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Kubrick and Off-Shore Tax Shelters

posted 8 years ago by countdown-to-zero
2 replies | jump to latest

"Panama Papers: What Stanley Kubrick Can Teach You About Tax Shelters"

http://europe.newsweek.com/panama-papers-stanley-kubrick-tax-shelters-448494?rm=eu

Also at:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/06/panama-papers-reveal-offshore-dealings-stars
http://fusion.net/story/288251/panama-papers-leak-celebrities-list-of-names/

and also published at thousands of other newspapers, magazines and internet websites over the past few months.

And Soderbergh is now going to make a film adaptation of the Panama Papers:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steven-soderbergh-tackling-panama-papers-908889

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and lastly, the truly bizarre response from the Kubrick Estate:

"The Herts Advertiser asked the Kubrick family’s representative a series of questions in response to allegations in The Guardian, including whether by using the tax haven, members had saved thousands of pounds in inheritance tax.

She replied: “Stanley Kubrick was a citizen of the United States. His estate is a U.S. estate handled by a major U.S trust company.

“That company attends to all the financial matters related to the estate, with advice from their U.S. lawyers and their colleagues in the United Kingdom to assure that any activities are appropriate.”"

From: http://www.hertsad.co.uk/news/stanley_kubrick_s_family_in_st_albans_caught_up_in_panama_papers_scandal_1_4495250

It's a very disturbing response from the Kubrick Estate representative, implying that Kubrick left all his assets to some anonymous "US trust company" and nothing to his family or anyone else. It's sheer nonsense, PR spin, legalistic gobbledegook, and further evasion. But all the facts are now known.

[–] Sandoz 8 years ago

More so than the tax evasion stuff (which doesn't surprise me--don't all millionaires do this stuff?), I found this bit in the article to be somewhat surprising:

Christiane now lives at the manor with her other daughter by Kubrick, Vivian, and a third daughter she’d had prior to their marriage, Katharina, as well as her grandchildren.

Has this been verified? Last I had heard Vivian was still entangled with those Scientology loonies, and estranged from her mother and the rest of the family. Did she move back to England?

Are you enjoying your genetically modified food?

[–] countdown-to-zero 8 years ago

Yeah, the article has lots of basic factual inaccuracies. Just to clarify one of them:

Vivian moved to LA (she had been born there when Kubrick was living in LA for Spartacus and other earlier work) in 1993 and eventually got subsumed into the Scientology cult there, as a result of which she more or less cut off all further communication with the rest of her family, Kubrick, his wife Christiane, and her two sisters and other relations. She did attend Kubrick's funeral in 1999 (accompanied by a cult minder) and attended the premiere of "Eyes Wide Shut" (she was photographed with her sisters attending it: http://www.gettyimages.ie/photos/ron-galella-vivian-kubrick?family=editorial&license=rf&phrase=ron%20galella%20vivian%20kubrick&sort=best&excludenudity=true#license). She has since moved to Texas and does not appear to be involved with Scientology any more. She has a somewhat hysterical, righteous Twitter account in which she continually expresses her outrage at all the bad stuff that goes on in the world, as well as nostalgic reminisences about her late father. It's as if she openly expresses notions that Kubrick himself never articulated, but more subtly manifested in his films (ie abuses of power, conspiracies, etc).

Another distortion is that many of the reports covey the impression that it was Kubrick who set up these off-shore shelf companies in the British Virgin Isles tax haven. But they were, according to the records, set up around 2009, some ten years after his death. These off-shore phony companies appear to have been set up by the Kubrick Estate with their lawyers and accountants. Way back in the early 1970s Kubrick set up tw0 trusts, one for his children and one for the films. Upon his death, the house (Childwickbury) would have passed to his widow without any tax/inheritance implications (as she was already co-owner by virtue of marriage) and other assets would have gone to the two trusts. It is to avoid paying taxes on drawdowns/withdrawals from these trusts that the dummy off-shore, tax-haven companies were established in the British Virgin Isles.