How to Open a US Company from ANYWHERE in 24 Hours (0% Tax) - w/ Bobby

Can you really start a US company from India, earn in dollars and pay zero taxes in the US without ever setting foot in America? I sat down with Bobby Casey, international tax lawyer and founder of Business Anywhere just to find this out. We have thousands of clients that have never even been to the US that run their company through the US. We have a ton of Indian and Pakistani entrepreneurs. These dudes over there are starting some pretty cool tech stuff. That just literally sounds illegal.

That just literally sounds illegal. Like, how's it possible? It's super easy. There's nothing illegal about it. Like, you can register the company online. Um, we provide a legal address for your company. Um, you can open bank accounts. I'm like almost dizzy here with how fascinating this is. I had no idea any of this stuff even existed. Subscribe on YouTube or Spotify or anywhere you get your podcast for new episodes every week with high agency individuals. Let's dive in. Bobby, welcome. welcome. Hi, Nan. How are you? Thanks for having me on today. It's a pleasure to have you on. I know we've had this schedule for a while, so really excited to get this going. For our listeners that are not super familiar with what you do, can you help

familiar with what you do, can you help break down for us what Business Anywhere is and what problem it solves? Sure. So, business anywhere we are a uh like a startup platform for uh any anyone starting a new business in the US. So, we do US company formation, uh registered agent service, virtual mailbox, uh bank account openings, tax filings, bookkeeping, trademark filings, uh EIN, ITNS, all of your state compliance for your company. Um, we're actually the only registered agent that fully automates all of your state compliance, so you don't miss any deadlines or anything. Um, let's see. We do tax consulting. Uh, our our our primary two demographics are location independent entrepreneurs. So, people who own their own business but maybe live outside of their home country or have a business outside of their home

have a business outside of their home country. We have ton tons of non- US people that uh register US companies for various reasons and also Americans that live abroad. Um and then real estate investors. Those are like our two biggest demographics. So we do we also do tax consulting specifically for the location independent entrepreneur audience as well. Um because when you got multiple countries at play, you have multiple issues. So, um, that's that's basically what we do. That's super helpful. And obviously, as I'm sure you realize, that's a lot, right? That that spans the breadth of pretty much it sounds like everything under the sun that one can do. So, I am curious to double click on why you chose to cater more towards folks that aren't the most stable stable in terms of where

the most stable stable in terms of where their location is. As you mentioned, it's a lot of your a lot of people that you work with are either outside the US or not exactly in the place where they work at. So, why is that? Why is this something you chose to go after? You know, that's a really good question. Nobody's ever actually asked me that question before. I I do a lot of interviews. Nobody's ever asked that.

interviews. Nobody's ever asked that. So, I really appreciate that. Um I think fundamentally for me as the founder I've always held um freedom as one of my highest values. values. Um and by by that by freedom I mean free to live, free to work when and where you want. And so even like in my like I've always been an entrepreneur. I started my first business uh like my first real business when I was 19 and even like during my 20s and early 30s like I had a company with an office 20 plus employees and even then I had an office at home because I really wanted the freedom to work from wherever I wanted. I wanted

work from wherever I wanted. I wanted that uh location freedom for myself. And of course, I'm I'm 51 now, so we're talking like 30 years ago. Um it was more technologically challenging to do it, especially at the international level because of communication technology issues. We don't have that now. Like we have things like Zoom and Google Meet and we had Skype in the 2000s that kind of set the stage for that. And it came it stemmed from I'm an international tax lawyer and so my client base um for before a business anywhere my client base in my my practice has always been uh location independent entrepreneurs and we we help them with uh company structure tax optimization strategies and residency. So like gotcha there there's a lot of issues to deal with

there's a lot of issues to deal with when it comes to um let's let's say for example you're I don't know a Canadian with a software company selling globally and you live in Thailand. So you've got multiple jurisdictions to factor in there and that's a complex thing that very few um tax strategists deal with for small to midsize businesses. Like of course you can go to like a deote or somebody like that if you're a big multinational company right but if you're a you know a solarreneur or you have a small team of five or 10 people you can't go to deote like they're they're out of your range to deal with that. So I work with like that audience and because I worked with those people I saw the problems they dealt with when it

saw the problems they dealt with when it comes to tax optimization strategies how to deal with company structure and that sort of thing. And so, Business Anywhere was a spin-off of my my tax strategy practice that I was doing. Um, and so I just like those people and I live like that. That's how I live personally. Yeah. Yeah. I lived I lived I have three home bases. I lived between three countries. Um, I travel a lot. What were the three countries? Uh, can you share? Sure. Right now I'm in Mexico. So, this is like my winter home. Um, cool. And then I have a place, my summer home is in Latvia in Eastern Europe and then I still have a place in the US in North Carolina. Gotcha. So

