Well, that’s easy. This multibillionaire doesn’t like to pay taxes, so she saves money by registering her yacht in the Cayman Islands, like so many other tax-avoiding .001%ers.

She has at nine other yachts, and it is not clear whether all of them are registered in the Cayman Islands. Maybe some are registered in Michigan or Ohio. Hard to keep track of so many yachts. Can you imagine how confusing it would be if you owned 10 cars? Even harder when you are talking yachts, each of which needs servants and crew.

Newsweek writes that offshore havens seem to be a pattern among the rich members of Trump’s cabinet, you know, the ones who say “America First,” but only for the peons:

When someone untied a yacht owned by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s family, the episode was portrayed as an example of anti-Trump harassment. But the yacht’s foreign flag illustrated how an allegedly “America First” administration is full of moguls who have stashed their wealth offshore in ways that help them avoid taxes, regulations, transparency requirements and domestic employment laws.

We already know that Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s family shipping consortium routes its business through the Marshall Islands—a notoriously secretive tax haven. Federal records detail how Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton and Federal Reserve board appointee Randal Quarles held parts of their personal fortunes in investments based in the Cayman Islands, which are not necessarily required to adhere to America’s domestic financial regulations.

Now there’s DeVos, one of the heirs of Amway’s multilevel marketing empire. When the family’s 164-foot yacht was untethered from a Huron, Ohio, dock, it was flying a flag of the Cayman Islands, where the yacht is registered, according to VesselTracker. According to federal records, the yacht is owned by RDV International Marine, which is an affiliate of the company that controls the DeVos family’s fortune…

When buying a vessel or cruising in U.S. waters, American yacht owners like the DeVos family could face state sales or use taxes like those most nonyacht owners face on everything else. However, registering a yacht in a locale like the Caymans—under what has come to be known as a “flag of convenience”—allows those American yacht owners to effectively characterize themselves as foreigners for tax purposes, thereby avoiding the obligation of paying the standard levies…

DeVos’s yacht is reportedly one of 10 in the family’s fleet and is worth $40 million. If the vessel was registered in, say, Grand Rapids, Michigan—the state where RDV is located and that has in the past made an effort to compel yacht owners to pay use taxes—the Seaquest would likely be subject to Michigan’s 6 percent use tax. That would require the DeVos empire to cough up about $2.4 million: public revenues that help finance the kind of police services that the DeVos yacht crew called when the boat was untied. With the Cayman flag fluttering on its deck, the family can avoid the levy even as it cruises the Great Lakes.

Another incentive for yacht owners to register offshore is the potential to avoid stricter inspection and safety standards required for U.S.-registered vessels of a certain size.

“If someone is buying a boat that is above 300 gross tons but below 500 gross tons, getting registered offshore means they can avoid being subject to U.S. Coast Guard inspection and certification requirements as either a ‘seagoing motor vessel’ or a ‘passenger vessel,’” said maritime attorney Mark J. Buhler. “The most commonly used offshore yacht registries have comprehensive large yacht safety codes that were specifically developed for large yachts, whereas the U.S. Coast Guard regulations and inspection requirements applicable to ‘seagoing motor vessels’ or ‘passenger vessels’ were created many years ago principally for vessels engaged in trade, and not really having large yachts in mind. Those requirements do not translate well to yachts, and most yachts are simply not designed or built to those particular standards.”

The DeVos yacht is 492 gross tons, according to MarineTraffic.

If you are a billionaire, there are so many details to weigh you down. Of course, you have a multitude of lawyers, accountants, fixers, go-fers. But who will manage all of them?

Poor, poor billionaires. So many problems.

What do the simple folk do?
(h/t, “Camelot”)