i know it is down there, page-25

tax and other evils In the UK they have a separate tax called Capital gains Tax - allows you to make about GBP 8k per year tax free and then you pay tax at a flat rate of about 30% on profits - it is not considered income but a capital gain.

To get round this I held an amount of cash in switzerland - to trade I phoned my orders to switzerland (no internet then) and the swiss bank bought the stock and held it for me via proxy. Consequently the capital gian was not registered to me. Technically I was due to pay tax when I repatriated the money back to the UK ... I wonder if it is possible to have an off shore share trading account using the internet. Money could easily be withdrawn using a debit card or credit card that could be settled each month from the off shore broking account.

Probably highly illegal - but still possible - although I don't know with whom.

The only disadvantage with my Swiss / UK adventure was paying double brokerage and the potential for a currency exchange loss on swiss francs / GBP.

I do not operate such a system atm here in Australia but would be interested in anyone's comments....if anyone has any ideas and doesn't want to post an answer here you could always email me - [email protected] (I used to live in Amsterdam as well hence my wierd email address)

EB