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Comment by azinman2

3 days ago

Wow the virtual office concept is so beyond shady. I wonder if there are any legitimate uses of it?

Many:

You run a business from home but do not want to reveal you personal address to the world.

You are from a country that Stripe doesn’t support but need to make use of their unique capabilities like Stripe Connect, then you might sign up for Stripe Atlas to incorporate in the USA so you can do business directly with Stripe. Your US business then needs a US physical address ie virtual office.

Etc

Virtual offices have been around forever and aren't really an indication of being shady necessarily.

That you don’t need an office if your company works remotely? Kind of overkill with a whole office for a company with 3 people working at it and everyone works remotely.

  • Some things still require a mailing address. PO Box isn't always acceptable. Do you want it to be one of your 3 people's houses? What if one moves?

    • Obvious option would be the law firm handling your business license. But can we also take a minute to appreciate the absurdity of a PO box ever being deemed unacceptable? It literally exists for this exact purpose, and there are any number of "PO box except not a PO box" schemes out there due to this issue. It ought to be illegal to treat PO boxes differently IMO.

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