tech-company, startup-costs, website, business-registration, incorporationWe will soon be going to create a company, we are about half way with our website, and need to know more info about the same.
Right now we are working on a website and on the course of next few years to come, we intend to start new websites.
Thus, we need a company, which will be enough for us to accommodate all these different type of websites OR Do we need to register a parent company, and child company for each new websites, which are from different business sector?
What are the cost associated with creating a company there?
EDIT: I am from India (very high taxes). We intend to hire in the long run, most probably local itself. But if the company takes off, then we don’t mind travelling or changing our current residence.
In practical terms:
You should register the company in a country (in the US: a state) where one of the founders reside. You technically can register in a country with lower tax rates etc., but you really don’t want to go down that path without an army of lawyers at your side. Plus in the US you must incorporate in your state of residence regardless because of the next point.
You do not need a locally registered company to do business in a country or state unless you’re hiring locally. There are a heap of workarounds here (such as using contractors or detaching workers) but, in practice, your only sane long term option is to incorporate. (Courts in some countries and states will readily re-qualify contractors as employees with back taxes and fines for good measure if you tick the boxes.)
It’s sometimes useful to put country or state specific activities or assets under a separate company. The main reason you’d want to do so is so a subsidiary in country A can go bust without it affecting the one in country B, or so a subsidiary in one activity can go bust without affecting the entire group, or so you can sell a subpart of a business. But it usually isn’t worth the trouble except in the latter case, because most of the time your creditors will be the same or closely related for both companies. (For completeness, a last reason you’d want to do so is to incorporate parts of a business so that that part’s shareholders have unlimited liability to avoid hostile takeover attempts.)
It’s impossible to know where you fit exactly without more details but the chances are you’re overthinking this: just create a single business where you live, and call it a day. Should you need to sell one of the websites you can eat the costs of incorporating and transferring corporate assets when that time comes. Wasting capital on this is premature optimization more often than not.
The specific costs depend on where you live.
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