What options exist to make money in the US on a work-restricted visa?
"Income generated from online sales is not considered ""passive income"", so you need to be authorized to work in the U.S. Those without work authorization can acquire passive income (through investments, lending, competition/contest earnings, etc.) In order to sell products on eBay (the description you've given leads me to believe that this is operated as a business), you need to be authorized to work in the U.S., and register a business. See:" Are you planning to not pay taxes? Any time someone has income in the U.S., it is subject to U.S. taxes. You must file tax returns (and pay taxes if necessary) if you have income above a certain threshold, regardless of whether you're not authorized to work or not. If you plan to intentionally not pay taxes, then that's a whole other matter from working without authorization. Working without authorization is an immigration issue. It probably violates the conditions of your status, which will make you to automatically lose your status. That may or may not affect when you want to want to visit, immigrate to, or get other immigration benefits in the U.S. in the future; and at worst you may be deported. It's a complicated topic, but not really relevant for this site.
Unless you started a bank or other kind of a financial institution (brokerage, merchant processor, etc etc), the page you linked to is irrelevant. That said, there's enough in the US tax code for you to reconsider your decision of not living in the US, or at least of being a shareholder of a foreign company. Your compliance costs are going to go through the roof. If you haven't broken any US tax laws yet (which is very unlikely), you may renounce your citizenship and save yourself a lot of money and trouble. But in the more likely case of you already being a criminal with regards the US tax law, you should probably get a proper tax advice from a US-licensed CPA/EA who's also proficient in the Japanese-American tax treaty and expats' compliance issues resolution. Probably the biggest tax-deferment available to US workers is through employee-sponsored investment plans like the 401k.  If you meet the income limits, you could also use a Traditional IRA if you do not have a 401k at work.  But keep in mind that you are really just deferring taxes here.  The US Government will eventually get their due. :) One way which you may find interesting is by using 529 plans, or other college investment plans, to save for your child's (or your) college expenses.  Generally, contributions up to a certain amount are deductible on your state taxes, and are exempt from Federal and State taxes when used for qualifying education expenses.  The state deduction can lower your taxes and help you save for college for your children, if that is a desire of yours. "Yes you can, but to do so successfully, you need lots of money. You also need to be able to meet the criteria for being classified as a ""professional trader"" by the IRS. (If not, you'll be buried in paperwork.) The fact that you're asking about it here probably means that you do not have enough money to succeed at HFT." "Since you're also looking for alternative means of funding, have you considered doing part-time work -- during the holidays or on some of the weekends? With this kind of financing you have to watch out that the work does not interfere with your study. On the other hand it can be valuable work experience that can come in handy later in your life, such as when applying for your first ""real"" job. The kind of work you can do will depend a lot on the subject you are studying and what qualifications you have. For example, if you are studying computer science, there are a lot of freelance opportunities in programming. One of these could lead right to your first job after university. The two broad types of work you can do are: For freelance: Try searching for ""[subject] student freelance"" and look at sites like oDesk. Read up on tax concerns, research how to price your time, and start doing! For employment: Browse the job boards at your university. Contact businesses to ask for part-time opportunities. Hope this helps to open one of the alternative paths here. If you go down this road, remember to keep your priorities in mind. Especially the freelance work can easily interfere with your study and delay you unnecessarily. Good luck!" "There are two parts to the hack you describe.  One is moving to a high-cost, high-pay country to work, and the other is moving to a low-cost, low-pay country to retire. As Dilip mentioned in a comment, the first part is not so easy in many cases.  You can't just take a plane to the USA and start making big bucks immediately.  In the first place, it's illegal to work without special visa permissions.  Even if you manage to secure that permission (or take the risk of trying to work illegally), there's no guarantee you'll get a job, let alone a high-paying one.  The same is true in most other high-paying countries. As for the second part, that takes considerable willpower as well.  