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Stripe Atlas

stripe.com

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51–60 of 402 posts

Re: Stripe Atlas

#51

Post by jonhmchan »

I absolutely love this idea - it solves for a HUGE pain point that entrepreneurs have dealing with the logistical, legal, and financial groundwork for a startup and getting to payments easily. Good lord, if Atlas were around for me to setup my startup, I would be crying tears of joy.

What I'm confused about is why they didn't focus more on the convenience advantages and positioned Atlas as a non-geo tied incorporation/setup offer. As many people have noted, the advantages of doing business as a U.S. company if you're not in the U.S. is unclear. It seems far more appropriate as a side note to the much needed advantages of solving a legal, financial, and accounting nightmare just to get payments. Why emphasize international?

Re: Stripe Atlas

#52

Post by kiloreux »

I live in Algeria, and we can't use credit cards here, my bank account doesn't support debit cards transfer and if I veer receive 10$ from outside the country, then I'm in for 1 day of questioning the resources for those money, This is a great use case for my country and great initiative from Stripe, Thank you.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#53

Post by aprdm »

Wow this is simply amazing! I would love to be able to use Stripe in Brazil and that seems to make it possible!

Must be a headache legally tho

Re: Stripe Atlas

#55

Post by charlesdm »

tomp wrote: post #36
charlesdm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I applaud the idea, if you don't need to be US based: 1. It's ridiculous to incorporate in the US, due to ridiculous tax policies; and 2. It's a great way to upset local tax authorities + there are probably a ton of nasty side effects (e.g. some countries have "see through" taxation that taxes certain profits arriving in foreign entities at the shareholder level, or require board meetings to be held in the juri…

> 1. It's ridiculous to incorporate in the US, due to ridiculous tax policies; and What are these ridiculous tax policies? I've often heard complaints about US taxes for citizens/residents, but nothing yet for companies... (I realize that many companies choose to incorporate in tax havens to evade taxes; but I'm mainly interested in knowing how is incorporating in the US worse than incorporating in e.g. UK, Switzerla…

High corporate taxes + global taxation of profits. For example, any profit coming from lower taxed subsidiary (i.e. a dividend) will be taxed at the difference between the local rate and US corporate tax rate. So if you pay 20% in the UK, you will have to pay an additional 15% (35%-20%) in US tax.

Second, the US is very aggressive when it comes to withholding taxes (FATCA and all) - if you’re a shareholder living in a country without a decent tax treaty with the US, you’ll lose an extra 30% on any dividend you declare, unless you include intermediary structures such as holding companies etc

Now, some of these might not matter that much to a startup since they aren’t making a profit anyway. But if you build something profitable it will be relevant for an acquirer. If things are set up properly to pay less tax, they will pay more for your company.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#56

Post by jasonsync »

Does this mean Stripe will phase out the ability for Canadians to accept USD and deposit funds directly to Canadian banks offering "US fund" accounts (that are not technically US bank accounts)?

Currently, a Canadian business can accept $USD with Stripe and have it deposited directly into a Canadian US fund account without conversion to CAD.

Stripes competitors can't do this - and have traditionally told Canadian businesses that they would have to incorporate in the US, setup a USD bank account at a US institution, in order to accept USD without conversion back to CAD.

That process is what Stripe Atlas simplifies.

PayPal allows Canadians to accept USD by holding the funds in a USD PayPal account. However, getting the funds to a Canadian bank account always involves converting to CAD.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#57

Post by amit_m »

amgin3 wrote: post #31

Is there really a market for this? Why would anyone outside the US want to open a US company when you can just as easily open a company and bank account in a tax-free country with little/no oversight?

Because it is difficult to do business in the US without a US subsidiary and bank account. You can't even run a Kickstarter campaign as a foreigner.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#58

Post by eis »

patio11 wrote: post #16
eis wrote: post #12

A very nice product it seems. But people should be aware that having a US business, bank account and so on makes you a "US person" in the eyes of the US government which comes with downsides. If you recently tried to open a bank account somewhere you might have seen the form you have to fill out which tries to discover if you are indeed such a "US person". I don't know exactly what the result apart from probably the…

A US corporation is a US person. The owners of it are not, unless they are citizens or LPRs. Feel free to check with your lawyer or the IRS. https://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Clas...

For banking purposes you can already be befined as a US person by just having a US phone number, mailing address or generate some brokerage gains from any US business.

Re: Stripe Atlas

#60

Post by michaelschade »

kiloreux wrote: post #52

I live in Algeria, and we can't use credit cards here, my bank account doesn't support debit cards transfer and if I veer receive 10$ from outside the country, then I'm in for 1 day of questioning the resources for those money, This is a great use case for my country and great initiative from Stripe, Thank you.

Great to hear! Can't wait to see what you end up building :-)
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