Foreign company incorporated in US and W9
According to the W9 instructions you are considered a U.S. person if: According to the following section, it looks like a C corporation may be easier then an LLC: All of this information can be found here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf Hope this helps!
"Since as you say, an LLC is a pass-through entity, you will be making income in the U.S. when you sell to U.S. customers.  And so you will need to file the appropriate personal tax forms in the US.  As well as potentially in one or more States.  The US government does not register LLCs.  The various States do.  So you'll be dealing with Oregon, Wisconsin, Wyoming, one of those for the LLC registration.  You will also need to have a registered agent in the State.  That is a big deal since the entire point of forming an LLC is to add a liability shield.  You would lose the liability shield by not maintaining the business formalities.   Generally nations aim to tax income made in their nation, and many decline to tax income that you've already paid taxes on in another nation.  A key exception: If money is taxed by the U.S. it may also be taxed by one of the States.  Two States won't tax the same dollar. Registering an LLC in one State does not mean you'll pay state taxes there.  Generally States tax income made in their State.  It's common to have a Wyoming LLC that never pays a penny of tax in Wyoming.  Officially, an LLC doing business in a State it did not form in, must register in that State as a ""foreign LLC"" even though it's still in the USA.  The fee is usually the same as for a domestic LLC.  ""Doing business"" means something more than incidental sales, it means having a presence specifically in the State somehow.  It gets complicated quick.  If you are thinking of working in someone's app ecosystem like the Apple Store, Google Play, Steam etc. Obviously they want their developers coding, not wrestling with legalities, so some of them make a priority out of clearing and simplifying legal nuisances for you.  Find out what they do for you." *Disclaimer: I am a tax accountant , but I am not your professional accountant or advocate (unless you have been in my office and signed a contract). This communication is not intended as tax advice, and no tax accountant / client relationship results. *Please consult your own tax accountant for tax advise.** A foreign citizen may form a limited liability company. In contrast, all profit distributions (called dividends) made by a C corporation are subject to double taxation. (Under US tax law, a nonresident alien may own shares in a C corporation, but may not own any shares in an S corporation.) For this reason, many foreign citizens form a limited liability company (LLC) instead of a C corporation A foreign citizen may be a corporate officer and/or director, but may not work/take part in any business decisions in the United States or receive a salary or compensation for services provided in the United States unless the foreign citizen has a work permit (either a green card or a special visa) issued by the United States. Basically, you should be looking at benefiting only from dividends/pass-through income but not salaries or compensations. We offer a variety of business enterprise formation applications designed to make putting in a private organization as simple and straightforward as feasible. They range from the simple Digital Package - providing the minimum prison requirements for reputable Company formation - to the All Inclusive, which includes a variety of beneficial extras, including a prestigious registered office, a commercial enterprise provider. This corporation shape is usually utilized by non-earnings Company inside the United States. It protects the private finances of the business enterprise owners in a comparable manner as a corporation limited via stocks. Instead of getting shareholders and stocks. Note:  This is not professional tax advice.  If you think you need professional tax advice, find a licensed professional in your local area. What are the expected earnings/year? US$100? US$1,000?  US$100,000?  I would say if this is for US$1,000 or less that registering an EIN, and consulting a CPA to file a Partnership Tax return is not going to be a profitable exercise.... all the earnings, perhaps more, will go to paying someone to do (or help do) the tax filings. The simplest taxes are for a business that you completely own.  Corporations and Partnerships involve additional forms and get more and more and complex, and even more so when it involves foreign participation.  Partnerships are often not formal partnerships but can be more easily thought of as independent businesses that each participants owns, that are simply doing some business with each other. Schedule C is the IRS form you fill out for any businesses that you own. On schedule C you would list the income from advertising.  Also on schedule C there is a place for all of the business expenses, such as ads that you buy, a server that you rent, supplies, employees, and independent contractors.  Amounts paid to an independent contractor certainly need not be based on hours, but could be a fixed fee, or based on profit earned.   Finally, if you pay anyone in the USA over a certain amount, you have to tell the IRS about that with a Form 1099 at the beginning of the next year, so they can fill out their taxes.  