Gotcha. So that's kind of my lifestyle. That's Yeah. Like people I know, people I dealt with from my practice in business anywhere was just kind of a natural spin-off of having those clients anyway. and and this demographic or niche of people like it didn't really exist more than 20 years ago or at least not I was just going to say that. Yeah. And and in addition to that, I do think you're positioned so well in this new era that we're entering where teams we saw them go from, you know, dozens of people to tens of thousands of people.

people to tens of thousands of people. And now I think the pendulum is swinging back where we're now seeing again the rise of super small, really lean, nimble teams even if and like the biggest extension of that is just the solopreneur model. But I do think we are seeing that really get smaller and smaller. So that's where your value proposition becomes really just perfect, right? Cuz these teams, as you said, do not have the funds to engage like a deoid or the KPMGs of the world. So I I do think that's going to, you know, factor in really well here in the in the near future for you. At least that's my take anyway. Sure. Well, like so so the we you know, I'm sure you've heard the term nom. It's

I'm sure you've heard the term nom. It's like digital nomad, right? Like that's kind of the the few aspirational friends that want to be digital nomad. So I've been a digital nomad long before that term was ever coined. Okay. is when I was living like this long before it was it was ever coined up. Um it didn't really exist until about 20 years ago because technologically it wasn't really practical for yeah solopreneur or small business to be a digital nomad. We didn't have the technology to make it viable. Like I remember uh it was about 20 years ago. I took a trip to Russia and and um I was gone for like 3 weeks give or take and I remember coming home and my cell phone bill was like $2,000, you know, and I it wasn't like I was on

you know, and I it wasn't like I was on the phone a lot. It's just it was super expensive to make calls, right? And for me to maintain some things like it it was like $2,000 cell phone bill. I guess solopreneurs and small business owners, man, they they can't have a $2,000 cell phone bill every month. Well, I believe it was 2004, if I'm not mistaken, Skype was created.

if I'm not mistaken, Skype was created. You know, you had a couple of really smart uh technical Estonian guys that created Skype. And when Skype was created, you it opened up that world of communication where we could talk to clients or partners or friends or whatever, free or next to free with video calls and it didn't cost anything. So if you were using Skype, that $2,000 a month phone bill went to zero and it just kind of opened up that a whole new world for communication. And Skype was just kind of the catalyst that kicked that off. I think there was also maybe you've read the book naman um uh the 4-hour work weekek Tim Ferris.

4-hour work weekek Tim Ferris. Oh yeah, Tim Ferris. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was also around that time. I I think it was maybe 2006 five or six I think the book was written. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Um I didn't look it up. Um I I think it's about that time. But that became like the Bible for the well not yet coined digital nomad. Yeah, Yeah, I remember he called it geo arbitrage back in the day. Actually that's what I called it too. Um, even before I read the book, I called it geo arbitrage. But um, and then so many people like started like, wow, I have Skype. I can do this.

like, wow, I have Skype. I can do this. I can outsource things now. I can hire VAS in, I don't know, the Philippines or Pakistan or whatever. And like now I don't need to be sitting at a desk all day. And now of course we have just basically every technology platform is now built for async your nest work, right? So yeah. Um, so this kind of demographic of people, this digital nomad community really only started about 20 years ago. I was kind of doing this from the beginning just because that's the way I wanted to live my life.

that's the way I wanted to live my life. But then the practice kind of built from there because it kept growing and growing and then you know that's how business anywhere got spun off because uh it was one of the tool like I had so many clients we were registering US companies for um actually what happened was we had registered so many uh companies for our clients US companies for our uh clients back then um it became super tedious to renew them like constantly Like we were doing renewals all the time and it was like we'd have to email you reminders. Hey, you need to pay this bill. Click here to pay the bill or send us the bank transfer or whatever to pay the bill. It was tedious for us

to pay the bill. It was tedious for us to do it. It was tedious for you as the client to deal with it. So a few years ago, I hired a software developer to build me a platform to automate the process to renew all of the companies we had for our clients. So originally it was meant to be a tool for my my consulting practice to just basically out of laziness to be honest. It was basically out of laziness to automate a process that we were tired of dealing with. And when we built it out I was like wow actually that's pretty cool. Maybe we could make like a whole product out of that. And then we we turned that into business anywhere. And then we started adding other products like the virtual

adding other products like the virtual mailbox, the remote notary, the bank account openings and blah blah blah all this other stuff. So it's kind of become a platform for remote entrepreneurs to be able to deal with their their company structure and all their compliance in one place. And AI allows you to be a soloreneur and automate so many things. you actually feel like you're you're a team of 10 people, but no, you're just, you know, one one dude sitting on your laptop, laptop, you know, sipping my ties by the beach or something, right? So, yeah. I was just going to say if the internet can be likened to a car, right, when it first came, I feel like an AI for entrepreneurs now is just a straight

for entrepreneurs now is just a straight up, you know, jet jet rocket or something. something. It's just 100xed what used to be 10x before. So I do want to get your thoughts on if you were to back into it, right? You mentioned that a lot of people that you work with are solopreneurs. solopreneurs. They're able to do these things while not being in the US or wherever they are that their current doicile is, which in your case is usually the US. So I am curious suppose there's a person right that has we'll say they have a maybe a year of you know rent savings lined up.

