I want to make a bet with anyone who has or has had a foreign company in the last 3 years: your offshore probably has mistakes that will cost you dearly.
In the last 5 years the market has been flooded with terrible professionals — some scammers, others simply incompetent — who fooled a lot of people by showing off cars, designer brands, and Instagram photos. And you did not notice the Portuguese full of errors, the lack of elegance, knowledge, or experience.
How do you judge a professional's quality at first sight? Three clear signals:
- Price. A simple offshore costs between 900 and 2,300 dollars. Anything above that is robbery.
- Image. If the person takes photos of steering wheels, shows off clothing labels, and poses in front of the Burj Khalifa, they are not a professional: they are a caricature designed to impress people without discernment.
- Presence. This is not the kind of person you would want abroad representing your company in New York or Tokyo.
They are a fake youroperatoris_local who buys the cheapest part of the operation for 200 dollars and sells it for 5,000 or 10,000. They do not know that they do not know. But they are not the ones paying for the damage: you are.
Startaway invited me to fix your structure and bring your company over — without you paying anything for it.
The jurisdiction mistake
The most common first error: they opened your offshore in the wrong place. They sold Dubai or the British Virgin Islands as a magic solution, but forgot to tell you that without real substance or updated compliance, you are immediately on the radar of the Federal Revenue and international banks.
You have a piece of paper, not a functional company. And you will be very uncomfortable with IR 2026, when the profits of foreign controlled entities are taxed annually regardless of distribution.
Abandonment and blocked accounts
Many companies hand you an EIN, a UTR, or a registration certificate and disappear. They let your company "expire" — the famous strike off — because of missed annual renewals. Suddenly you wake up with your bank account blocked and your assets frozen.
You were abandoned and lost money. The company that seemed cheap at first became expensive at the end, because nobody took care of it after the sale.
AML issues and a damaged name
There may be AML — Anti-Money Laundering — issues in your name right now with foreign registry bodies, just because your consultant failed to deliver compliance documents on time. This is not just a fine; it is your name stained in the global financial system.
You will be notified sooner or later. Or you will find out when you try to visit Disney or Big Ben and get a surprise at immigration or the bank.
The income-tax declaration disaster
Or worse: they gave you bad advice about your Brazilian income tax return. You declared gains you should not have, or omitted what was mandatory, and now the Federal Revenue fine is knocking at your door.
Your local accountant's mistake became an unpayable liability for you. The professional who said "trust me" will not pay the fine. You will.
The Startaway proposal
Startaway provides a free diagnosis of your international structure. We review:
- The jurisdiction where the company is domiciled;
- Whether there is real economic substance;
- Compliance status and renewal history;
- Outstanding issues with foreign registries;
- How the structure relates to your Brazilian tax return;
- Corporate documents and contracts.
If we find errors, we present a correction plan. You only proceed with the migration to Startaway if you want to. There is no charge to hear the diagnosis.
A poorly built offshore is like a car without brakes on a mountain road. The question is not whether it will stop, but how. Before the curve arrives, let Startaway take a look at the wheel.
