Blog
Notes from the paperwork side of building abroad.
Structure, tax residency, banking and relocation — written the way we'd explain it to a founder across a table, with the costs and the caveats left in.
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Everything else we've written.
Tax6 min read
Form W-8BEN-E, line by line
Eight pages, thirty-one parts, and for most founders only three of them apply. Getting it wrong means 30% withheld on payments that should have suffered nothing.
ReadTax5 min read
When your US company pays abroad, you may withhold tax
Most founders learn about withholding when they receive it. The larger risk runs the other way: as a payer, an amount you failed to withhold becomes your own liability, not the recipient's.
ReadTax4 min read
Estimated tax, and the year the bill arrives twice
Nobody warns you about this one. In the year you first owe estimated tax you pay last year's balance and this year's instalments together — and the business that failed to plan for it was profitable the whole time.
ReadTax5 min read
Transfer pricing with two companies and eleven employees
Transfer pricing sounds like a problem for multinationals. It starts the moment you have a US entity invoicing customers and a local entity doing the work — which is most founders with two companies.
ReadTax5 min read
VAT when a US company sells into the EU and the UK
The registration threshold everyone quotes applies to businesses established in the country. A US company selling to European consumers usually has no threshold at all — the obligation starts at the first euro.
ReadTax5 min read
SaaS sales tax: which US states actually tax software
Sales tax on software is not one rule with exceptions. It is fifty separate answers, and the states that tax SaaS are not the states most founders assume.
ReadTax4 min read
Exclusion or credit: the choice US founders get wrong
Every American abroad is told about the exclusion. Far fewer are told that electing it can be worse than the credit, that revoking it locks you out for five years, and that neither touches self-employment tax.
ReadBanking4 min read
Holding more than one currency, without inventing a treasury
You are billing in dollars, paying salaries in another currency and living in a third. That is a treasury problem, and the default answer — convert everything on arrival — is quietly one of the most expensive habits a small company has.
ReadBanking5 min read
Why banks close accounts, and what precedes it
Account closures feel arbitrary because the bank is frequently prohibited from explaining them. They are not arbitrary. There is a pattern, and most of it is visible months in advance.
ReadStructure4 min read
Offshore jurisdictions, compared on what they are good for
Every one of these jurisdictions still exists and most of the reasons to use them do not. Here is what each is genuinely good at, and the honest default for a founder with one company.
ReadStructure4 min read
Estonian e-Residency: what it actually gives you
It is the most misunderstood product in this category. The name promises residency and the card delivers a login — which is still useful, for a narrower set of people than the marketing suggests.
ReadResidency4 min read
Being tax resident nowhere: why it fails
Stay under the threshold everywhere and you are taxed nowhere. It is the most repeated idea in this category and the least survivable, because it mistakes the absence of a claim for the absence of a country.
ReadResidency6 min read
Digital nomad visas, ranked by tax residency risk
Every list of these visas compares the same three things: cost, income floor, duration. None of them compares the only one that changes your bill — whether the permit hands you a tax residence you did not ask for.
ReadResidency5 min read
Golden visas are closing. What actually survived
Five European programmes have closed or been gutted since 2023. The ones still standing have one thing in common, and it is the thing that makes them worth less to the people who liked golden visas most.
ReadResidency5 min read
Citizenship by investment, priced honestly
Almost everything written about buying a passport quotes a price that has been withdrawn or a benefit that has been revoked. Here is the current position, the real total cost, and the question to ask before any of it.
ReadResidency5 min read
The passport you may qualify for: citizenship by descent
Before pricing a second passport, check whether you are owed one. The routes are free, the documents are the whole job, and one of the most-used ones was narrowed sharply in 2025.
ReadResidency5 min read
Naturalisation by residence: the passport you wait for
If you are going to live somewhere for five years anyway, the citizenship is free. The four conditions that decide whether you actually get it are rarely the ones being advertised.
ReadStructure5 min read
Economic substance rules killed the shelf company
The offshore company most guides still describe stopped existing in 2019. What replaced it has annual tests, annual filings, and an information exchange that runs straight to the tax authority where you actually live.
ReadStructure5 min read
The UAE is not a zero-tax country any more
Free zone still means 0% — on qualifying income, if you meet substance, if you stay inside the de minimis, and if you file. For a lot of founder businesses none of those hold, and the answer is 9%.
ReadStructure5 min read
IP holding structures after the nexus rules
The IP holding company is the most-recommended structure in offshore advice and the one that most reliably loses money at founder scale. Three rules broke it, and a fourth makes leaving expensive.
ReadStructure5 min read
Asset protection trusts: what they buy, and when too late
The structure works only if you build it when you do not need it. Once a claim is foreseeable, the transfer that was supposed to protect you becomes the evidence against you.
ReadBanking4 min read
What your bank reports: CRS, FATCA and the form you signed
Roughly 120 jurisdictions now exchange account data automatically. Nobody reads the form that starts it, which is unfortunate, because it is the single document your tax position is later measured against.
ReadBanking5 min read
Where a non-resident can still open a bank account
Every guide to offshore banking lists jurisdictions. None of them lists the four tests you have to pass, which is why people fly somewhere and come home without an account.
ReadBanking5 min read
Deposit protection, bail-in and the “safest banks” list
For a company holding operating cash, a bank's credit rating is close to irrelevant. Three other things decide whether you get your money back, and two of them are not about the bank at all.
ReadResidency4 min read
What Paraguay residency costs, and how long it takes
The migration authority's fee is public and small. Everything else you'll be quoted — apostilles, sworn translations, notarisation, travel, professional work — is separate. Keeping the three apart is the only way to tell whether a quote is good.