year of you know rent savings lined up. So like they're not struggling quote unquote financially but could be better, right? They really want to become a digital nomad. What would your recommendation be in terms of helping this person figure out what it is that they could do so that they would not have to be in the US necessarily. They could be anywhere. And then I guess just because of the theme of my show is really focused around the first step, right? Where do you start?

first step, right? Where do you start? So really I guess what I'm asking you is for your average Joe or Jane, how can one start to think or take the first step towards figuring out what sort of digital nomad they can be? So one thing I I want to correct one point you made. You you mentioned that we're mainly focused on people in the US. That's not actually true.

US. That's not actually true. Okay, cool. Now this is anywhere is a US-based service because we do the company formation in the US. However, most people don't fully understand this, but for non US people who have uh especially virtual type businesses, and when I say virtual businesses, I mean they don't have an office, they don't have people coming in to work, they're they're not doing physical work in a physical location, you know, maybe like a software company and you you can run it from your laptop.

and you you can run it from your laptop. Maybe you've got um a team of developers in Ukraine or Serbia. Maybe you've got customer service support in the Philippines like that. And you can kind of run everything virtually. For non US people that have virtual type companies, the US is almost always the best place to register your company because because if you do it in the correct way, you pay zero US tax. It's the easiest structure to set up for banking, for payment processing, for your tax stack, and for compliance because in most cases, you can you you you pay no tax and you have one annual filing like one annual filing tax- wise at the end of the year.

tax- wise at the end of the year. Whereas, if you were to register that company like digital nomad, like the thing in the digital nomad world that people talk about a lot is let's register this company in Estonia. Well, yeah, I have heard that. Yeah, for 95% of digital nomads, Estonia is a terrible option. I think Estonia has done a great job of marketing themselves to the digital nomad community, but for most digital nomads, it's a bad option.

most digital nomads, it's a bad option. An Estonian company is really only good in in two real scenarios. one, if you're selling physical goods within the European Union. So, you need a a a company registered in the EU because it's going to make it easier to import your goods and get DAT registered. But a US company for the vast majority of digital nomads is the smartest choice because um an LLC is a disregarded entity for tax purposes. So, the income flows through to you as the owner. And if you don't have what's called ECI or effectively connected income to a US trade or business and you're a non US person, you have no US tax obligation.

person, you have no US tax obligation. So when you say non US person, what does that entail? Anybody that's not a US citizen or permanent resident and they can still open their business or set up their business, so to speak, in the US. Is is is that what you're saying? I mean we have thousands of clients that have never even been to the US that run their company through the US. US. Um like like for example right now a big hot spot at least for us is we have a ton of Indian and Pakistani entrepreneurs like that's a huge entrepreneur hotspot right now. Like these dudes over there are starting some pretty pretty cool tech stuff. And I I I

pretty pretty cool tech stuff. And I I I don't know this exactly, but the I think the vast majority of them have never set foot in the US. H um how can that be? Like I'm sorry, but that just literally sounds illegal. Like how is it how is this possible? It's super easy. It's like it's super easy. There's nothing illegal about it. Like you can register the company online. Uh we provide a uh legal address or registered address for your company.

or registered address for your company. Um you can open bank accounts. There's multiple like online banks and fintech platforms that that work exclusively but expressly work with non US persons. Um there's several there's a lot of them that work expressly with non- US persons. Um, I mean it's insanely easy to do this and tell you. No, I I I definitely I trust you and I believe you. And just to just really make sure that I'm understanding, you're saying the biggest benefit to doing this for these dudes in India or and or Pakistan or wherever else that that is not in the US is that they can earn in US dollars. Is that right? I'm assuming that would be why they want to do this,

that would be why they want to do this, right? Um, so for example, so I I just took a quick peek at our dashboard and just wanted to look real quick. Um, we've had we we got a few clients already this morning that have already registered companies. Every one of them is non US. Every single one of our clients so far this morning is from outside of the US. I just looked the last one. Well, I'm not going to click back, but first name was Muhammad. I forgot the last name. Mhm.

forgot the last name. Mhm. Um and if I look at the if I go back and look at the address I I think he was India. Um Okay. So basically, um yeah, I mean it's it's super easy to get it done. You don't even have to do business in US dollars. Like you can you can have multicurrency. You can have a US company uh in a with with a bank account that's multiurrency. So you can be transacting euros, yen, pounds, pesos, like whatever, whatever you want.

