[Asterisk-biz] Voip startup regulations question

[trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com]

On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 18:57 -0400, Dean Collins wrote:
> Yep it's tough enough to do business in the USA as it is without
> applying for every state your customer happens to live in (you guys are
> crazy with state based legislation).
> 

Would rather see that than a federal system that  tells everyone in
rurual areas they have to act like they live in urban areas and have the
laws of urban areas.  The states in america are not that different than
the member countries in the EU in grand broad strokes.  

Large centralized governments far removed from the people tend to cause
problems for more people than solutions.  


> Simple solution is to incorporate outside of the usa, contract with the
> externally incorporated entity to cover your income and your staffs
> income (means they need to incorporate themselves but it/sales no
> probs), and not have any US based offices or infrastructure.
> 
That is difficult for many companies.  For VoIP it can work if you can
get the bandwidth and good enough peering.  Bermuda for example has a
ton of fiber.  

But this doesnt work well if a US citizen living in the US owns the
corporation.  The IRS doesnt like that and likes to go after people that
try that route.  

The best solution is to leave the US until the government fixes things
(yeah right).  If you live out of the US for 10-11 months (dpeending on
which program) as a US citizen you no longer have tax liability, and can
then work on no regulations of any kind.  

Wild wild west VoIP dot com

That route wont be cheap either, for someone that wants to be close to
their customers, or doesnt want to have to double check everything with
a tax lawyer to make sure they arent doing stuff illegally may want to
avoid that route however.


> Be aware however if you conduct business meetings in your residence on a
> regular basis it can be considered an office and you can be done for
> sales tax and a whole heap of other nice things.
> 
But then you get the tax writeoff of the rent percentage that your
'office' qualifies for.  If they dont give you that they cant claim it
for revenue purposes, and they are *very* strict on what qualifies as a
'home office' (ie dont store old suits in the closest in the office or
they may disqualify that).


-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
US +1 360 207 0479 or +1 516 687 5200
FreeWorldDialup: 635378
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