’t protect you from criminal prosecution, but it does prevent information on your assets from leaking out in a way that might spark interest from the police. And it shields your wealth from the government, since South Dakota has no income tax, no inheritance tax and no capital gains tax.   So money inevitably flows to the places where governments offer the lowest taxes and the highest security.  Those of us who cannot vote in South Dakota elections have little hope of changing its laws. But if we don’t do something to correct the imbalance between global wealth and local legislation, we risk entrenching today’s inequality and creating a new breed of global aristocrat, unaccountable to anyone and getting richer all the time – with grave consequences for the long-term health of liberal democracy.                        https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/the-great-american-tax-haven-why-the-super-rich-love-south-dakota-trust-laws