pesos, like whatever, whatever you want. Um you can have multicurrency accounts. So accessing the the biggest the biggest reason people do it is it's easy, it's cheap, and as long as you don't have ECI, you pay no US tax. So I see for example you are a Pakistani entrepreneur with some you know new SAS product or whatever you register an LLC like in Wyoming for example. We'll just do a hypothetical here. Yeah we'll do a hypothetical like case study.

we'll do a hypothetical like case study. So you're Pakistani with a with a SAS a SAS product. You want to sell it globally. You got this cool new product. If you register the LLC in Wyoming in in that scenario, let's say all the developers are in I don't know Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, wherever his developers are. Maybe he's got customer support team in Philippines maybe. I don't don't Yeah. U but he has no physical presence in the US. No office, no employees where you're withholding payroll tax. Um no, he's not physically performing a service in the US. Now, that doesn't mean he doesn't have US clients. Maybe all of his clients are in the US. Like maybe 100% of the clients are in the US, maybe

100% of the clients are in the US, maybe 100% in US dollars. It doesn't matter because the definition of US source income in this scenario is where you physically do your work. So, if you don't have US source income, you don't have ECI or effectively connected income to a US trader business. If you don't have that US source income or ECI in this scenario, the LLC doesn't pay tax. The income flows through to the owner.

The income flows through to the owner. The owner doesn't have US source income. So, he doesn't have a US tax obligation. So, it flows through to him personally. Now, he I I don't want to get into the details of this. He may or may not have a tax obligation in what did we say? Pakistan. What did we use? Yeah. Yeah. you may or may not had a tax obligation in Pakistan um depending on the tax situation there.

um depending on the tax situation there. But it's super simple on the front end of the business on the US side because at the end of the year there's one tax filing. It's anformational report he has to do with the IRS. It's one one time a year. You don't have to do a monthly filing like an Estonian company. You have to do a monthly filing, right? right? Um actually two monthly filings. You have to do an income tax filing and a VAT filing.

an income tax filing and a VAT filing. It's two different tax offices in Estonia. You have to do two monthly tax filings. Um, which means that raises your cost of business because you're you're going to have to hire an accountant to do these monthly filings for you. Yeah. Whereas in the US, you might have an accountant do that annual filing for you, but that's like a one-time thing to to do that filing for you. Um, not twice a month, right? Um, and then also in Estonia, Estonia, I know I'm picking on Estonia a bit here, but in Estonia, um, you don't pay tax on retained earnings. So, let's say the business makes a million bucks a year, and you keep all of it as retained earnings in the company. You don't pay any tax on it, that's great. But if the

any tax on it, that's great. But if the owner says, I want to take um a profit distribution out of 100,000. So then you pay a tax in Estonia, the Estonian company pays a 20% tax on that profit distribution or the dividend paid out to the owner. So he would then owe 20% tax in Estonia at that point and he may also owe tax in India when he receives the dividend.

India when he receives the dividend. There could be a tax credit if there is a um u what do you call tax treaty a tax treaty between Estonia and or Pakistan we use as an example if there's no tax treaty and I don't know this but if there's no tax treaty between Pakistan and Estonia you might actually owe double tax whereas if you did it through the US you don't owe anything in the US nothing like you have that once a year filing all the money flows through to you in Pakistan And then you depending on Pakistan's rules you may or may not have a tax but it doesn't comp.

a tax but it doesn't comp. True. True. And I think for me the biggest shocker here is that I always thought you needed an SSN like a social security number to do any any US related business of any sort whatsoever. No, you need this is crazy. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. You need an EIN for the company. EIN employer identification number. Correct. uh for the company, but you don't have to be a US person to get an EIN. Uh now, there are some scenarios, there are some scenarios where you might want an IT 10 as a non- US person. An IT 10 is a individual taxpayer ID number. That is the US equivalent of an SSN. So, it's an individual taxpayer number. SSN is for US citizens and permanent residents. I 10 is for non-residents.

10 is for non-residents. there are scenarios where they might need an IT 10. Yeah, that that really helps explain that. And then maybe you see this as well, but for a lot of my listeners who are into tech and they make their own SAS companies and such, there is always that component of getting payments via Stripe or whatever online payment that you have. So, can you talk through how that works?

