international, legalI am planning to start up an online business targeting users in a different country. The business is providing an online service for managing schools online including payments, scheduling and reporting. Is there any law around this? Do I need to get approval if I am targeting a specific country which I am not in?
I hope you understand how incredibly complex of an answer this question requires, given the generic fact that all we know about your industry is that it is an "online business targeting users in a different country."
Your question is pointing towards a specific topic called product compliance - and it is a very huge topic. Several 'large ($1b+) companies have entire divisions and partners who build software just to tackle product compliance.
I interned at a company whose main source of revenue was a software suite that they sold to Cisco, among dozens of other clients, for 6 figures a sale. Guess what the software did?
Without getting to the specifics, it was all-things regulatory compliance: whether it was for restrictions on frequencies, emissions, bandwidth, or things more obvious like radiation.
Of course, in your case, online software, I think the most important things you have to look at are taxes. You're clearly generating revenue, or plan to, and if you're operating out of the USA you need to be established as a formal business who can run work in each country.
To put your question into perspective, the S-Corp I am part is required to submit paperwork for each state we are operating in. I can only imagine what the process is like for each country. Actually, I had a conversation with our agent about this very thing. First of all, some countries are grouped together, but generally, there are different regulations for different groups of countries. For example, it's much easier to operate in Canada if you're already in the USA, but it may be much harder to operate in a country like Kazakhstan.
EDIT: Since you've updated your question, I'll provide a few more details. First of all, you need to become familiar with the different trade groups, finding out which countries you want to do business in. Clearly, it is a country-by-country basis in terms of doing sales, and you'll want to make sure you're up to date with the laws and regulations on a per-country basis.
If you're not actually selling a service online, this is a totally different story, and you can just run your site and get traffic. But the moment you accept payments internationally, you better know what you're doing, because chances are there are regulations you need to check in with.
As much as I hate doing this, Wikipedia wins out here. The quality of resources in that link is incredible, and it covers the breadth of your question very well. If that isn't your thing, enroll at your nearest university and sign up for International Trade & Finance.
Best of luck with your international affairs.
It depends, of course on the type of your business. There are specific rules for specific sectors like medicaments (in some countries, the advertising for medicaments is forbidden), firearms,… But if you are active in some more “common” activity, it is less complicated.
You will have to pay attention to the place where you sell - is it an online store? Do you have some local shops? Will you have an official importer or will you just ship directly to the customer?
In general, you will have take care of some tax issues (e.g. the VAT in European Union) but the most of the aspects are linked to the client. He has to know if it is legal or not to “import” and use your products in his country.
See it also like this: targeting or not, it doesn’t matter. If you have a client from a country you are not targeting, you will not refuse to ship him your product, right?
The easiest way is to contact some kind of “public agency for export” (the name depend on your country) and they will give you more detailed answers. Consulting a lawyer should also be a good idea in this case.
It depends on the country’s law. Here in Brazil it doesn’t matter where the business is from, if the client is in Brazil and, for any instance it sues the company, it will respond based on Brazil’s laws. However, there is not any kind of approval to “operate” your online business.
Remember that some products might require specific approvals from local authorities (eg. a cellphone in Brazil requires an approval seal from Anatel, the national agency for telecommunications); however, an online service company shouldn’t have many concerns with this.
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