Your business is getting hard to explain

The reason most big U.S. companies — particularly credit-card providers and banks — keep a Delaware office is because Delaware asks fewer questions, so it's easy to open complex financial units, known as special purpose entities or vehicles, and run them. Countries with reputations as offshore financial havens ask even less.

I recommend: An intelligent discussion of the history of so-called SPE/SPVs is available at the CPA Journal.

Taxes are eating up the business

Lots of companies start up offshore units for their purely financial units in order to carry out large international deals — buying and selling assets and securities or doing normal trade transactions — without incurring a monster tax bite every time money changes buckets.

I recommend: Consultancy KPMG does an annual global review of corporate tax rates, good for estimating where your business will get hit the hardest.

Your company has its own investment arm

Offshore companies can normally buy and sell securities like an individual with very little government oversight. If you hold a lot of cash, managing that money will cost you unless you do it offshore.

I recommend: Major investment banks, like Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have entire departments dedicated to customers who are often called "non-U.S. investors." That would be rich foreigners, and your little cash-stuffed operation in Nevis.

You need to appear older

Bizarrely, there is a subset of offshore companies known as "shelf" companies. They are corporations that were formed by others but never used. If you buy one, your own legal history will be the length of that shelf company — useful, if ethically challenged — when seeking credit or bidding on public contracts

I recommend: Shop shelf names at CompaniesInc, BizFilings or OffshoreBVI.