<story><title>I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas</title><url>http://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/09/09/im-joining-stripe-to-work-on-atlas/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>basisword</author><text>First time I&amp;#x27;ve seen Atlas. I&amp;#x27;m immediately worried. If someone starts a company using this I presume it&amp;#x27;s subject to US laws? What does this mean:&lt;p&gt;1. For taxes? If I live in the UK and start my business with Atlas does the US get the corporation tax revenue or the UK (or a split of the two)?&lt;p&gt;2. For data security&amp;#x2F;privacy? Is the data I store now subject to access by the US government through National Security letters and the like? I believe that if I was storing EU citizen data I&amp;#x27;m subject to privacy shield but all data would be more susceptible to US government requests. Is this accurate?&lt;p&gt;Edit: Quite shocked at the number of downvotes a completely legitimate question is getting...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>antoinevg</author><text>We&amp;#x27;re based in South Africa and joined the Stripe Atlas beta earlier this year.&lt;p&gt;Solving the incorporation problem is only the first of many problems.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;Please understand that none of the following is a criticism of Stripe. If we hadn&amp;#x27;t been accepted to the beta we&amp;#x27;d be dead in the water right now and our customers would have been screwed. I also expect the solutions to become easier as more people in more countries face the same problems.&lt;p&gt;(Btw… one small suggestion for the Stripe Atlas team if anyone there is reading this… how about a forum where Atlas users in the same countries can swap information?)&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;So, the questions you asked are completely legitimate.&lt;p&gt;Trying to answer them ourselves has cost us an inordinate amount of money on legal &amp;amp; tax advice so far and we&amp;#x27;re still no closer to answers.&lt;p&gt;The problem is this:&lt;p&gt;The moment you&amp;#x27;re operating in two countries you are subject to the same legal, tax &amp;amp; accounting rules that multi-national corporations have to conform to.&lt;p&gt;There _are_ existing services that are geared towards tackling the insane levels of complexity involved but the pricing also assumes that you are a large multi-national corporation.&lt;p&gt;So, to give you an idea: Several reputable firms all quoted us the equivalent of an engineer&amp;#x27;s salary for a month just to _estimate_ the price of getting our ducks in a row.&lt;p&gt;For my company this is a LOT of money. We&amp;#x27;re bootstrapping and are barely ramen profitable.&lt;p&gt;Also, and I&amp;#x27;m sure this happens to everyone at least once, at the time I did not understand that what they were quoting for was to prepare an estimate for what it would cost to answer our questions. I thought this was the quote to answer our questions!&lt;p&gt;When the estimate itself arrived it was for the equivalent to an engineer&amp;#x27;s salary for a year, with _no_ guarantee that further complexities (and costs) would not come up during or after the process.&lt;p&gt;An expensive lesson.&lt;p&gt;Currently we&amp;#x27;re trying to navigate the process ourselves by interacting directly with the .za &amp;amp; USA revenue services and the .za Reserve Bank.&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, this is hell on trying to get any actual work done in the meantime :-)</text></comment>
<story><title>I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas</title><url>http://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/09/09/im-joining-stripe-to-work-on-atlas/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>basisword</author><text>First time I&amp;#x27;ve seen Atlas. I&amp;#x27;m immediately worried. If someone starts a company using this I presume it&amp;#x27;s subject to US laws? What does this mean:&lt;p&gt;1. For taxes? If I live in the UK and start my business with Atlas does the US get the corporation tax revenue or the UK (or a split of the two)?&lt;p&gt;2. For data security&amp;#x2F;privacy? Is the data I store now subject to access by the US government through National Security letters and the like? I believe that if I was storing EU citizen data I&amp;#x27;m subject to privacy shield but all data would be more susceptible to US government requests. Is this accurate?&lt;p&gt;Edit: Quite shocked at the number of downvotes a completely legitimate question is getting...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>manarth</author><text>To rephrase the question slightly differently: &amp;quot;Is Atlas a suitable tool for a UK startup, selling to the UK&amp;#x2F;EU markets?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;To which the answer may well be &amp;quot;No. Right now, Atlas is US-centric, but could potentially broaden its scope in the future to include other jurisdictions&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I&amp;#x27;m not worried about Atlas, in the same way as I&amp;#x27;m not worried about other US company startup facilities.&lt;p&gt;When I started my latest UK company, I used a UK accountancy service, who handled the initial set-up for me.</text></comment>