After spending X years getting used to a country, investing time and money, you must then have the resolve to uproot your life a second time and move to another country.  For the most part, countries are expensive for a reason.  Even if you in principle reject the cost-benefit tradeoffs of a particular country, it can be difficult to give up some of those benefits when the time comes (e.g., trains running on time, reliable electricity, donut shops, or whatever).  You might ""get soft"" or become co-opted by the rich-country rat race and find it difficult to extricate yourself. All of these problems are compounded if, as in many cases, you happened to start a family while in the expensive country.  At the least, moving would require uprooting not just you but your family.  Also, quality of education is often one of the main reasons people immigrate permanently to expensive countries.  Even a person who personally would prefer to retire to a cheaper country may be unwilling to transplant their children into that country's education system.  (Of course, they could wait until the children are self-supporting, but that makes the wait longer, and may result in them living far away from their children, which they may not want.) As JoeTaxpayer notes, the same reasons may work on smaller levels, even within a country.  In theory it's perfectly possible to power through a brief, lucrative career in Silicon Valley and then retire to Idaho, but it doesn't seem to happen as often as the plain numbers might suggest.  A simple way to put it might be that the kind of person who would be happy living in a cheap environment often cannot or will not endure a lengthy ""tour of duty"" in an expensive environment.  Either you like the expensive environment and stay, or you leave, not as a planned lifehack, but because you realize you don't like it." "The real question you're asking is how you can work for your business. You cannot. Whether your ""friend"" pays you or not is entirely irrelevant. Claiming your work-related earnings as interest/dividend will make it also a tax fraud, in addition to the immigration violation (i.e.: not only deportation but also potentially jail time)." "I am a female that works for a photo studio in berlin. I work ""part time"" (as in, I started at four hours per day and now I can work up to 8 if there is enough work). I make 8 euro per hour (not a lot but I don't speak fluent German and I scan photos), I have health insurance, I have sick and vacation time (24 days).  I am married to a German with a full time job so, of course, I have it better. However, if we didn't make enough money you can go and apply to get help from the government. My husband said they would give him at least 300euro per month.  Trick is that since I am a US citizen and looking for a permanent visa in three years they check to make sure you haven't gotten any government aid. They don't want to support more people that can't or don't want to work.  That being said my mother-in-law cannot work due to medical reasons and she lives very comfortably in a good apartment.  Our last apartment was a studio/one room apartment and we paid 230 euro per month. Even making the money I do without my husband I could afford the basics.  Even now we pay 57 euro for electricity. About 20 euro a month for our phones. 20 euro a month for internet.  It is way less expensive than the USA. My mom pays about $90 per month (my aunt sometimes has $1,000 electricity bills). Water is another $30. Cellphone another $60, cable and internet another $120.   I would say that living in the USA is far more expensive.  Edit: to put it very simply. I used to make on my own in the USA about what my husband and I both make, combined, in Germany. In the USA I could barely make ends meet. I lived with my mom and sister. Paid as little rent as I could, barely had enough for food. I had a good job! I was lucky to have health insurance but it was still really expensive to go to the doctor.  Here, in berlin, we have a large apartment in a nice neighborhood. With paying rent and all of our must haves every month we have over 500 euro left. That is pretty good. In the USA I was lucky if I had $20 by the end of the pay period." Your wife could open a non-registered margin trading account with a Canadian full-service or discount broker. An account at one of the top Canadian brokers should provide access to trade U.S.-listed options. I've traded both Canadian and U.S.-listed options with my own broker. On the application, you'd need to indicate an interest in trading options, and more specifically, what kind of option trades; e.g. long puts and calls only, covered writing, combination trades, etc. And yes, part of the application approval process (at least when I went through it) is to answer a few questions to prove that the applicant is aware of the types of risks with trading options. Be sure to do some research on the fees and currency/fx aspects before you choose a broker.  