So, can you talk through how that works? It's like is it just the same like at the end of a year you just report all of your earnings you pay whatever tax you and then the rest you can just get shipped back home uh to India or wherever like converting from USD to your own currency. Sure. Well, if you're a U if you're a non US person for tax purposes, you won't pay any US tax if you had a SAS business. business. Okay. Okay. I see. If you back to the Pakistani guy or Indian or German or Canadian or it doesn't matter, Mexican, it doesn't matter. If you are a Mexican person with a SAS business running it through a Wyoming LLC, you don't pay any

through a Wyoming LLC, you don't pay any US tax. There's nothing owed. You have anformational tax filing you have to do once a year. Um, it's form 5472 and you have to do a a pro-form 1120. All you're doing is telling the IRS that that company is more than 25% owned by a non US owner. Gotcha. So that the IRS knows who that income is attributed to, but the income itself doesn't have US source income. So then there's no tax filing.

income. So then there's no tax filing. You just have to tell the IRS who who owns it. Okay? Uh-huh. But there's no tax obligation if you're a Mexican with a SAS business in in running to a Wyoming LLC. You don't had a tax filing. You may had a tax filing in Mexico because you're if you're a tax resident in Mexico, you may had a tax filing there, but it makes it simple because you treat it as personal income in Mexico and you would just pay your normal like like your normal personal tax return. If you made 100 grand in Mexico or if you made 100 grand through your SAS business, but you're a Mexican tax resident, you just file your Mexican tax return and treat it like ordinary income. So, it just makes it easier is the point. So, like if you're if you're

the point. So, like if you're if you're in that scenario, it makes it so much easier. Now, where it's really cool is if you're a digital nomad and you don't have tax residency anywhere, which which is possible depending on your nationality. It is possible to do that. Um, for example, a Canadian with a digital business. Um, and when I speak of digital business, just for the listeners, I mean a business that has no ECI or no, uh, US source income. So, a Canadian with a digital business running it through a Wyoming LLC, but he's a digital nomad. He lives maybe a month or two in Mexico, couple of months in Argentina, maybe a couple of months in, I don't know, Thailand. Thailand. Yeah. Whatever. a couple of months in Portugal and he's kind of traveling as a tourist or perpetual tourist as we call it. Um,

or perpetual tourist as we call it. Um, in that scenario, that Canadian would have zero tax residency anywhere. All of his or her income would flow through that Wyoming LLC. No US tax and no personal tax residency means they don't even have a tax filing. Zero. No tax filing, no tax obligation, zero of zero. Now, obviously that requires a certain type of lifestyle. Um, if if you enjoy that, that's conducive to the way you want to live, that's great. Um, and some people say, "Oh, that's stupid. I would never want to live like that."

would never want to live like that." Well, don't like you don't have to live like that. Like, you can live however you want. It's just your situation is going to be different if you're like, "I really want to go live in Portugal." Well, actually, Portugal's I didn't even mean to do that, but Portugal is a good example. Portugal has a very special tax regime called NHR. Um, so if you, using this example, Canadian who moves to Portugal, you can apply for what's called the NHR tax regime. I mean, assuming you get residency in some way, like a D7 or D8 visa in Portugal, uh, you can apply for NHR, non-habitual residency. And in that scenario, if you earn your income through dividends from a company that has a tax treaty with Portugal, you pay no tax on your

Portugal, you pay no tax on your dividends. dividends. Got it. In that there's a lot of combinations possible here that can really help you. Right. Right. Right. So in that scenario, maybe you use the cana, we use Canadian, right? So if you if you're a Canadian with a US LLC, you treat your income as Portugal as a dividend. You pay no tax in Canada because you've exited the tax system.

because you've exited the tax system. You pay no tax in the US because you don't have US source income. And then you would pay no tax in Portugal because you treat all of your income as a dividend from a US company and the US and Portugal have a tax treat. Huh. Huh. I mean, I just feel like I'm like almost dizzy here with Yeah. with how fascinating this is. I had no idea any of this stuff even existed. I have to admit, admit, no, I've been doing this for more than 20 years. Like, yeah, yeah, I have I have clients probably I'd have to go back and look, but it's probably a hund 100 plus countries now that we do this. Um, it's a very narrow niche. Like, if you're a Canadian living in Canada,

you're a Canadian living in Canada, I'm not your tax strategist. I'm not the guy for you. Like, I'm not the guy that's going to help you optimize your business within Canada. Yeah. My for from a tax strategist perspective, I'm the guy who helps you optimize your business and your tax strategy when you live outside your home country or you have a business outside your home country. That's a very narrow niche that we discussed earlier that's growing over the past 20 years, but it's still a pretty narrow niche. niche. True. True. And I did want to ask you, what do these people do? like generally are they influencers or are they what is the common pattern here for most of these people right like what are they doing doing or is there even a pattern I can't really man I don't know like um

I can't really man I don't know like um let me think of some recent examples like like yeah actually that would be even better yeah just some you know cherry examples you know so I I got a client like from the um tax consulting side not the I do some tax consulting through business anywhere I have another company too global wealthp protection.com okay that's my tax strategist uh company tax strategy company so I I don't really like I take new clients with global wealth protection but we don't do any marketing like zero of zero of zero so pretty much all my clients come from referrals um hey I found you through my buddy Tom or whatever so I that's how I get those most of My focus is on business anywhere now. Okay. And we we do take like you can do hourly

