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Comment by winter_blue | Hacker News Reader

The key here is that he is hiring himself, so as he is the employer (of himself), and the liability for hiring an undocumented worker falls on himself.

Anyone can create a Delaware C corporation, even people from other countries who have never been to the US. You do need to be a citizen however to create an LLC or an S corporation.

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Sorry this is incorrect anyone can create an LLC and a S corporation no need to be a US Citizen, at least in most states, can you pin point a state that requires US citizenship?

You're probably right. I got this information from an NYSBDC advisor[1] that I met with while I was in college.

(I wanted to do a startup part-time, but that dream was shattered after I found out from my school's immigration advisor that working for myself was prohibited.)

[1] New York Small Business Development Center (NYSBDC): http://www.nysbdc.org/

Any sources you recommend so that I can find about the differences between those?

Thanks.

Most companies you hear about are C corporations.

S corporations are nearly identical to C corporations, except that they do not pay any corporate taxes. There are a bunch of qualifications for being an S corp (that ensures only small companies can be S corps): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_corporation#Qualification_fo...

An LLC (Limited Liability Company) is similar to an S corp in that it does not pay incomes taxes, but it is structured differently and is not a corporation. For a startup, I've heard it's more expensive to set up an LLC than an S corp.

This is mostly true, but you're confusing because there are two different levels: corporations are registered and regulated at the state level, of which LLC is one category. The IRS then categorizes registered corporations as either S-corps or C-corps for the purpose of federal taxes. There's not a one-to-one mapping between the two levels, especially since there's 50 different states, but usually LLCs implies S corp.

In addition to @akjj's reply, I also want to point out that it's not entirely true to say that S-Corps/LLCs do not pay taxes. The short version is that a C corp pays taxes a corporate level and individual employees pay taxes on their income, where in an S corp the profits of the business must be either dispersed to the shareholders/owners or reinvested in the business, any profits which are dispersed are taxed as normal income rather than capital gains like dividends would be in a C corp, so depending on the relative size, an S-corp effectively pays a higher tax rate than a C-corp, just obfuscated through its owners.

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