This is my first post here, so hello to all and please excuse my total newbie status. My goal is to legally minimize our taxes and make a long-term plan to take the best advantage of living abroad to help grow our business. Here's the situation:
We're an American couple and we've been living abroad for 8 years so far and plan to continue indefinitely. Although we've lived together for more than 20 years and refer to each other as husband and wife, we aren't legally married. The certificate is unimportant to us, but we're considering whether or not getting married would be helpful for our business, taxes and eventual retirement.
Until recently, we worked as employees for foreign companies so the FEIE took care of everything, but now the self-employment tax is killing us. We have a small online business selling jewelry and other products my wife designs. She's a fine artist and also sells her paintings. Most of our customers are in the US. The business is new, so we both also teach English online via Skype to make ends meet. Both of us teach as independent contractors. I teach for a US company and she teaches for a foreign one.
We currently receive payments for our business and teaching through our American PayPal personal accounts and transfer the money to our US bank accounts. Ideally, we would like to be able to continue accepting payments through PayPal.
We've been moving countries every 3 months or so in and around Europe. Eventually, we would like to get a long-term EU visa.
At the moment we're making very little money, so the initial and ongoing costs are definitely an issue.
What do you think would be the best way to structure our company and banking?
Thanks in advance for any and all advice!
We're an American couple and we've been living abroad for 8 years so far and plan to continue indefinitely. Although we've lived together for more than 20 years and refer to each other as husband and wife, we aren't legally married. The certificate is unimportant to us, but we're considering whether or not getting married would be helpful for our business, taxes and eventual retirement.
Until recently, we worked as employees for foreign companies so the FEIE took care of everything, but now the self-employment tax is killing us. We have a small online business selling jewelry and other products my wife designs. She's a fine artist and also sells her paintings. Most of our customers are in the US. The business is new, so we both also teach English online via Skype to make ends meet. Both of us teach as independent contractors. I teach for a US company and she teaches for a foreign one.
We currently receive payments for our business and teaching through our American PayPal personal accounts and transfer the money to our US bank accounts. Ideally, we would like to be able to continue accepting payments through PayPal.
We've been moving countries every 3 months or so in and around Europe. Eventually, we would like to get a long-term EU visa.
At the moment we're making very little money, so the initial and ongoing costs are definitely an issue.
What do you think would be the best way to structure our company and banking?
Thanks in advance for any and all advice!