And we we do take like you can do hourly consultations with us through business anywhere. So there is some overlap between the two. Um but mostly I focus on business anywhere. But some recent uh global wealth protection clients. So I have one girl girl Canadian girl who lives in Mexico who has a uh scooter and car rental business in Mexico. Okay. Huh. Wow. So, she's like I'm not going to go over numbers, but like she's making she's making a ridiculous amount of money renting scooters and cars in Mexico.

renting scooters and cars in Mexico. Like when she when we went through her numbers, I'm like, "Holy shit." Like, I can't believe you're making that much money. Like, so, um, in her scenario, she's Canadian living in Mexico. She has a business with a physical presence in Mexico. So what we're doing for her is we're registering a Mexican company. So one thing you got to understand in Mexico whenever you have when you rent vehicles like scooters, cars, quads, side by sides, whatever, they have to be registered for commercial use.

registered for commercial use. Um because like if you if you go out and buy 20 scooters and you register them in your own name and one of your clients if one of your clients got pulled over by the police and they say, "Let's see your papers." and it's registered to another person and you're like, I'm renting the scooter from this person. They're going to come back to you because it's like not authorized. Yeah. It's not Well, it's not authorized to be a commercial rental. So, you could get in trouble with that if your clients get caught driving your scooter. So, you know how taxis have like a commercial plate that says we're a taxi or a rental car has a a rental car plate? You know, it's the same thing

plate? You know, it's the same thing here in Mexico. So, we're registering a Mexican company so she can have she can legalize the business, so to speak, so she won't get in trouble. It's pretty it's pretty new, but she's killing it already. already. In that business, she will have a Mexican tax obligation, but what we did is we created a marketing agency for her in the US with an offshore holding company. So that company does all of her lead gen and actually in this scenario actually earns most of the profit. So in her scenario, most of her profit is going to be held it flows through an offshore hold code. So because she's Canadian, Canadian, um she has no tax obligation in the US because the the the business is virtual, like no US source income. We put an offshore holding company in place so it

offshore holding company in place so it can hold and retain earnings. Um whereas an LLC is a pass through. We put a hold company in place so it can retain earnings. And then in Mexico, she's going to earn a little bit of money through the Mexican company, but the most of her money is going to come as dividends from the offshore holding company, which for her in Mexico is not taxable because it's not Mexican source income, income, right? Yeah. Very specific to the Mexican tax system though. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No. So quick uh you know question on that is I mean I think I have a vague idea but can you just really help us understand how an offshore holding uh company works and why it's used? I have heard of it in

why it's used? I have heard of it in like movies and such, but what is the actual use for it in in this scenario? It's only a holding company. It owns her interest in the US company. So that way, so that US company, let's just say it earns $100,000 a year. If she owned it personally, that $100,000 flows to her as an individual. Well, because she has resident permanent residency in Mexico, Mexico would, if they knew, Mexico would treat that as earned income as a Mexican resident and they would treat it as Mexican source income, making her taxable on that US company. No US source income, so no US tax. But because it flows to her, it would be treated as personal income in Mexico, therefore taxable in Mexico.

in Mexico, therefore taxable in Mexico. So, but we put the holding company in place. So, she doesn't own this LLC. The holding company owns it. So, the holding company is treated differently. It's like a corporation and the profit that flows to there, it's it's not a pass through. It's it's like a corporation. So, the corporation or it is a corporation. it's treated as it it can be kept in the company as retained earnings, but the offshore company has zero tax in that jurisdiction.

zero tax in that jurisdiction. And so she makes a h 100,000 and let's say she only wants uh 50,000 dividend for example. But because the dividend comes from a foreign company in Mexico, she would not it's not considered Mexican source income in specifically Mexico's example. So she can pay herself that dividend of 50,000 and have no Mexican tax obligation. obligation. Okay. So she's Canadian. She exited the Canadian tax system. She no longer owes tax. She no longer files. Pays nothing in Mexico. The US, she has no US source income. So she pays nothing in the US. The hold code doesn't have a tax obligation because it's a zero tax company. No tax obligation there. In Mexico, she'll pay a little bit of tax on her income from

a little bit of tax on her income from the Mexican company, but her dividend from the hold co, she pays no tax because of it's a dividend from a foreign company. Okay, so that's like one example. Um I I feel like the IRS just must hate you so much. No, they don't. They don't. You know why? Because these loopholes, they're they're intentionally built like this. Really? Because you got to understand the way tax governments in general work.

the way tax governments in general work. You know, you've got some, I don't know, senator in, I don't know, let's say Iowa, who has a bunch of his buddies who all have like money they want to have taxfree, right? So, they create loopholes in the law to suit their buddies, you know, as we call them, cronies, right? It's cronyism, right? Yeah. Yeah. All we're actually doing in this situation is taking advantage of their own tax laws that they create for themselves. themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Um the tax law is incredibly complex. It does not it is not favored towards the average person.

