4 ms·

Ask HN: US address for non-American who founded US company but resides in Mexico

I've already engaged an accounting firm and a lawyer to ask questions about this, but given the unique circumstances, I thought I will x-post this to HackerNews for an advice. If nothing else, to prepare me better for conversations with lawyers. The short version is that I co-founded a company in US. I lived there for a while, but have been spending 95% of my time outside of the US. Due to unique tax situation in Mexico, I am not obliged to pay local taxes. Therefore, I have chosen to continue paying taxes in the US. I want to stop renting an apartment in the US, which serves nothing more as the mailing address at the moment, and want to consider cheaper alternatives, e.g. virtual office or mail forwarding. If anyone has done this, do you know what are implications in terms of IRS, keeping my bank accounts, etc active in the US with this setup?

amerine 4y ago
I am a US citizen, but have two separate businesses that use virtual business addresses provided by two small mailbox businesses in Oregon that have been painless for all addressing/mail needs. The key point is to make sure your businesses registered agents contact info works and that legal correspondence can get to you through them.
- AnonFloridian 4y ago
  However, this is for business address. I am referring to personal address. I have two concerns: 1. AFAIK, all mail forwarding companies need to be registered with USPS as “commercial mail receiving agency”. This can get flagged by IRS, etc if I use it as a personal address 2. Various services (e.g. banks), might require to prove that I live at the location (e.g. telephone bills with that address [although now that I think about it, this might be less of a problem])
uberman 4y ago
Are you a us citizen? If not, you are almost certainly breaking the law and if you have a visa or green card, are almost certainly out of status. Even if you are a US citizen, I suspect you are breaking Mexican law unless you have some sort of tech expat visa.
- AnonFloridian 4y ago
  I am not a citizen of US. I have a special visa though. Breaking a law of which country/what law? I am def not breaking laws of Mexico. That much is certain. Had top immigration firm handle all of my paperwork. But they cannot advice me regarding the US. US is unclear. I've engaged a law firm about this prior and they've not produced recommendations. Will see what comes out of the meeting tomorrow, but my suspicion based on previous interactions is that the advice will be along the lines of "This is atypical. We recommend you spend minimum of X days in X state to claim to be tax resident of US.", which is not particularly useful. It is not particularly common for people to misrepresent their tax residence in order to pay more taxes.
AnonFloridian 4y ago
TLDR after talking with lawyers and an accountant is that in my case it does not matter. However, this is pretty unique to my VISA type (O1), so if you stumble upon this, do your own research.

amerine 4y ago

I am a US citizen, but have two separate businesses that use virtual business addresses provided by two small mailbox businesses in Oregon that have been painless for all addressing/mail needs. The key point is to make sure your businesses registered agents contact info works and that legal correspondence can get to you through them.

AnonFloridian 4y ago
However, this is for business address. I am referring to personal address. I have two concerns: 1. AFAIK, all mail forwarding companies need to be registered with USPS as “commercial mail receiving agency”. This can get flagged by IRS, etc if I use it as a personal address 2. Various services (e.g. banks), might require to prove that I live at the location (e.g. telephone bills with that address [although now that I think about it, this might be less of a problem])

uberman 4y ago

Are you a us citizen? If not, you are almost certainly breaking the law and if you have a visa or green card, are almost certainly out of status. Even if you are a US citizen, I suspect you are breaking Mexican law unless you have some sort of tech expat visa.

AnonFloridian 4y ago
I am not a citizen of US. I have a special visa though. Breaking a law of which country/what law? I am def not breaking laws of Mexico. That much is certain. Had top immigration firm handle all of my paperwork. But they cannot advice me regarding the US. US is unclear. I've engaged a law firm about this prior and they've not produced recommendations. Will see what comes out of the meeting tomorrow, but my suspicion based on previous interactions is that the advice will be along the lines of "This is atypical. We recommend you spend minimum of X days in X state to claim to be tax resident of US.", which is not particularly useful. It is not particularly common for people to misrepresent their tax residence in order to pay more taxes.

AnonFloridian 4y ago

TLDR after talking with lawyers and an accountant is that in my case it does not matter. However, this is pretty unique to my VISA type (O1), so if you stumble upon this, do your own research.