Program Owners: Where is your company registered?
 

Hey guys,

Where did you register your program as a company, and why? A ton of companies are hosted in Cyprus, I'm guessing for tax purposes. How do you go about doing that?

May sound silly but that kind of stuff is beyond me. How you are able to register your company in a foreign land, where people speak a language you dont and you're still able to take care of all your taxes, accounting, etc.

I think this thread could deliver some quality advice from people.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions :thumbsup

We're in Calabasas California. stop by and chat with me anytime

Thank you Squirtit.

You should think about Curacao... Freezone, 2% tax ;-)

i've never understood it myself, the IRS and CRA are very clear, you must report and pay taxes on all world wide income. anything but is tax evasion, you can dress it up in holding companies in countries which are termed 'tax havens'.

i'd love to put my earnings in a Cyprus corporation and only be taxed on the money i use for personal expenses but it's not legal.

if anybody knows differently, post how it is legal. i'd love to know - i asked two accountants and they laughed at me when i told them what i wanted to do.

We're on the same page. I never got it either, that's why I'm really hoping for someone to post solid info on here. I'm sure people are doing it for a reason, a lot of people, who make a lot of money.

Here is one legit reason it could be done: partners of different nationality. You still have to report all of your income though.

What's your email mate?

It's in my sig

I realize you have to report all income, but, say you live in Holland and earn 8K a month, the income tax rate you pay over that amount is nearly 50%.

In some countries if you earn 8K a month you pay 2% over that amount.

Again, I'm clueless when it comes to this stuff, but that's how it is as far as I know.

Can't see it on iPhone

guy (a) loveamateurscash.com

Ok, I'll mail you the answer in a bit :)

Even in the US, _company_ income is not _personal_ income, except if your company is setup as such. That does of course not mean that opening a company in cyprus and you being in the US solves your taxes in the US. There is always the issue of substance. Meaning, even if you are in the US and company in Cyprus, unless everything or the vast majority done for that company is handled in Cyprus, or whoever else handles it does 1) not own the company and 2) actually charge standard rates for their work, you will have to pay your income as if it was made in the US, since the US will just pierce cyprus's corp veil.

Since most people here open a company in Cyprus and then just have nothing there and still do all the work, this obviously does not work... But for the bigger corps in this industry, they are usually setup correctly. For example, Private's Fraserside Holdings in Cyprus, owns all copyrights for their content, and licenses it out to the corps that use it. There is staff that is there and they license it at certain rates which match the rates any third party would do the same, the governments can then not really say anything against it since its just as if they would buy content from third parties.

Taxes is not simple. And to set it up right, you need to be a certain size and you need to get real advice. Also, do not forget, if you have started your business in the US and have been running it for some time, and want to move to Cyprus, you can not just switch and be done with it. The IRS will expect a sale from the US to Cyprus at true company value and they will take you capital gains on it in the US of course...

Set up two diff companies at same time.. same time is the rub.. one here one there, just can't suddenly open a new company in another country and be transferring funds there.. its all about doing things in the beginning.

It's not a registered company yet. We're registering a new company. Thanks for the advice so far, hope you can keep em coming.

Most people can speak decent English in Cyprus.

Companies registered elsewhere is mostly done for several reasons. Like Fabian said, for holding content licenses or staff.

Mostly parts of the companies are located in tax heaven countries so they compete with their competition. For example if you only pay 2% you have a lot which you can give to your target groups (amateurs / affiliating webmasters).

just dont pay taxes at all... problem solved !

Thank you for the simple explanation.

Q: Where is your company registered?
A: Up my bum !

there's a lot more to running Private than that - what if there's 2 people on staff in Cyprus handling the licensing of content and 200 people in management, administrators, production staff, web developers and IT staff, accountants etc in Spain - i'm sure that wouldn't wash with Spain's version of the IRS.

none of the adult companies registered in Cyprus have anything more in that country than an office address and a representative that is provided by these companies that specialize in offshore corporate setups. they're incorporated there for a reason, but that doesn't mean it's legit.

the biggest companies in the world do it, setting up layer upon layer of holding companies and subsidiaries in tax haven countries all over the world. like anything else, it's only a very small % who get sued by the IRS because the government doesn't have the manpower and resources to take on all those they know are skirting the laws to evade taxes.

Helpful post, as always, though not entirely true. Private's copyrights are held in Gibraltar, so why do they use Cyprus?