If you plan to exercise any options purchased or expect to be assigned for any you write, be aware that those fees are often different from the headline cost-per-trade advertised by brokers. For instance, I pay in excess of $40 when a call option I write gets assigned, vs. ~$10 that I'd pay if I just plain sold the stock. One other thing to investigate is what kind of online option trading research and order entry tools are available; not every broker has the same set of features with respect to options — especially if it isn't a big part of their business. "If you live outside the US, then you probably need to deal with foreign tax credits, foreign income exclusions, FBAR forms (you probably have bank account balances enough for the 10K threshold) , various monsters the Congress enacted against you like form 8939 (if you have enough banking and investment accounts), form 3520 (if you have a IRA-like local pension), form 5471 (if you have a stake in a foreign business), form 8833 (if you have treaty claims) etc ect - that's just what I had the pleasure of coming across, there's more. TurboTax/H&R Block At Home/etc/etc are not for you. These programs are developed for a ""mainstream"" American citizen and resident who has nothing, or practically nothing, abroad. They may support the FBAR/FATCA forms (IIRC H&R Block has a problem with Fatca, didn't check if they fixed it for 2013. Heard reports that TurboTax support is not perfect as well), but nothing more than that. If you know the stuff well enough to fill the forms manually - go for it (I'm not sure they even provide all these forms in the software though). Now, specifically to your questions: Turbo tax doesn't seem to like the fact that my wife is a foreigner   and doesn't have a social security number. It keeps bugging me to   input a valid Ssn for her. I input all zeros for now. Not sure what to   do. No, you cannot do that. You need to think whether you even want to include your wife in the return. Does she have income? Do you want to pay US taxes on her income? If she's not a US citizen/green card holder, why would you want that? Consider it again. If you decide to include here after all - you have to get an ITIN for her (instead of SSN). If you hire a professional to do your taxes, that professional will also guide you through the ITIN process. Turbo tax forces me to fill out a 29something form that establishes   bonafide residency. Is this really necessary? Again in here it bugs me   about wife's Ssn Form 2555 probably. Yes, it is, and yes, you have to have a ITIN for your wife if she's included. My previous state is California, and for my present state I input   Foreign. When I get to the state tax portion turbo doesn't seem to   realize that I have input foreign and it wants me to choose a valid   state. However I think my first question is do i have to file a   California tax now that I am not it's resident anymore? I do not have   any assets in California. No house, no phone bill etc If you're not a resident in California, then why would you file? But you might be a partial resident, if you lived in CA part of the year. If so, you need to file 540NR for the part of the year you were a resident. If you have a better way to file tax based on this situation could you   please share with me? As I said - hire a professional, preferably one that practices in your country of residence and knows the provisions of that country's tax treaty with the US. You can also hire a professional in the US, but get a good one, that specializes on expats." "You may look into covered calls.  In short, selling the option instead of buying it ... playing the house.   One can do this on the ""buying side"" too, e.g. let's say you like company XYZ.  If you sell the put, and it goes up, you make money.  If XYZ goes down by expiration, you still made the money on the put, and now own the stock - the one you like, at a lower price.  Now, you can immediately sell calls on XYZ.  If it doesn't go up, you make money.  If it does goes up, you get called out, and you make even more money (probably selling the call a little above current price, or where it was ""put"" to you at). The greatest risk is very large declines, and so one needs to do some research on the company to see if they are decent -- e.g. have good earnings, not over-valued P/E, etc.  For larger declines, one has to sell the call further out.  Note there are now stocks that have weekly options as well as monthly options.  You just have to calculate the rate of return you will get, realizing that underneath the first put, you need enough money available should the stock be ""put"" to you.   An additional, associated strategy, is starting by selling the put at a higher than current market limit price.  Then, over a couple days, generally lowering the limit, if it isn't reached in the stock's fluctuation.  I.e. if the stock drops in the next few days, you might sell the put on a dip.   Same deal if the stock finally is ""put"" to you.  Then you can start by selling the call at a higher limit price, gradually bringing it down if you aren't successful -- i.e. the stock doesn't reach it on an upswing. My friend is highly successful with this strategy. Good luck" Well I am kind of looking for a way to make it little bit more official if I can ... :D I have no toruble for paying taxes to US and anything ...   