Comment by punarinta
3 days ago
I was an e-resident for 10 years, had a company and paid all taxes, but this year they refused to prolong it due to my nationality. So, I don't recommend Estonia at all, they can easily screw you over at any time. :(
Since I'm looking for a replacement atm, what's the best US state to register a simple and cheap LLC for a foreigner?
The classic answer is Delaware because that's what everyone else does so there are scale effects. Practically this means that Delaware's legal and banking system is extremely experienced with business customers.
At the level of having, say, a mom and pop LLC, most states are about the same, eg you need to do about the same amount of minimal paperwork to register the name, have an agent in state who can receive legal notices for you, etc. Virginia for example isn't much more work than DE.
If you really don't want to do a lot of leg work, there are services like Stripe Atlas that will do it all for you. I haven't used them but they seem to be targeting the startup/HN crowd.
Finally Wyoming and Nevada have some features of LLCs that you might find attractive, such as keeping the ownership structure out of public records. Personally, and unfairly to NV, I think of NV LLCs as slightly sketchy because for a couple of years all the ones I saw were weird businesses that promised "incredible investment opportunities!!!" in some revolutionary technology or other, thermodynamics be damned.
I am sorry, but under the current circumstances in the US, your second paragraph sounds like satire, and I actually laughed out loud.
Well, I did a small research and I couldn't find any cases of the US government discriminating foreign business owners by passport. There are several cases in the EU, but the US looks clear so far. Hence my interest in that location.