Solving the incorporation problem is only the first of many problems.
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Please understand that none of the following is a criticism of Stripe. If we hadn't been accepted to the beta we'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.
(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?)
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So, the questions you asked are completely legitimate.
Trying to answer them ourselves has cost us an inordinate amount of money on legal & tax advice so far and we're still no closer to answers.
The problem is this:
The moment you're operating in two countries you are subject to the same legal, tax & accounting rules that multi-national corporations have to conform to.
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.
So, to give you an idea: Several reputable firms all quoted us the equivalent of an engineer's salary for a month just to _estimate_ the price of getting our ducks in a row.
For my company this is a LOT of money. We're bootstrapping and are barely ramen profitable.
Also, and I'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!
When the estimate itself arrived it was for the equivalent to an engineer's salary for a year, with _no_ guarantee that further complexities (and costs) would not come up during or after the process.
An expensive lesson.
Currently we're trying to navigate the process ourselves by interacting directly with the .za & USA revenue services and the .za Reserve Bank.
Needless to say, this is hell on trying to get any actual work done in the meantime :-)