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Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

thenitai.com

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Re: Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

#291

Post by arjie »

kartikkumar wrote: post #38
Orangeair wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're smugly throwing around Wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simile

Had you seen my body language when I posted the comment, you might not have decided that it was made out of any sense of smugness. NOTE: Since my comments in this thread were downvoted, implying that they were not taken in the spirit they were intended, my contribution to this thread should be considered obsolete. I'll leave my original comments in place to serve as a reminder to myself to be careful about what I say…

No need to play the martyr. It's a tangential issue. If you brought it up in conversation people would say something like "ha ha yeah, you know what I mean" and continue discussing the original topic.

There it quickly dissipates because voice is quickly damped but here it is just noise that takes time to be damped out.

Re: Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

#292

Post by girvo »

sgdesign wrote: post #244
philiphodgen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the question of where you incorporate depends on two factors. First is citizenship. Are you (or your friend) U.S. citizens? If so you have a bunch of tax hobbles that will slow you down. Second is where your customers are. This is both a tax question (you want to pay less tax) and a business question (you want to collect more money more easily). If you need Stripe or its equivalent, you dance to the tune they…

Neither of us are U.S. citizens. I'm French and my partner is Australian. And we have about half of our customers in the U.S., and half outside. And I hear you about not over-thinking this. But even if we want to choose the simplest route, it's still not obvious which solution to pick just yet…

Where in Australia is he? I'm an Aussie, and I've done a startup and a regular business, and my mother is a(n ex-)partner at KPMG, so I have a whole stack of resources and info I can give him if you guys decide to incorporate here. My email is in my profile :)

Re: Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

#293

Post by girvo »

mbesto wrote: post #202
philiphodgen wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For catching up, your risk depends on your income and the kind of stuff going on in your life (owning businesses, etc.). Here are the category of choices: 1. Just prepare the tax returns and file them. Good for regular people; the likelihood of you owing any U.S. taxes is low. You have risks of penalties (undisclosed bank accounts = FinCen 114 form filled in online -- that's the biggest one). If you are a very small…

Wait, do you have to do FBAR and FinCen 114? EDIT - Oh doh! They're the same thing.

It seems the Financial inCentives here are FuBARed. Seriously, this is making my head spin. Sure I get taxed out the wahzoo here in Australia, but at least is sort of simple

Re: Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

#294

Post by a3n »

> We sent endless amounts of documents, translated documents, notarized documents and copies of this and that. ... a detailed list of all transactions from our Danish bank accounts for the past 3 years. ... our lease agreement for the office. ... pictures of the office from the outside. in Denmark and the USA. ... pictures of the inside – and we needed to make sure that the pictures had employees in them. We had to get the main lease agreement from our lessor to prove that they could actually sublease to us.

> ... We needed to explain, why we needed the space. We needed to explain, why we didn’t need more. Then why we didn’t need less. Then we had to send copies of all Nitai’s diplomas. Then we had to explain, why nobody else could run the operation in the USA for us.

I've read that we do this shit to make sure that people don't come here and take advantage of the business and benefit paradise that we've created.

I have this picture of the US as a 1970s asshole dressed in a leisure suit, wide collars and bell bottoms and a vest, who think's he's God's gift to women, where actually everyone is laughing at him for the clown that he his. And he rarely gets laid, despite bragging to the contrary.

Re: Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

#295

Post by girvo »

jpatokal wrote: post #272
joseph wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposing one does not want a second citizenship and is willing to renounce their US citizenship entirely, which country would you recommend switching to? How difficult is it and what are the consequences?

+1 for Singapore, at least from a business perspective: http://gyrovague.com/2013/10/30/half-the-donut-why-an-entrep... Personally, I'm going for Australia though -- there's more to life than low taxes.

Yeah, while our taxes here in Aus are high, so are our standards of living. Although our new government seems intent on ruining that, in a bid to out-do the US in terms of idiotic legislation and curbing freedoms...