not favored towards the average person. So, if you have a W2 job, you know, you live in Ohio, you have a W2 job, and you know, you maybe have an IRA or a 401k, maybe you got a couple of rental houses or something like that. There's a little bit of loopholes for you there. You know, you can, you know, do pre-tax contributions to your IRA and 401k, maybe Roth, whatnot. Yeah, backdoor Roth, stuff like that. There's some little bit of tax advantages for doing, you know, like you can deduct uh interest expense on mortgages for real estate property investments. Like there's some tax advantages there, but they're not built in a way to help the the normal, right?

right? You know, family living in the average Joe living in suburban America. Yeah. Um, and my expertise is finding those loopholes and helping that solopreneur, that small business owner. Let's let's take advantage of that stuff. stuff. So, they do exist to be taken advantage of. Now, to your point, maybe they don't like I'm helping people that aren't their buddies take advantage of it. But, yeah, I mean that this is this is what I do.

I mean that this is this is what I do. So, like I've had clients get audited before and they're it's all clean. Like, it's all good. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. Of course. like I don't doubt at all that you always, you know, cross your tees and dot your eyes, you know, without a doubt. doubt. But for non for non US people, it's even easier because um so the US is um what I call or what what what we call a citizenshipbased worldwide tax system.

citizenshipbased worldwide tax system. So meaning, you know, I'm a US person, right? So you have your little blue passport with the gold eagle on the front, you're an American citizen. So that means as an American, you're taxed on worldwide income no matter where you live in the world. Okay? However, there are tax loopholes for us too. There's the foreign earned income exclusion. There's the foreign tax credit. And then there's some other things that you can take advantage of if you're at a higher income level. Um depending on the nature of your business, whether you have permanent establishment, um economic substance, and you know, taking advantage of other things. Usually the the if if you make over if you make up to about 2 250,000 a year and you're living outside the US, you can basically

living outside the US, you can basically be zero tax um because there's loopholes you can take advantage of. Um like there's the foreign earned income exclusion which you like you can if you're an American living abroad your first 130,000 is taxree or for last year it was taxree. If you're married, pay your spouse 130,000 from your company, right? So that's 260. You get a housing allowance that averages around 40 50,000 a year. If you pay tax in that foreign country in any way, you can take advantage of a foreign tax credit. Um there's some other loopholes. If you make over that, there's more complex strategies to deal with. Um but it's more complicated for Americans. If you're not an American, um there's only one other country that has citizenship based worldwide tax and

citizenship based worldwide tax and that's Eratria in uh northern Africa like right beside Ethiopia. It's the only other country in the world that has that. The vast majority of the rest of the world, it's what's called residency based worldwide tax. So like a Canadian, if they exit the Canadian tax system, they're they're done with Canada. they don't have to file or pay anything anymore as long as they exit in the correct way, which a lot of people don't do it the correct way and they end up having problems because they didn't know how to do it in the right way. That's a lot of what I do in my consulting practice is help make sure people exit in the right way from other nationalities other than Americans. Americans. But if you exit in the correct way,

But if you exit in the correct way, you're done. You you wipe your hands clean of that country and you move abroad. Now, depending on your lifestyle, if you go settle down in Germany, for example, and you you just you live in suburbia Canada, and you just go live in suburbia, Germany, well, you just become a tax resident in Germany. It's just a different system. Um, but a lot of my clients are more nomadic or they travel a lot or maybe they have two or three home bases like me. me. Yeah. And so if you have that two or three home bases, it's actually pretty easy to arbitrage countries and avoid being a tax resident anywhere. Yep. Yep. And take advantage of that. So there's a lot of cool loopholes for people living that lifestyle. It just has to be

that lifestyle. It just has to be conducive to the lifestyle you want. And if it's not for you, then it's not for you, right? And then there's other ways to figure that out, such as make 250k a year, right? And it's easy enough to do that. Let's just yeah let's just do that and you know maybe maybe your life is suburban Iowa you know and then there are other you know there's a lot of the normal loopholes like we mentioned IAS 401k defined benefit plans real estate investing investing you know there's a lot of strategies for living in the US where you can take advantage of it um I mean it's very difficult to get the zero tax living in the US if you make any reasonable amount of money it's difficult but you can minimize it quite

difficult but you can minimize it quite a bit if you have a good uh US-based tax strategist. strategist. Definitely. Um what lies ahead for Business Anywhere? What do you see changing in the next five years here? Oh, I mean we're we're adding new products um such as almost monthly now. A lot of our stuff right now it's a lot of ancillary products. It's just extra little things that we do for clients that we're just productizing it. um like this week for example um if just an example, let's say you have an LLC in Illinois, okay, and you want to open an office in I don't know, let's say South Carolina. Carolina. Um you would need to register your Illinois LLC as a foreign entity doing business in South Carolina. It's called a foreign qualification or foreign registration. Um, we've always been

