My tax paradise: how I (almost) felt the tropical breeze of an offshore haven. (Gazette).

I COUNTED ON A $200 TAX REFUND this year. But the Internal Revenue Service, perhaps sensing that I had vast hidden assets, adjusted my return, and I only got 129 bucks. As a magazine intern and a college student, I make a little less than the average citizen of the Bahamas, who earns about $15,000 per year. The economy of that commonwealth orbits around tourism, smuggling and international finance. Smugglers, of course, don't pay taxes. And in the Bahamas, pretty much nobody does--there are no income, sales, inheritance or withholding taxes.

Which is why the islands are so ...

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