We're a design and development team with a company registered in Europe (Portugal). We have a product we've been selling worldwide (mainly to the US) for quite a while. We've had our problems with being non-US in the past, the main one being not having a merchant account and thus being impossible to signup for Authorize.net (or a similar service).
For the last couple of weeks we've been thinking about incorporating for different reasons: taxes and paperwork. We've been hearing about taxes and incorporating on Delaware, Texas, Nevada and the likes but we'd love to know what you guys on HN would suggest.
Where are your startups based? If in the US, what State? Where would you suggest us to register the company and where should I look into? We're looking for low taxes and almost no red tape, paperwork, invoice requirements, etc... We're developers and designers, we like to build awesome products ;)
We'd love to hear about not only taxing but also about monthly/quarterly/yearly paperwork one needs to fill in and submit on each example you guys know about.
Thanks for sharing. Feel free to link to any resources you know about.
The one office you really need is a registered agent, the official place government and courts can get in touch with your corporation and you can pay an attorney to do that and forward you mail for a few hundred dollars a year.
For big businesses, the best state to incorporate in is Delaware because Delaware can handle masses of corporate acts and paperwork and claims and lawsuits efficiently.
For really small operations, the least cost and paperwork will be in Wyoming. You may well never file any paperwork there beyond annual renewal fees.