BUT.... according to an article in International Tax Blog you might not have to file Form 1099 with the IRS for foreign contractors if they are not US persons (not a US citizen or a resident visa holder). "Q) Will I have to submit the accounts for the Swiss Business even though Im not on the payroll - and the business makes hardly any profit each year. I can of course get our accounts each year - BUT - they will be in Swiss German! You will have to submit on your income from the business.  The term ""partnership"" refers to a specific business entity type in the U.S.  I'm not sure if you're using it the same way.  In a partnership in the U.S. you pay income tax on your share of the partnership's income whether or not you actually receive income in your personal account.  There's not enough information here to know if that applies in your case. (In the U.S., the partnership itself does not pay income tax - It is a ""disregarded entity"" for tax purposes, with the tax liability passed through to the partners as individuals.) Q) Will I need to have this translated!? Is there any format/procedure to this!? Will it have to be translated by my Swiss accountants? - and if so - which parts of the documentation need to be translated!? As regards language, you will file a tax return on a U.S. form presumably in English.  You will not have to submit your account information on any other form, so the fact that your documentation is in German does not matter.  The only exception that comes to mind is that you could potentially get audited (just like anyone else filing taxes in the U.S.) in which case you might need to produce your documentation.  That situation is rare enough that I wouldn't worry about it though.  I'm not sure if they'd take it in German or force you to get a translation. I was told that if I sell the business (and property) after I aquire a greencard - that I will be liable to 15% tax of the profit I'd made. I also understand that any tax paid (on selling) in Switzerland will be deducted from the 15%!? Q) Is this correct!? The long-term capital gains rate is 15% for most people. (At very high incomes it is 20%.)  It sounds like you would qualify for long-term (held for greater than 1 year) capital gains in this case, although the details might matter. There is a foreign tax credit, but I'm not completely sure if it would apply in this case. (If forced to guess, I would say that it does.)  If you search for ""foreign tax credit"" and ""IRS"" you should get to the information that you need pretty quickly. I will effectively have ALL the paperwork for this - as we'll need to do the same in Switzerland. But again, it will be in Swiss German. Q) Would this be a problem if its presented in Swiss German!? Even in this case you will not need to submit any of your paperwork to the IRS, unless you get audited.  See earlier comments." Hi, apologize for my English. Extremely moronic question incoming (corporate finance, Modigliani&amp;Miller).  Let's say an unlevered company is valued at 1 bln: it issues 200 mln of debt and the corporate tax is at 40%.  What is its value now? The sum of unlevered value, fiscal shield (200*0.4) and debt or just the sum of unlevered value and fiscal shield? "Tax US corporate ""persons (citizens)"" under the same regime as US human persons/citizens, i.e., file/pay taxes on all income earned annually with deductions for foreign taxes paid.  Problem solved for both shareholders and governments.  [US Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad - Filing Requirements](https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-citizens-and-resident-aliens-abroad-filing-requirements)  &gt;If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien living or traveling outside the United States, **you generally are required to file income tax returns, estate tax returns, and gift tax returns and pay estimated tax in the same way as those residing in the United States.**  Thing is, we know solving this isn't the point.  It is to misdirect and talk about everything, but the actual issues, i.e., the discrepancy between tax regimes applied to persons and the massive inequality it creates in tax responsibility.  Because that would lead to the simple solutions that the populace need/crave.  My guess is most US human persons would LOVE to pay taxes only on what was left AFTER they covered their expenses." "I'm working on similar problem space. There seems to be some working ambiguity in this space - most focus seems to be on more complex cases of income like Dividends and Capital Gains.  The US seems to take a position of ""where the work was performed"" not ""where the work was paid"" for purposes of the FEIE. See this link. The Foreign Tax Credit(FTC) is applied (regardless of FEIE) based on taxes paid in the other Country. In the event you take the FEIE, you need to exclude that from the income possible to claim on the FTC. i.e. (TOTAL WAGES(X) - Excluded Income) There is a weird caveat on TOTAL WAGES(X) that says you can only apply the FTC to foreign-sourced income which means that potentially we are liable for the on-US-soil income at crazy rates.  See this link.. Upon which... there is probably not a good answer short of writing your congressperson." "It appears as others have said that companies are not required to state this on as any sort of Asset. I remembered a friend of mine is a lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property Rights so asked him and confirmed that there's no document companies are required to file which states all patent holdings as assets. There are two ways he suggested for finding out. Once you find a company you're interested in can search patents by company using one of the two following: US Patent Office website's advanced search: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm aanm/company for example entering into the textarea, ""aanm/google"" without the quotation marks will find patents by Google. The other is a Google Patent Search: http://www.google.com/patents/" "1. What forms do I need to file to receive money from Europe None. Your client can pay you via wire transfer. They need to know your name, address, account number, and the name of your bank, its SWIFT number and its associated address. The addresses and names are required to make sure there are no typos in the numbers. 