ReadTax5 min read
What Paraguay's 0% covers, and the three exceptions
The headline is a fair description of the ordinary case. It also hides three exceptions, and the biggest one only bites if you register a Paraguayan company — which is exactly what a lot of people are sold alongside the residency.
ReadResidency6 min read
Paraguay against the alternatives: Dubai, Panama, Georgia
Dubai gives you a written 183-day test and charges Dubai prices for it. Panama wants $200,000 placed. Georgia wants half your year. Paraguay asks for two short trips and a fee — and is the only one of the four that is permanent from the start.
ReadResidency10 min read
The 183-day rule is not a rule
Stay under 183 days and you're fine — the most confidently repeated wrong thing in this industry. In most countries the day count is one input among four, and in several it isn't even the first one checked.
ReadTax8 min read
What a non-resident with a US LLC actually owes the IRS
The most expensive misunderstanding in this niche: a foreign-owned single-member LLC that owes zero tax still has a mandatory annual federal filing, and missing it starts at $25,000. Here is the complete obligation list.
ReadStructure7 min read
Your company's second year costs more than its first
Everyone quotes you the formation fee. Nobody quotes you year two, which is when the registered agent renews, the franchise tax lands, the federal information return falls due, and the $99 special stops being $99.
ReadBanking8 min read
Opening a US bank account as a non-resident, honestly
Not a list of the ten best accounts. A decision tree — because the thing that decides your outcome is your passport and your customer base, not which brand has the nicest dashboard.
ReadResidency8 min read
Exit taxes: what it costs to leave
Leaving is treated as selling. A dozen countries will tax you on gains you have not received, on the day you stop being resident — and the US version, which everyone talks about, is the one least likely to apply to you.
ReadStructure8 min read
CFC rules will find your offshore company
The company is registered in a zero-tax jurisdiction. You are not. There are three separate doctrines that close that gap, and for a solo founder the one that closes it fastest is not the one everyone worries about.
ReadStructure6 min read
When to stop being a sole proprietor
"Form an LLC to protect yourself" is sold to people who have nothing to protect and no exposure to protect it from. Here are the five moments when it genuinely becomes the wrong call to stay unincorporated.
ReadBanking7 min read
Payment processors freeze accounts. Plan for it.
A freeze is not a punishment and it is rarely a mistake. It is an acquirer deciding it is carrying more risk than it agreed to. Understanding whose risk it actually is tells you exactly what to do about it.
ReadResidency7 min read
Territorial tax countries, ranked by whether you'd live there
The tax rate is the easiest thing to find and the least useful thing to compare. What separates these places is what residence costs to get, what it costs to keep, and whether the rule you moved for survives the decade.
ReadResidency8 min read
US visa routes for founders, and the entity each one needs
Owning a US company gives you no right to be in the US. Six routes do, each with a different gate — and each quietly assuming a particular entity, ownership split and employment history that you either have or you don't.
ReadStructure7 min read
Dissolving a US LLC without leaving a tail
The company stopped trading eighteen months ago, so it is closed. It is not. It is accruing state fees, missing a federal information return with a $25,000 penalty, and quietly building a problem you will meet at the border of your next company.
ReadTax7 min read
Treaty shopping doesn't work, and what does
The structure that worked in 2014 fails in 2026, and it fails on a test so broadly drafted that arguing about it is usually pointless. The good news is that most founders are trying to solve a withholding problem they do not actually have.
ReadStructure6 min read
Virtual addresses: what they are accepted for
A founder abroad needs a US address and buys one, then discovers it works for the state filing, half-works for the IRS, and gets the bank application declined. These are four separate problems sold as one product.
ReadTax7 min read
Paying international contractors without a permanent base
The salesperson you engaged in Madrid closes deals from Madrid. Somewhere around the fourth one, your company acquired a Spanish filing obligation — and nobody involved did anything wrong or unusual.
ReadStructure6 min read
Holding company structures, and who is too small for one
A second company doubles your filings, your bank onboarding and your substance obligations, and protects nothing you were actually exposed to. There are six cases where it is right. Most founders asking about it are in none of them.
ReadResidency6 min read
Tie-breaker rules: when two countries both claim you
Two countries can both be right about you at the same time. If there is a treaty, a four-step sequence decides which one wins. If there isn't, nothing decides it, and you pay both.
ReadResidency6 min read
Becoming tax resident somewhere new, properly
Almost everything written about relocation is about leaving. Arriving has its own checklist, and the founders who skip it discover the gap two years later, when someone asks for a certificate they never applied for.
ReadResidency6 min read
Social security across borders: what a treaty misses
You checked the tax treaty. It says nothing about social security, because social security is governed by an entirely different set of agreements — and where none exists, two countries can both charge you in full.
ReadStructure6 min read
What diligence actually asks for, and why you can't produce it
Nobody loses a deal because the company was structured badly. They lose value because the documents proving it was structured at all were never signed, never filed, or live in a departed co-founder's account.
ReadTax6 min read
FBAR and 8938: the filings American founders discover late
You owed no US tax, so you assumed you owed no US filing. The two are unrelated. The reporting obligations attach to holding foreign accounts and foreign entities at all, and their penalties are assessed per form, not on the tax that was never due.
ReadBanking6 min read
A US LLC for an OFM agency, and banking that stays
Forming the company is the easy part. Keeping an account open once the payouts start is where most OFM agencies come unstuck — usually because of how the business was described, not what it does.
ReadStructure8 min read
US LLC vs Dubai vs Hong Kong: which one actually fits
Three structures, three completely different bets. The cheapest to run isn't the cheapest to bank, and the 0% headline usually belongs to somebody else's facts. Here's what each one is genuinely good at.
ReadReading about it is the easy part.
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