Comment by gringomorcego | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gringomorcego | Hacker News Reader

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First off: thank you for taking the time to respond. Your answer was incredibly insightful.

Usually I'm pretty good at googling stuff, but when it comes to this I feel like too dumb to know what I don't know. If you know a link or two that answer most of my questions below, it's cool if you just post those. I feel like I can't even tell what info is right when it comes to this stuff.

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Okay, so I'm a US citizen. If I understand you right, most of my problems stem from wanting to incorporate in Singapore. If I incorporate domestically but run it while traveling, that'll cover most bases and make life much easier, correct?

Secondly, I don't doubt your talk about the complexity added on by incorporating in Singapore. But Singapore is really banking on people starting to incorporate there, I mean there must be some sort of national effort to automate/lessen the hurdles, right? I mean your random comment literally saved me from thinking that incorporating in SG/HK would be a good option.

I don't know, just after reading sivers.org I just assumed that the complexity was much more manageable. Maybe I'm just gullible/easily misled? Or does this option only make sense when you have a certain number of people working with you/certain profit? Could you guess as to what those numbers might be?

If I did want to incorporate, is there a big difference between incorporating in HK/SG/better place I don't know of?

Singapore is a very easy place to incorporate (24 hours + $350), but there are enough other downsides (credit card merchant account, banking, foreign reporting) - that it's probably worth doing what the other people advise here, and just set up your US LLC/corp and bank account in the U.S. first, then take off and go hang in Phnom Penh, Nha Trang, Luang Prabang, Chiang Mai, Bali, Kerala, etc. (I can introduce you to interesting techies in any of these places & more. Feel free to email me at derek@sivers.org)

Singapore often wins the “ease of doing business” awards, but those are grading things like imports/exports, foreign employees, and such.

When it comes to doing an internet-based business, U.S. wins hands-down. All those lovely online things like Stripe, easy online banking, online statements, PayPal integration and such are much harder to set up outside the U.S. So set it all up first. Online-only statements for your bank, etc.

Oh and yes, EarthClassMail is awesome. Set it up first before you incorporate, and make your EarthClassMail address the sole address for your LLC/corporation from the start. It's a little expensive but so worth it.

Get a CPA you trust in the U.S. first, and give them some pre-signed blank business checks before you go. There are some things that require paper checks, and it's a drag when you're across the world and need to send one. Usually they're tax-related so have your CPA send one of your pre-signed checks. And when needed, have EarthClassMail forward tax things to your CPA.

On that note, it helps if a family member can sign your name for you, so if some forms insist that they need the "signed original", you don't have to have a f'ing FedEx jet flying a piece of f'ing paper to Asia and back just to get your pen on it.

Hope that helps. I won't be monitoring this HN post for future comments, so anyone please feel free to email me with any questions.

- Derek

Singapore just surpassed Hong Kong as one of the most expensive places to live in Asia.

I think it'd be more rational to discuss more developing countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, South America, etc.

Sivers has an awesome post on how him and his dad screwed up some paperwork when he started CD Baby, IIRC, CD Baby was officially part of his dad's company, it cost him $3.3 million to fix it.

http://sivers.org/mistake

Keep in mind that for sivers it would make sense to do something like pay someone $750/hour to make sure his paperwork gets done right.

Whenever someone talks to me about saving money on taxes I remind them of a man named Al Capone and what he actually went to jail for. It wasn't killing people, it wasn't running guns, booze, gambling or many of the things that people think of him as doing illegally...

It was filing his taxes incorrectly.

"Run it while traveling on a tourist visa?". Maybe I misunderstand, but if you are going the illegal route, why to do it all the way? Just run a company without paperwork.

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