2. What forms do I need to file to pay people in Latin America (or any country outside the US) None. 1099s only need to be filled out when the contractor has a US tax ID. Make sure they are contractors. If they work for you for more than 2 years, that can create a problem unless they incorporate because they might look like ""employees"" to the IRS in which case you need to be reporting their identitites to the IRS via a W-8BEN form. Generally speaking any foreign contractor you have for more than 2 years should incorporate in their own country and you bill that corporation to prevent employee status from occurring. 3. Can I deduct payments I made to contractors from other countries as company expense Of course." See I believe that it's pretty in the open. A shell company whose only purpose is to license out some intellectual property to an affiliate company should be easy to spot. A company with 5 employees and a tiny office should not be claiming millions of income that originated in an affiliate company. My point is that these things are not clearly defined in the code and should be, not that they are necessarily being hidden. I've seen at least 5 articles in the last year similar to this one about other large companies, so I wish congress and whoever else would do something about it. International equity are considered shares of companies, which are headquartered outside the United States, for instance Research in Motion (Canada), BMW (Germany), UBS (Switzerland). Some investors argue that adding international equities to a portfolio can reduce its risk due to regional diversification. &gt; foreign company  I mean, I agree with the rest of the post but this dude is from the US and works in NY. The equity research division has nothing to do with foreign entities, especially when the foreign country of origin is Germany......Being a foreign company really doesnt have anything to do with this. "By living in Sweden and having a Swedish personal identification number (personnummer), you are required to declare your entire worldwide income for tax purposes with the Swedish tax authorities, Skatteverket. It would seem to not make any difference if some of that income is kept outside of Sweden. A company that has no permanent base of operations within Sweden should not deduct any preliminary taxes for an employee that lives in Sweden. Rather, the employee should apply for ""special A tax"" (""SA"" tax status), and pay the taxes that, had the company had a permanent base of operations in Sweden, the company would have paid. The information available on the tax authority's web site in English seems limited, but the relevant page in Swedish in your situation is very likely Lön från utländska arbetsgivare utan fast driftställe i Sverige. There is a summary at Paying taxes – for individuals. Particularly do note the summary section: When staying for at least six months, you are considered as resident in Sweden for tax purposes, and are liable for taxation in Sweden on all of your worldwide income. You must also file a Swedish income tax return. Your tax return must be filed no later than May 2nd of the year after the fiscal year. as well as that: If you stay in Sweden for a continuous period of at least six months you are considered to be resident in Sweden. /.../ As a resident you are liable for taxation in Sweden on all of your worldwide income. In some cases a tax treaty with with your ordinary country of residence  may limit the Swedish taxation. /.../ For a more detailed answer, including which exact forms you need to fill out and what data is needed, I strongly recommend that you either contact Skatteverket (they are usually quite nice to deal with, and they tend to realize that everyone benefits from getting the tax paperwork and payments right from the beginning), or find an attorney specializing in Swedish tax law. They even point out themselves that (my emphasis): the practical applications of these rules are relatively complicated and for more information you can contact the Tax Information (“Skatteupplysningen”) at 0771 567 567." According to the Form W-8BEN instructions for Part II, Line 10: Line 10.   Line 10 must be used only if you are claiming treaty benefits that require that you meet conditions not covered by the representations you make on line 9 and Part III. For example, persons claiming treaty benefits on royalties must complete this line if the treaty contains different withholding rates for different types of royalties. In tax treaties, some of the benefits apply to every resident of a foreign country.  Other benefits only apply to certain groups of people.  Line 10 is where you affirm that you meet whatever special conditions are necessary in the treaty to obtain the benefit. If you are claiming that Article 15 of the U.S.-India Tax Treaty, you could use Line 10 to do this. It is important to remember that this form goes to the company paying you; it does not actually get sent to the IRS.  Therefore, you can ask the company themselves if filling out Line 9 only will result in them withholding nothing, or if they would need you to fill out Line 10.