And to add more obfuscation, corporate entities change names, have private sales and takeovers all the time. The main thing is they pay the appropriate taxes, follow the laws and regulations, and stay squeaky clean so no investigative journalist ever notices them or has reason to. So no political contributions, no associations with controversial subjects, etc and so on.

Doqwnvoted because of the pointless, abusive rhetoric, even though the answer should be true in principle.

Upvoted because of the pointless, abusive rhetoric comments... from me haha ;D

Upvoted because the pointless abusive rhetoric was funny.

What need for forged death certificates? Surely, there would be more than enough of the real things - the paperwork a little delayed from the actual event, perhaps, sometimes.

Upvoted because accurate and also wittily stated. Also per Thorne.

And American banks are immortal, soulless entities bent on taking the money of innocents and consuming everything in an unending, unslaking lust for wealth.

Don't need death certs. You can work around the death/retirement of a board member in other ways, but too busy to.go into thrm

@NotThatGuy Who says they are not paying taxes? The corporation is paying all taxes on it's assets, income and expenditures and everything is above board. It's more then normal for wealthy individuals to funnel parts of their money into trust funds and corporations who pay taxes and everything else and it is perfectly above board.

@NotThatGuy For example the prime minister of czech republic has all of his money and other asstes in a trust fund that is ultimately under control of his wife and children (i think) and this way goes around the law on conflict of interests for politicians. See, he does not own the money and corporations, he just gets a stipend from it and gets to use the corporate owned assets. And the trust fund is paying all of the taxes and everything on that wealth.

Question: How much money do you need to have before this becomes worth the trouble? I imagine that some "newborn" vampire working as a waitress in a town diner who only has a few thousand dollars in savings couldn't get away with passing those savings off as the budget of a company, am I wrong?

@CyrusDrake There are A LOT of small companies with a very small assets/income/expenditures and there are people who funnel (legally above board) all of their money and assets through the LLCs and other corporate entites they solely own. I'm no accountant, so the specifics are better answered by someone with specific knowledge. I just know it is very well possible, it's just a hassle if you aren't knowledgeable enough and doesn't offer enough benefits to outweigh it for normal people.

@CyrusDrake Plus any normal vampire who's not a deadbeat will during a normal lifetime get to amass enough assets to start such corporation, it's one of the benefits of being perpetually in your earning potential prime and not degrading over time. So the waitress in the boonies might not have the assets now but in forty years time definitelly.

@CyrusDrake more on trusts here: denhalaw.com/transferring-assets-into-and-out-of-a-trust

Cites to existing, very old companies: Kongō Gumi (founded 578), now a part of Takamatsu Construction; the Paris Mint (founded 864), owned by the Republic of France.

@mishan Thanks! It sounds like a lot of this stuff doesn't require an in-the-know bank at all, though I imagine doing business with an immortal bank would still be ideal for them. Most importantly because a bank with magical staff would be much, much harder for other immortals to rob. Would there be any other major advantages to having the bank know about the corporation-based deception?

@CyrusDrake I've been treasurer for several organisations with annual turnovers well under £10k. Robbing banks has no actual effect on the people using that bank unless they're storing items (as opposed to money) there. The disadvantages of potential leaks vastly outweigh any very marginal advantages that you could get from the bank knowing.

@user3482749 Oh right, I forgot, banks are insured, it's the insurance companies that have to pay up after a robbery. I'll keep that in mind about storing items there though. That would definitely be a thing.

But this is STILL at the mercy of the vagarities of American law, American governmental regulations, and American governmental institutions, which as we have seen can be changed by a single election. Would immortals really trust the longevity of the American government, when a single election can alter it so dramatically? Methinks a democracy would be the LAST place they would trust.

I would. The bank is old-old school, hires some vampires as guards, and physically stores assets by resting out safety deposit boxes. There's nothing useful on the books because its business model simply doesn't require it. After the first couple of robbers are killed on site by the vampire guards, there won't be any more.