Just don't want to spend 4000$ on 2 year VISA for a model that will stay in NYC for 3 weeks ...  Doesn't make sense ... I'll start with the bottom line. Below the line I'll address the specific issues. Becoming a US tax resident is a very serious decision, that has significant consequences for any non-American with >$0 in assets. When it involves cross-border business interests, it becomes even more significant. Especially if Switzerland is involved. The US has driven at least one iconic Swiss financial institution out of business for sheltering US tax residents from the IRS/FinCEN. So in a nutshell, you need to learn and be afraid of the following abbreviations: and many more. The best thing for you would be to find a good US tax adviser (there are several large US tax firms in the UK handling the US expats there, go to one of those) and get a proper assessment of all your risks and get a proper advice. You can get burnt really hard if you don't prepare and plan properly. Now here's that bottom line. 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! That's actually not a trivial question. Depending on the ownership structure and your legal status within the company, all the company's bank accounts may be reportable on FBAR (see link above). You may also be required to file form 5471. 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!? All US forms are in English. If you're required to provide supporting documentation (during audit, or if the form instructions require it with filing) - you'll need to translate it, and have the translation certified. Depending on what you need, your accountant will guide you. 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.  Q) Is this correct!? No. You will be liable to pay income tax. The rate of the tax depends on the kind of property and the period you held it for. It may be 15%, it may be 39%. Depends on a lot of factors. It may also be 0%, in some cases. I   also understand that any tax paid (on selling) in Switzerland will be   deducted from the 15%!? May be. May be not. What you're talking about is called Foreign Tax Credit. The rules for calculating the credit are not exactly trivial, and from my personal experience - you can most definitely end up being paying tax in both the US and Switzerland without the ability to utilize the credit in full. Again, talk to your tax adviser ahead of time to plan things in the most optimal way for you. 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!? Of course. If you need to present it (again, most likely only in case of audit), you'll have to have a translation. Translating stuff is not a problem, usually costs $5-$20 per page, depending on complexity. Unless a lot of money involved, I doubt you'll need to translate more than balance sheet/bank statement. I know this is a very unique set of questions, so if you can shed any   light on the matter, it would be greatly appreciated. Not unique at all. You're not the first and not the last to emigrate to the US. However, you need to understand that the issue is very complex. Taxes are complex everywhere, but especially so in the US. I suggest you not do anything before talking to a US-licensed CPA/EA whose practice is to work with the EU/UK expats to the US or US expats to the UK/EU. Here is the solution: any money made inside the United States will be taxed under US tax law.  You want to do business here, open up a US headquarters that handles all the sales tracking and reporting. No tax dollars, no operations inside the US.   The united states carries such bulk buying power that companies will be forced to abide by its rules. You should talk to a lawyer who's familiar with the matter. I'm not such a lawyer. For the best of my understanding, at least with regards to the US, the answer to all three of your questions is no. Legally, a US company cannot employ Iranian residents and transfer money to Iran. However, I know of Iranians working in the US. So if you manage to secure a H1b visa and move to the US - you can work and earn money here. What you do with it after you earned it - is your business. If you are assigned a US Social Security number, you can apply for credit while you are here.  Making small purchases and paying them off will help with your length of credit history, which is a part of FICO, but inactivity will eventually lead to those accounts being closed.   Additionally, many revolving credit companies will charge you annual fees to keep your accounts open, and will require you to maintain a US address, and most want a residential address, not a mail-drop or PO Box. TL;DR: you can do it, but it will likely require an investment of both in time and money that won't make it worth it. Footnote:  If you plan on opening US banking or investment accounts, there are regulations that make it difficult for foreign nationals to maintain accounts due to IRS categorization of US Taxpayers vs Foreign Nationals.  Unless you have a lot to invest or deposit, most firms won't want to bother with Foreign taxpayer certification (see w8ben).