I don't know how to say this nicely, but you don't know what you're talking about. Having done the move and spent considerable amounts of none trivial money, t

I don't know how to say this nicely, but you don't know what you're talking about. Having done the move and spent considerable amounts of none trivial money, this is not worth it for anyone unless you need a physical presence in the US (wanting to open an office with employees, wanting some USG contracts, whatever). In that case, you don't need your hypothetical service. There's very little that requires a phsyical prescence when you're selling software or SaaS. The US tax system is one of the worst in the world (compared to even "high tax" countries), on both a corporate and personal level, if you're running a company where your intention is to make money. Why do you think every big US software company keeps all their non-US profits offshore? Avoiding all interaction with the IRS is the best thing going for any company outside the US -- it's worth its weight in gold. This makes things difficult when you want to hold USD balances or process USD transactions, but not impossible. If you're taking VC funding, then it doesn't matter. If you're a small startup where 5% of revenue doesn't matter, than you have no reason to be wasting money on a US presence, because it's completely unnecessary in 2013. And no, lawyers don't provide proxy servers, but a micro instance at AWS is like $15/m.