panamaguy

I couldn't post for a while, throttled or something. It's personal tax while I saved for later spending on the start-up. Even when optimized the US company tax rate was too high to be viable. I'm not American but could have move the company here - I wish I could afford it because I love living in SF.

Luckily I'm not American. For those that are you are you can renounce, or roll the dice with Panamanian banking secrecy. The token amount still really helps for small business and remote workers.

US taxes on global income if you're a tax resident of the US. There are ways to do it but at the low end it costs more than the taxes so it's not worth it.

I'm doing a self funded start-up and I moved to Panama from SF to save on taxes. I was paying over 50% tax and now I pay 0% tax. By moving here my start-up went from unviable to very competitive. I am now able to undercut my only competitor and will likely drive them out of business sometime next year. Once that happens I'll raise my prices and make even more money.

This is business; if I didn't do this someone else would do it to me. Same thing happened to me with a previous company and a Chinese competitor. Lost ten years of savings and 4 years of my life on that one.

I much prefer living in the US but it was just impossible to make the numbers work. I could have survived with a 10-20% tax but there is no way that is happening in the near future in the US.

The point I want to get across is; irrespective on what you think is fair the US tax rate is uncompetitive and driving small business out of the country. Big companies get to stay because they can afford the more expensive tax avoidance schemes. Little guys like myself are either driven out of business or out of the country.