For all those who want to start business in H1/H4/L1/F1 visas

C

CoolDesiDude

Registered Users (C)
OK , i may be slammed by Joe for this post ...but here it goes anyway :)

Its true anybody can start a company in US but one need authorization to work for it ...But you can bypass this with this strategy !

1, Start a C-corp , preferably an nevada one and more preferably with 'nominee directors' (this way nobody can find out you are related with the company) ...You can easily find online a service which do nevada c-corps with nominee directors ...

2, Do business as usual but retain all earnings in the corporation , never pay yourself .So basically you pay taxes at the corporate level and retain all earnings without paying any dividend to the shareholders (you )...The purpose of this is not to have any business income so nothing will show up in your personal tax return (which USCIS asks time to time ) .

3, After you get your GC or EAD just pay all this retain earnings to yourself gradually... Pls note you have to pay dividend tax on this (15%) , so its double tax !

Disclaimer:-
This above post is just for information purpose i never ever advocate this strategy !
 
MONEY LAUNDERING - Conduct/acts designed in whole or in part to conceal or disguise the nature, location, source, ownership or control of money (can be currency or equivalents, eg. checks, electronic transfers, etc.) to avoid a transaction reporting requirement under state or federal law.
 
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Hadron , I dont think this even comes near money laundering ...It maybe if one concels income and pay no tax or something like that ...

Joe , i agree this is a grey area and thats why i never advocate the above strategy . But i believe 99.9% of the time INS will never know that you run a business if nothing show up in the tax return ! ...The risk can be further reduced if you hire a manager or someone to run the company , so in the 0.1% chance they find it you can argue that you are a investor and was not concerned with day to day activities !
 
> designed in whole or in part to conceal or disguise the nature,
> location, source, ownership or control of money

If you are here on a F1 visa, they want you to study and not work. If you engage into a scheme to conceal the fact that you did work from the goverment by hiding the money in a corporation specifically designed for that purpose, I don't know what else would be money laundering.

> But i believe 99.9% of the time INS will never know that you run a
> business if nothing show up in the tax return !

If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around
does it make a sound?

In this scenario: Yes, my conduct is illegal, but because the goverment never found out about it it's ok.

> ...The risk can be further reduced if you hire a manager or someone

The correct term is 'straw man'.

> so in the 0.1% chance they find it you can argue that you are a
> investor and was not concerned with day to day activities !

I don't know about you, but I never felt the urge to discuss the finer points of immigration law with an IJ (actually, I do feel that urge. But before I do that, I will actually get my JD and work for a good practice for a while)

If you are here on a H1 or L1 you might even be able to justify this type of activity. If you are here on a H4 or F1, you are playing with fire.
 
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>> This scheme would avoid tax

WOW , Joe , i dont think that you understand what i posted in the first place ....I will never ever post anything regarding cheating on taxes ...Thats a very very serious crime in this country resulting in jail time..

What i posted was to run a C-corp and so the corporation has to pay its own tax (approx 35%) and file its own tax return .I suggested just not to pay dividend to the shareholder ...The corporation can or cannot pay dividends to its shareholders .This is a business decision and perfectly legetimate .

FYI most tech growth companies dont pay dividends just retain or re-invest the revnue it generates so that i t can continue growing !...Even microsoft after 2 decades began paying dividends only last year !
 
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Hadron , i said its a grey area ...

IMHO in practice even the H1B sponsorship by this small bodyshopping companies is a grey area ...Are those companies truely not able to hire a US worker with the skills so they have to sponor a H1 and hire an alien ? , i dont think so :)
 
> IMHO in practice even the H1B sponsorship by this small
> bodyshopping companies is a grey area

Hope I don't get flamed here but I think that is not even a grey area. The practice of these H1b bodyshoppers is in my opinion clearly against the intent of the immigration law. People are abusing loop-holes in the law to bring in people who otherwise wouldn't get into the country. Especially these deals were H1b 'consultants' are 'benched' and only after they bring back their own clients they are beeing paid again (minus the slaveholders cut of course)
This has two effects:
1. they gobble up the H1b quota so legitimate businesses and hospitals have difficulty getting H1b's for their otherwise highly qualified specialists.
2. They will eventually pi__ off a sufficient number of congressmen to make the entire H1b visa go away.

> regarding cheating on taxes ...Thats a very very serious crime in
> this country resulting in jail time..

Actually, it is national pasttime. You just have to cheat on a big enough scale for it to become legal again (like moving the headquarters of your US based corporation to Bermuda).
 
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>> Yes, it would. The personal taxes of the people who work there...

Joe , You can just run a C-corp without no one working on it . I guess majority of the C-corps in this country will be like this ! ...

Hadron , i got what you say , you can cheat but have to do legally :) ...Actually this is a fundamental right given to citizens in most countries - "You can do whatever legally possible to minimize taxes" .
 
Normally the chairman of the corp signs and he dont have to draw any salary.I am surprised you never heard of employeeless corps...Most of the shell or holding corps which are there just for asset protection or for real estate investment holding are like this !


Anyway i am again saying its just an idea/strategy and i am not recommending it to anyone ...But to be honest i think the above model will perfectly work and its risk are negligible :)
 
> That's why benching without pay was made illegal.
> Unfortunately, most of the people in that situation don't know about that.

Well, the people in that situation are indentured servants of the body-shopper. They are unlikely to rat him out. (along a similar vein, it is also illegal to stuff 100 tomato pickers into a 40ft sea container, but you don't see too many cases were they went to OSHA do you ?)
 
Joe , i am not saying its 100% legal but at the same time its not completely illegal also , its actually a grey area ... With a smart lawyer you can argue your way out !

Also the chances of INS finding out that you are owning a business is very slim (less than 1%) provided you dont draw salary or dividend and your personal tax returns are clean ! ...
 
Joe , you cannot even compare this to murder because in this case its not completely illegal if you can prove (in the rare case INS found it out) that you were not actively working but was a mere passive investor you may be able to get out !
 
Look at Arnold

He worked for Golds Gym while he was here on a visitors visa in the early 70s. In the run-up to the recall some people tried to dig out the dirt on him and accused him of obtaining his GC and citizenship fraudulently (nice enough, some higher up in INS stated that they didn't care about it when he got his GC and that they don't care about it now.)

So, if you ever want to go into politics, don't call gay dating hotlines, don't fondle little girs and don't mess up your immigration case with any 'smart' constructs like the one you proposed here.
 
Well Joe , everything is risky in this world .Its our job to manage the risk and opt for the one with the perfect risk/reward combination !

I know a guy in H1B who are doing real estate investing ! ..Thats a grey area , It can be a passive investment for someone but look like a business for some others ... The H1B guy dont care about this , he says even if he is thrown out from the country he would have made more money than if he had worked just in his h1b job for 6 years !
 
JoeF said:
Who runs it then? How is running a company without running it possible?
Does it run itself? Does it sign checks, bills, what-have-you, itself? (Sorry, couldn't resist ;) )
Click to expand...

you seems having knowledge about business visas so I have few questions.
and these are for my friend who is canadian and working on TN for few years

he wants to buy gass station and wants to transfer his TN to some business visa...do you have any advise for him?

whats is the difference between L type or B type visas

is it easy to get business visa and then apply green card on that?
 
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