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Bootstrapping overseas as an American

expatsoftware.com

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Re: Bootstrapping overseas as an American

#11

Post by dalke »

That was an odd piece. I'll start with the provably wrong statement: "Even in Europe, where you wouldn’t be able to get a self-employment working visa (if such a thing existed) with less than six months effort and a good lawyer"

It took me about 2 months to get a self-employment residency permit for Sweden. While I looked around for lawyers to help, I couldn't find any, and ended up writing it myself. It seems very few people do that option.

YMMV of course. Which is my point.

But as for the other parts, it depends on the type of person you are and what you want. I did the 3-month-at-a-time tourist visa option for a bit over a year. (It's not quite a 'visa run' because it wasn't a cross over the border and back thing.) It got tiresome to start make friends and then leave them, then come back, only to leave again.

On the other hand, there are people who do that for decades, and love it.

While I sell software, my customers are businesses, in a market where most contacts start by meeting people and word-of-mouth. Most of the people who might buy are in the US or Europe, and that's also where most of the conferences are held. It's much more expensive to send my bundle of atoms from South Africa (one of the places I considered living) than from Sweden.

Again, this isn't true of everyone. There's a big difference between "and start bringing in a few hundred bucks a month from paying customers" and my software, which sells for a few tens of thousands.

It also becomes harder if you want to have access to a local user's group (I co-founded the local Python user's group) or makerspace.

So if your interests are surfing, rock climbing, Swedish women, and beaches, and you are selling direct to customers who expect no personal connection, etc. then certainly living overseas can be a great idea.

I do believe that living or even just a multi-month travel overseas is a good thing to do at least once. Just bear in mind that it's not always as rosy as this author paints.

Re: Bootstrapping overseas as an American

#12

Post by jasonkester »

peterjmag wrote: post #8

Am I allowed to work there? No, not really. But they’re not checking. Places like Southeast Asia are chock full of expats living there, doing silly things like “visa runs” to the next country and back every couple months to remain a tourist for years on end. Even in Europe, where you wouldn’t be able to get a self-employment working visa (if such a thing existed) with less than six months effort and a good lawyer, yo…

Yeah, yikes. Definitely don't overstay a Schengen Visa. I'm not sure where you got that from the article but you're right that it's not a good plan.

Beyond that, I can only speak from personal experience. 15 years and counting without running into any issue working from the road.

Re: Bootstrapping overseas as an American

#14

Post by vdance »

I did this with a few differences. It was 2004, so a few services from these days were not as "available" from a quality perspective -- particularly, VoIP. I left to France with a PSTN phone device that answered calls to my business number, and forwarded them to a French PSTN fixed phone number -- all at international rates, which were a bit more expensive back then. I did later move to a VoIP service, when the quality was reasonably acceptable.

Time differences in Asia would be different than France - maybe a few hours too many for me. I particularity loved the time difference between France and the US (~8 hours). Everyday, there was a whole day of work before my clients in the US would wake up. If needed, I could make a few calls before I had dinner and went out.

I had a 3 year established list of clients when I moved there, so that helped. A fairly stressful aspect of living abroad was that all my clients came in "locally" by way of local google advertising. And as it happens, when someone picks up the phone and calls a number that seems local to them, they tend to assume they're talking to someone who is physically present in their city.

Many clients were turned off after realizing that I was working abroad -- and not telling them (which I tried a couple times) was very strange as well -- it's just a balancing act. So my suggestion would be to get into a borderless niche business, if you can -- something like doing "websites for x" -- where a company would much rather work with someone with niche products and expertise, rather than someone local. Then the subject of where you physically are never really comes up, or makes sense. SAAS would work in that way too, of course.

Re: Bootstrapping overseas as an American

#15

Post by oops »

jasonkester wrote: post #9
oops wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that IRS page it says: "For this purpose, foreign earned income is income you receive for services you perform in a foreign country during a period your tax home is in a foreign country and during which you meet either the bona fide residence test or the physical presence test." It sounds like one must also be tax resident in the foreign country for this to work?

That's right. The other piece of the puzzle is that you have to either show that you're a resident of a foreign country, or that you're physically outside of the USA for 330 days of the year. (as mentioned in the linked article)

The IRS page reads as though one must meet both those criteria, not just one of them?

