Nomad with new passport and structure needed

[nomadguy]

I’m currently a US citizen looking to get a new passport from St Kitts or Antigua and then renounce the US passport.

I have a business partner in the US who won’t ever leave. We have a software business that is 100% legit currently in a normal US LLC / Stripe setup.

What is the best structure for the company along with the banking / cc processing stack (along with option to receive PayPal payments) so that I can have a clean no/low tax setup.

 

[Sols]

If you change nothing about the structure, you can very likely live in St Kitts or Antigua and pay zero personal income tax. Plan it out with a local attorney/tax adviser in advance, though.

As long as the company has a meaningful US presence through your business partner, Stripe and current banks in US probably won't care that you have left.

 

[nomadguy]

What if my partner wanted to give me the company and I could hire him as a contractor allowing some more flexibility to move the entity offshore etc.

 

[shitcoinbro]

What if my partner wanted to give me the company and I could hire him as a contractor allowing some more flexibility to move the entity offshore etc.

I think it would be better for him to manage the company and send you your money through a zero-tax Caribbean company... This way you can keep Stripe, banking, all of that, and the payments to you would be tax deductible for him

 

[Sols]

There is no way around your partner paying US income tax, as long as he's a US citizen. Operating under an LLC, you can only lower his tax burden by also lowering his income. The only one gaining anything here is you by getting a new passport, renouncing your US passport, and relocating to a tax haven.

If you change to a C corp, you can pay your partner dividends which are subject to capital gains tax instead. This becomes a math problem, figuring out if you are near, at, or beyond the cutoff point at which the extra costs of switching to a C corp are less than the taxes saved for your partner.

If you change to an offshore company, you're going to run into problems with banking and payment processing. Things will cost more and be less unreliable than if you keep operating under a US company, with a US presence, US banking, and US payment processing. You also need to solve for tax residence of the company.