[ifthenelseend]

Tax heavens have MUCH lower taxes, but they also have other benefits like very little bureaucracy, better privacy and better protection from lawsuits.

You will also have a lot of freedom managing your company. For example, if you try to move a German company to another country and that country has lower tax rate, then Germans will put additional punishing taxes on your company for the next 10 years, despite you are not living there anymore. You will never have that issue with offshore corporations.

[ifthenelseend]

If you need an offshore corporation, it can be opened for a few hundred $, but if you need to do the same for example in Germany, then you have to pay 25000 EURO to found a GmbH.

[icebraining]

You don't pay 25000€, you invest them in the company. And from what I can tell, there's a "mini-GmbH" model that avoids even that requirement.