registration. Um, we've always been doing that for our clients, but we haven't exactly productized it on the front end of the website so people can see it. Um, and so things like that, little things like that. We're productizing all these little ancillary things that we already do. Um, so that people can say, "Oh, foreign qualification. You can go through a like um all of our funnels are like AI built. So you go through a funnel and you're like it goes through a question answer QA thing and it takes you through a decision tree on how to do these things. Gotcha. Nice. Our business our business is very AI heavy. Basically everything in every one of our uh workflows we use AI like um just using that thing as an example. um

awesome like two or three years ago um to roll out that product for the foreign qualification thing. I mean it's a small little ancillary product but a lot of clients need it. Okay. And we do it but maybe they didn't know it on the front end of the site. So um but in order to do it every single state has nuances on foreign qualifications. There's different forms you file. There's different uh fees for each state.

different uh fees for each state. There's a different process, different processing time. lot of nuances. You got 50 states plus the territories. And two years ago or three years ago in the pre-AI days, um if we were to roll that thing out, I would have had to put a team member on that and it probably would have taken probably a week or so of research to put all that data together in a spreadsheet. That's right. And so we put one of our team members on it who is she's very good. She's very smart, but I wouldn't say she is like super tech-savvy. Um, and I put her on that um because

Um, and I put her on that um because like she's involved in the operations and she did all of it on Gemini and it took like two hours. Yeah. Yep. I we basically we hand that spreadsheet built in Gemini over to our development team and they built the whole platform like the whole funnel from start to finish using that spreadsheet like literally we used an AI tool to build the platform and it took like a day to build the whole thing before like two years ago it probably would have taken like hands-on developers coding doing everything by hand, it probably would have taken Oh I don't know. Probably a month. Yeah, I I would have said a month, too. Yeah. From what?

said a month, too. Yeah. From what? Probably a month because you're always back and forth with developers. No, no, I want the button here, not here, you know. know. Um, stuff like that. So, we're rolling out a lot of ancillary products. We've got some bigger things coming. I don't really want to give stuff away yet, but we've got a couple of things that are in the business space that that um we're just add it's just the tool.

um we're just add it's just the tool. We're basically a a startup toolbox for everything you need to get your business started. started. Um we're adding more and more of these bigger tools so that you have everything in one dashboard to get everything done. Um and it's all in one place. So um we're just trying to make like fundamentally I've talked a lot about one of the reasons I started the business was my fundamental core value of freedom. Another one of my fundamental core values is I truly believe entrepreneurship is what makes the world a better place. Um I think nothing happens without a visionary entrepreneur building a product or a service or improving a product or a service and as they build and improve these products you know it creates a better quality of

you know it creates a better quality of life for people. it at it creates jobs um for people and I truly believe entrepreneurs are the economic engine of the world. And so fundamentally my core view is I want to do things to make the job of the entrepreneur so much easier for the tedious task that no entrepreneur likes doing. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Every entrepreneur like what does every entrepreneur on the planet hate doing?

entrepreneur on the planet hate doing? like bookkeeping, tax, anything paperwork, right? Like have you ever talked to an entrepreneur that says, "Man, you know what I really love doing? I love filing articles of organization with the Secretary of State." Like, nobody loves doing that stuff. Nobody likes doing bookkeeping. Nobody likes doing a tax filing. Nobody likes doing an annual report. Like, and so my goal and what we're doing is we're making all of those annoying, tedious things insanely easy for the entrepreneur so he or she can focus on the things that matter. The next customer, the next hire, R&D, the next product roll out, um, the things that actually make the world a better place.

world a better place. Totally. Well, wow, Bobby, this has been so great. I've learned so much and I don't think it's a stretch for me to think that you will probably be hearing from at least a few of my listeners, a lot of whom are based in India to understand more about their options. Yeah. Yeah. I just have a feeling. So really appreciate you taking the time. I love what you're building and it's so it's such an honor for me to have you on my show and yeah, really looking forward to staying connected and seeing the great heights you take business anywhere to in the years ahead. Thanks for having me on, Norman. I appreciate it. Good chat. All right, that brings us to the end of that episode with Bobby Casey. As I said, I literally felt dizzy towards the end.

literally felt dizzy towards the end. All of that was news. Literally, all of the I couldn't believe some of the things he was saying. If you found value from this and if you would like to support me, the easiest way to do that is by subscribing on YouTube and leaving me up to a fivestar rating on Spotify or any of your favorite podcast apps. Something that goes a long way for me is if you share these clips, episodes, what have you, LinkedIn posts, I don't know, with those that might benefit from it. I really appreciate that a lot. I'll catch you all in the next one. New episodes every week.