Starting business in the US, people are faced with a number of features of the US market, which will be described more detailed by the example of the State of New York. We will consider such aspects of business as Documents and Licenses, Organization and registration of business, Taxes and bookkeeping, Lawyers and notaries’ services. One more beneficial way to conduct business is to hire a car in Rental24H in USA.
-
Documents and Licenses
Before registering a company in New York, you must have:
- The American address in the state of New York – it can be any address, later it can be changed, but the system is arranged in such a way that you will always receive a lot of correspondence. At first, you can order a service from intermediaries, if you are in New York not permanently;
- Mobile phone number – access codes from the bank would be send on it and it should be indicated in tax documents. You can register a free American number on Google Hangouts (which will be accepted in banks), but, in this case, you still need to come to the US and buy a mobile number for the registration period;
- Understanding whether you need special licenses – they are federal and local. Some are issued to the firm, some are issued to a person; Seals, certificates and shares are optional. Most likely you will never need them.
- Reserved necessary amount of money on a credit or debit card issued in any country in the world. Initial capital for the organization of a legal entity in New York is not required, but there are types of businesses that require the reservation of a certain amount of money in the bank through an irrevocable deposit mechanism – as a rule, these requirements are specified in the licenses.
-
Organization and registration of business
The main difficulty in the beginning is which type of company to choose and how to register it. According to www.wikipedia.org , there are several main types of companies – LLC, S Corporation, C Corporation, and Partnership. The registration conditions for each of them differ.
The registration in the state of New York will be described below- in other states it may be different. To conduct business in other states, it may be necessary to register the firm additionally- as a representation, the so-called ‘Foreign Corporation’, as the relations between states are close to those, which different countries have.
The easiest way (if you are not in the US at the moment, or have recently moved) is to register LLC or C Corporation. There are several options for registration: you can apply to a special company, which are easy to find on the Internet (for their services they will take from $ 100 plus all official payments), or you can do everything by yourself on the same sites. Later, you can change the structure of the organization (from LLC to C-Corp or S-Corp), and the company’s registration – during the filing of annual tax reports, if, for example, you have decided to attract investments.
After that, you need to register the EIN – Employer Identification Number, even if you are not going to hire employees yet. This number will be required to open accounts, pay taxes and in many other cases (for example, to register for PayPal or Amazon). You can do this on the IRS website.
Later, if you decide to hire employees, you will need to register in the Department of Labor.
-
Taxes and bookkeeping
The accountant can be hired on an outsourcing basis – to make a summary and reports for submission of tax declarations once a quarter. Accountant’s services can cost $ 300-500 per year.
Taxes in the US are count not by the accountants, but by special people and firms involved in taxes, based on reports prepared by accountants. Taxes are paid once a year. Reports on C-Corp are submitted once a quarter, on LLC – once a year. As a rule, a competent tax consultant will help with the specifics of your business and optimize the taxes. Taxes are divided into local taxes (city taxes – for example, New York City tax), state taxes (for example, New York State – Franchise tax) and federal taxes (for example, Sales Tax). There is no VAT in the US. Services for the preparation of tax reports depend on the size and specifics of the business and, in the first years of work, are unlikely to exceed $ 300-600. The first year or two of the work may be unprofitable – this is absolutely normal, in this case you will pay the minimum taxes that are required by the city and state. For New York they are $ 25 and $ 25 respectively.
Taxes are counted depending on the specifics of the business, usually the largest taxes – taxes on profits (from 4 to 9%), if you sell something or resell, the sales tax will be 8.875%.
-
Lawyers and notaries
Lawyers’ services are very expensive in the United States, but most of the information and samples of documents can be found on the Internet, studying competitors, at specialized forums. A notary can be a member of your bank – so do not rush to pay for notary services, ask your bank: as a rule, they certify the documents of their clients for free.
It is also worth noting that in the States you need to carefully monitor the legal support of the services you provide, the products you sell, the information you give- Americans are ready to sue you for the slightest reason. Depending on the specifics of the business, it may be necessary to make special legal documents for interaction with clients or business partners, since everything that is not stipulated in the contracts cannot be interpreted in your favor.
With business partners, any oral or written communication is already official – no one needs seals or papers, but it is still recommended to write an e-mail with ‘Heads of Terms’ – the main provisions of your agreement, regardless of whether an official contract will be signed or not. Everything that is not spoken and not fixed will be treated in favor of your counterparty.
Considering the trademark – official payments are $ 225-275 plus the cost of lawyer services (if you cannot submit all documents yourself or want to search for trademarks), which will help with documents – around $ 125 per hour. Every 10 years, the trademark must be renewed.
In general, the infrastructure for entrepreneurs in the USA is very developed. Starting from sending the goods: everything is sent and delivered with your minimal involvement in the process, there are a lot of specialized programs for project management – they are offered for free or for little fee to small businesses.
