Nick Fountain

So the drafters of that tax treaty with Malta put in language that says if a U.S.

retirement account is going to be tax exempt, then Malta will also exempt it from taxes and vice versa.

Right, and these accounts were much more lucrative than the American ones.

Because in the U.S., the amount of money you can put into Roths is capped.

It's actually pretty small.

And if you have assets like stocks or real estate or fancy paintings that have gone up a lot in value, you can't put those in.

You have to sell them first and pay taxes on the gains.

But these Maltese accounts were way supercharged.

They allowed people to put in unlimited amounts.

And not just cash, but whatever.

Real estate, ownership of a company, Bitcoin.

Then sell it and pull out the proceeds entirely tax-free, starting when people hit 50 years old.

Which means, in theory, if Americans stashed their appreciated assets in these Maltese accounts, then sold them and took the proceeds back to the U.S., the IRS couldn't tax them.

So if you were a tax lawyer trying to figure out how to help your favorite client avoid paying capital gains taxes on her Google stock, you'd have hit the jackpot.

This was an enormous loophole just sitting there for the using.

And seemingly legit.

You might be tempted to yell about it from the rooftops.

Maybe they don't yell it from the rooftops, but they do pitch their wealthy clients.

And it is rare for normies like me to see those pitches.

But Lauren, you actually got your hands on one of them.