Re: Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

#296

Post by girvo »

hueving wrote: post #154
CalRobert wrote: post #39

I really don't understand this fetishization of the US for business. If you want to be sued into utter oblivion and live on the streets with a nonexistent social safety net I guess it's all right. I'm in Ireland and if you want to start a real business (not some rinkydink app that mysteriously needs €30 million in funding so you can fail more spectacularly) the climate seems quite good.

>I really don't understand this fetishization of the US for business. You don't understand because of the following idiotic strawman. "If you want to be sued into utter oblivion and live on the streets with a nonexistent social safety net I guess it's all right." Rather than whining about your impression of the US on HN, maybe you could do some research on your own to find out why it's such a strongly preferred place…

His post is filled with hyperbole, yes, but as someone who has spent 18 months looking to move to the US from Australia, I've personally come to the conclusion that for me it's simply not worth it. The risks are too high, and those risks come from things like your legal environment, the health care situation, and the Byzantine labyrinth that is your tax code.

Moving would have opportunity, yeah! And a lot of it. But I'm not willing to trade my standard of living to go somewhere that I'll pay just as much tax as here, with far higher chance of penalties due to mistakes, and with a far worse social safety net (health wise) to cover me (as I won't be poor, Medicaid, etc) than I have here.

Now, you can deal with all those things. There are ways to manage, mitigate or avoid them. I'm well aware of that. But frankly, I shouldn't have to...

Re: Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

#297

Post by dleskov »

dcc1 wrote: post #193
luser wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I have to disagree. I have run a small software consulting business in Dublin for nearly ten years. The one thing we get right in this country is our pro business climate. It is easy to set up a company, there is a lot of support and advice available. I think we do this well... Two caveats though: - You DO need to get a good accountant to get advice on international VAT charges as they are complex (I suggest b…

re: fastsrping "You have the option to pay either 8.9% flat or 5.9% plus $.95 per transaction. " Wowza, thats steep! edit: Sorry but experience has been different here in west, in another lifetime I worked on an "innovation partnership" with EI, it was nothing more than a way to funnel state money to politically connected "friends", the business idea was crippled from day 1 but that didnt matter the objective was tra…

> re: fastsrping

> "You have the option to pay either 8.9% flat or 5.9% plus $.95 per transaction. "

> Wowza, thats steep!

FastSpring customer here.

First, they handle lots of boring and complicated stuff for you, not just taxes. How much would it cost you to accept all major credit cards, PayPal, checks and (international) wire transfers, and provide customer service for all of those transaction types?

Second, if you sell the more expensive B2B stuff like we do, and/or sell lots of your stuff through them, you can ask for a custom rate.

Re: Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

#298

Post by dleskov »

Solely from the taxation perspective, my home country now looks surprisingly friendly for small IT businesses.

We have a so called Simplified Taxation System for small businesses (not just IT.) Basically, as a company we can choose to pay either 6% of annual revenue, or the bigger of 15% of profit and 1% of revenue. That's it, no VAT or anything.

As far as wage taxes go, there is a 20% Unified Social Tax charged on the wage amount before income tax. Moreover, there is an annual cap on that tax, which a senior developer in a big city is likely to hit as early as mid-year. Otherwise, small IT businesses can qualify to lower that tax to 14%. All that's left after that is the income tax - 13% flat.

Which country you would ask? Russia. That's why I wrote "Solely from the taxation perspective" in the opening statement...

Re: Why you might not want to incorporate in the USA

#300

Post by megablast »

sgdesign wrote: post #247
mildtrepidation wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for doing this! I'm an American planning to live in Japan for 1-2 years starting later this year (I'll be studying the language and working for my existing small US business). I won't be working for (or, likely, doing any business with) Japanese companies. I assumed I'd be best off hiring an accountant who could take care of whatever inane forms come with paying taxes in this situation (I do also pay quarterly…

As a French expat living in Japan, creating a personal company in Japan was surprisingly easy (assuming you have a work visa of course). It was just a matter of filling a one-page form at the tax office. Filing tax was also very easy, I basically just went to city hall and they filed them for me. So despite its reputation as a bureaucratic country, Japan turned out to be much better than France. Of course, I can't he…

Oh, France is awful, very bureaucratic. Worst country I have seen for documentation.
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