Re: Bootstrapping overseas as an American

#16

Post by peterjmag »

jasonkester wrote: post #12
peterjmag wrote: post #8

Am I allowed to work there? No, not really. But they’re not checking. Places like Southeast Asia are chock full of expats living there, doing silly things like “visa runs” to the next country and back every couple months to remain a tourist for years on end. Even in Europe, where you wouldn’t be able to get a self-employment working visa (if such a thing existed) with less than six months effort and a good lawyer, yo…

Yeah, yikes. Definitely don't overstay a Schengen Visa. I'm not sure where you got that from the article but you're right that it's not a good plan. Beyond that, I can only speak from personal experience. 15 years and counting without running into any issue working from the road.

Ah, it seems I misinterpreted that paragraph. You mean to say that you're unlikely to get caught working while you're there on an otherwise legal tourist visa, right? I agree that it's less risky, but I'm still not sure I'd recommend it. Either way, sorry to jump on you.

Re: Bootstrapping overseas as an American

#17

Post by chatmasta »

ochoseis wrote: post #13

Anyone doing this in Hong Kong? The GF is considering a move to HK with work and I'm trying to sort out how I'd scrape by if I wanted to tag along...

I just got back from a trip to HK. While I'm sure it's do-able, be forewarned that HK is just as expensive as any other major financial center. Don't expect prices to be cheap just because it's Asia.

Re: Bootstrapping overseas as an American

#18

Post by mr_luc »

jasonkester wrote: post #12
peterjmag wrote: post #8

Am I allowed to work there? No, not really. But they’re not checking. Places like Southeast Asia are chock full of expats living there, doing silly things like “visa runs” to the next country and back every couple months to remain a tourist for years on end. Even in Europe, where you wouldn’t be able to get a self-employment working visa (if such a thing existed) with less than six months effort and a good lawyer, yo…

Yeah, yikes. Definitely don't overstay a Schengen Visa. I'm not sure where you got that from the article but you're right that it's not a good plan. Beyond that, I can only speak from personal experience. 15 years and counting without running into any issue working from the road.

Yeah, I don't see where in your article you encourage overstaying visas!

I spent the last 7 years living in pacific South America, during the last 4 of which I hacked remotely several months each year.

In the rare event that someone is targeted for working in-country, it's almost always because they are doing local work. The infamous example are some of the hippy burnouts 'teaching English' in the cities along the coast. Sometimes those types have a) overstayed their visa, and b) are working illegally in the country in a job that lots of Ecuadoreans would prefer to have. And so they get blackmailed by the owner of the English school! (This actually happens).

You would have to be pretty brazen to tempt investigation for working over the internet. Like, if you painted a giant logo on the side of your house with your business name or something.

But re: the visa issue, and visa runs:

Many countries that allow US citizens to come in as tourists on their passports have totally legal extensions that you can file to the automatic passport visa. In the case of Ecuador, for instance, this lets you legally spend 9 months of every year there without doing more than filing a paper and paying $180 a couple of months after coming into the country.

So you take a 3-month trip each year, and otherwise have a stable home base to work out of. :)

Re: Bootstrapping overseas as an American

#19

Post by seanmcdirmid »

chatmasta wrote: post #17
ochoseis wrote: post #13

Anyone doing this in Hong Kong? The GF is considering a move to HK with work and I'm trying to sort out how I'd scrape by if I wanted to tag along...

I just got back from a trip to HK. While I'm sure it's do-able, be forewarned that HK is just as expensive as any other major financial center. Don't expect prices to be cheap just because it's Asia.

In HK, expensive things are cheap and cheap things are expensive...at least compared to the mainland.

Re: Bootstrapping overseas as an American

#20

Post by semperfaux »

codecamper wrote: post #6
jasonkester wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the relevant section explaining that yes, income from a US company is just groovy for use with the Foreign Earned Income deduction: http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Forei... Source of Earned Income The source of your earned income is the place where you perform the services for which you received the income. Foreign earned income is income you receive for performing personal services in a…

Interesting! I stand corrected. Next thing I don't understand with that document is what is "earned" income. Are app store sales "earned?" I'd say so... constantly having to update the software -- I'm earning it.

Is this facetious? Because it's a little funny to expect the IRS to be so literal. In my experience, either it's "earned" in that it's been paid directly to you or it's indirect income (e.g. dividends you were paid on an investment you aren't directly working on or appreciation you haven't collected on) that are still going to be taxed on in one way or another.
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