Ask HN: Are there better countries to start my SaaS company for tax reasons?

Hah.

I am an international tax lawyer and I advise startups that do business all over the world.

I do not have a good answer to your question. There is insufficient data upon which to make a suggestion.

However, here are my guidelines:

- if there is a US person involved in this business as an officer or owner, you will experience exquisite agony in opening a bank account abroad.

- until your net profits from non-US sources amount to $2M - $3M per year, the tax benefits are likely to be trivial.

- an hour of founder time spent thinking about tax is an hour wasted. Think about building your product. Think about getting a customer. That's much more valuable.

- as soon as you add a foreign corporation to your business structure you have probably added $10K - $20k to your overhead. Minimum.

There are exceptions to every rule. Your situation may be different. Good luck.

> Even the richest persons on this world would not be "allowed" to "buy" their freedom from the "social contract".

What do you mean by buying your freedom from the social contract? The US, at least, allows people to renounce their citizenship after paying exit taxes and then they're free to choose citizenship in any country that will have them (and abide by that social contract instead).

Other than it not being practical to choose statelessness (so you have to find some country's social contract you're happy with), I don't see what is missing. It's true that you still have to follow US laws (and pay US taxes) if you want to conduct business in the US (and similarly for other countries), but those are voluntary choices, at the gain or cost of some business opportunities.

This is a brilliant way to put it. "Fear of shipping manifesting in 'productive' ways." We tend to manufacture busy work instead of focusing on what is necessary right now. (OP himself might be in a situation to seriously consider incorporation, so may not be applicable at all.)

I find so many startups in APAC incorporating in USA, with justification that they "need" a US company to get customers, or get a better payment gateway etc. That's just focusing on the wrong problem. 1. Get enough visitors by getting the word out. 2. Convert enough trials. 3. Talk to (email) real users. 4. Get to the point where they are ready to pay. 5. If objection clearly indicates payment experience, terms of service (location of company), then consider incorporation.

By setting up subsidiary / parent company elsewhere, you are committing to too many overheads in time and money.

Yes, this is a good pointer. However, there are likely more problems than just VAT MOSS — for example, it is likely that your home country will want you to charge VAT to your customers in the same country, while using VAT MOSS or reverse charge with customers in other EU countries. The result is that your subscription plan pricing gets significantly more complex.

Some countries also have requirements as to invoice language, or conversion rates that you need to use for foreign currencies. In my case (Poland), I can use the European Central Bank (ECB) rates for VAT, but not for income tax further down the line, so I have to integrated with two central banks to get their rates.

Overall, there is lots of overhead. There is a disconnect between EU officials and small modern companies. Officials want to "promote innovation and entrepreneurship" while introducing heavy-handed legislation (really meant to hurt Amazon, in case of VAT MOSS).