Then why bring up the John Kerry example after Tony brought up DeVos?
FWIW, I only mentioned DeVos so that people would read the article, as I'm sure most of the links I post (which I find interested) never get clicked on.
This is the part of the article that was interesting to me:
Offshore registration can also reduce labor costs.
“The reason otherwise red-blooded American yachts fly non-American flags has little to do with political sentiment, and a whole lot to do with tax and employment laws,” wrote Kevin Koenig, a former Goldman Sachs analyst, in a 2011 issue of Power & Motoryacht Magazine. “From a tax perspective, the U.S. government views an American working as a deckhand on a U.S.-flagged megayacht cruising off St. Tropez no differently than it views an insurance salesman plying his trade in Topeka—that is to say, a yacht flying the American flag is, essentially, on U.S. soil no matter where she is located.”
Koenig added: “The financial consequences of this view can be major for owners who choose to register in America because they are constrained to account for U.S. taxes when paying the crewmember. With Social Security and unemployment taxes what they are, this often means paying an American crewmember twice as much as say, an equally qualified Australian who is exempt from U.S. taxes but who the owner could only hire were his boat registered in a more lenient, foreign-flag state.”
That sentiment was echoed by Miami maritime lawyer David Neblett.
“If you have a U.S. flag vessel, you fall under U.S. law in crewing it,” Neblett told Grand Cayman Magazine in 2015. “You have to have workers compensation insurance for each of them. There’s a big savings to hiring your crew outside the U.S....tax benefits, privacy, liability, crewing requirements, all these are good reasons for our high-net-worth clients to register offshore.”
