I have been running a UK SaaS business (totally legit and low risk) for 4 years now and I want to achieve the following objectives:
1. Open a new subsidiary company in USA and expand the business in USA.
2. Protect the IPs (domain names, recurring payments and the actual software platform) against any potential lawsuits from UK or USA
3. Go Offshore and reduce taxes
4. I am UK citizen that would like to move to USA and run both UK and USA from there and have ability to spend the money from the offshore company.
At present the UK Company uses PayPal and sells worldwide including USA.
All the money comes in UK bank account.
I have dual citizenship between the UK and another EU country that has 10% tax with 5% dividends. Also my parents are living there too.
Trying to achieve my objectives, I was thinking of the following scheme. Please correct me if things are incorrect or need slight adjustments.
1. Open a new USA Delaware company by putting the UK Company as owner.
2. Apply for L1 visa and move to USA
3. Open a US office, bank account and PayPal and make the payments from the new US users to go to the US bank account. ( that way I can apply in a year time for visa extension)
4. Open 2 offshore companies:
a. Offshore Company 1 - A shelf offshore company that is 4-5 years old. I am thinking in Panama or Seychelles and putting myself and my parents as shareholders.
b. Offshore Company 2 – new formation that will be used simply for domain protection.
5. I will change the Register of my domains to a new register and apply privacy settings ( I see ****tube.com and other high risk companies are using eurodns dot com with some kind of HK privacy service.) I am not sure how reliable that protection is when it comes to lawsuits from UK and USA and therefore I was thinking of putting extra layer of privacy and security by transferring the ownership of those domains away from the current UK Company to “Offshore Company 2”.
I am thinking to say the reason for that transfer, in case someone asks, is the IP protection over the domain which is the truth. Since “Offshore Company 2” is not going to charge ant licensing fees, I see no reason for the tax office to dig into it.
So the UK company will own the US company but all domains will be owned by “Offshore Company 2” that is outside of any of the UK and USA court jurisdictions. In case of a lawsuit we can simply create 2 new companies one in UK and one in US and continue trading. The only issue will be the recurring subscriptions!
6. Create a back dated licensing agreement from 2007 between the UK company and the “Offshore Company 1” that said that the “Offshore Company 1” holds all the IP rights over the platform and granted the UK company a royalty free agreement for the first 5 years to use and operate the SaaS platform. After that time the UK Company shall start paying licensing fees to the “Offshore Company 1”
So the UK tax man will see soon suddenly the UK Company and its US subsidiary will start paying royalties to an offshore company.
We will show the agreement to the tax man between us and the offshore company. Even if the tax man starts digging into the “Offshore Company 1” , since the company is an old one, they won’t be able to proof that we are doing anything wrong. How could they?
7. Use a credit/debit card from the “Offshore Company 1” in US and UK to pay for my own small on-going costs.
If I need to purchase a house or car, I can transfer from “Offshore Company 1 the money to my partners who are the shareholders of the “Offshore Company 1” and they will pay legally the dividends (5%) their home EU country. Then they will wire the money back to me in my personal US bank account and I will declare them as “donation”.
I believe that when money came from a parent as donation, they are not taxable neither in UK or US at all.
8. The only thing now is to figure out how to secure the payment gateway and the future subscriptions against any tax or legal attacks. I am thinking of 2 options:
Option 1 – to open the “Offshore Company 2” in Cyprus and have new PayPal account linked to it. Then I can simply replace the current PayPal slowly with the new one and the whole worldwide operation of the business (UK and USA + Wolrdwide) money will come to the “Offshore Company 2”. The sales will be declared as if they were coming from the current PayPal.
Option 2 – to create new agreement with “Offshore Company 1” which will make us simply a support and callcenter for the website and all the payments to be sent directly to the “Offshore Company 1” bank account.
Do you have any recommendations on what offshore companies i should use?
1. Open a new subsidiary company in USA and expand the business in USA.
2. Protect the IPs (domain names, recurring payments and the actual software platform) against any potential lawsuits from UK or USA
3. Go Offshore and reduce taxes
4. I am UK citizen that would like to move to USA and run both UK and USA from there and have ability to spend the money from the offshore company.
At present the UK Company uses PayPal and sells worldwide including USA.
All the money comes in UK bank account.
I have dual citizenship between the UK and another EU country that has 10% tax with 5% dividends. Also my parents are living there too.
Trying to achieve my objectives, I was thinking of the following scheme. Please correct me if things are incorrect or need slight adjustments.
1. Open a new USA Delaware company by putting the UK Company as owner.
2. Apply for L1 visa and move to USA
3. Open a US office, bank account and PayPal and make the payments from the new US users to go to the US bank account. ( that way I can apply in a year time for visa extension)
4. Open 2 offshore companies:
a. Offshore Company 1 - A shelf offshore company that is 4-5 years old. I am thinking in Panama or Seychelles and putting myself and my parents as shareholders.
b. Offshore Company 2 – new formation that will be used simply for domain protection.
5. I will change the Register of my domains to a new register and apply privacy settings ( I see ****tube.com and other high risk companies are using eurodns dot com with some kind of HK privacy service.) I am not sure how reliable that protection is when it comes to lawsuits from UK and USA and therefore I was thinking of putting extra layer of privacy and security by transferring the ownership of those domains away from the current UK Company to “Offshore Company 2”.
I am thinking to say the reason for that transfer, in case someone asks, is the IP protection over the domain which is the truth. Since “Offshore Company 2” is not going to charge ant licensing fees, I see no reason for the tax office to dig into it.
So the UK company will own the US company but all domains will be owned by “Offshore Company 2” that is outside of any of the UK and USA court jurisdictions. In case of a lawsuit we can simply create 2 new companies one in UK and one in US and continue trading. The only issue will be the recurring subscriptions!
6. Create a back dated licensing agreement from 2007 between the UK company and the “Offshore Company 1” that said that the “Offshore Company 1” holds all the IP rights over the platform and granted the UK company a royalty free agreement for the first 5 years to use and operate the SaaS platform. After that time the UK Company shall start paying licensing fees to the “Offshore Company 1”
So the UK tax man will see soon suddenly the UK Company and its US subsidiary will start paying royalties to an offshore company.
We will show the agreement to the tax man between us and the offshore company. Even if the tax man starts digging into the “Offshore Company 1” , since the company is an old one, they won’t be able to proof that we are doing anything wrong. How could they?
7. Use a credit/debit card from the “Offshore Company 1” in US and UK to pay for my own small on-going costs.
If I need to purchase a house or car, I can transfer from “Offshore Company 1 the money to my partners who are the shareholders of the “Offshore Company 1” and they will pay legally the dividends (5%) their home EU country. Then they will wire the money back to me in my personal US bank account and I will declare them as “donation”.
I believe that when money came from a parent as donation, they are not taxable neither in UK or US at all.
8. The only thing now is to figure out how to secure the payment gateway and the future subscriptions against any tax or legal attacks. I am thinking of 2 options:
Option 1 – to open the “Offshore Company 2” in Cyprus and have new PayPal account linked to it. Then I can simply replace the current PayPal slowly with the new one and the whole worldwide operation of the business (UK and USA + Wolrdwide) money will come to the “Offshore Company 2”. The sales will be declared as if they were coming from the current PayPal.
Option 2 – to create new agreement with “Offshore Company 1” which will make us simply a support and callcenter for the website and all the payments to be sent directly to the “Offshore Company 1” bank account.
Do you have any recommendations on what offshore companies i should use?
