The Tax Mistakes That Are Costing Expats in Thailand More Than They Know | Bobby Casey

[00:00:00] Bobby Casey: We deal almost exclusively with location independent entrepreneurs who either live outside of their home country or have business outside of their home country. The biggest mistake I see with Americans that have US LLCs is they very often register it themselves. The problem when you do it yourself is you put your name on the entity in public record.

[00:00:18] Bobby Casey: If you’re not a US person, the US is hands down the best place for you to register your company in like 95% of the cases. Most of my clients come to me after an oh shit moment. He ended up owing over a million euros in tax when he went back because he didn’t do things in the right way. This is not a place to be cheap pay money to somebody who has 5,000 clients that has done this.

[00:00:45] Scott Pressimone: All right, so I’m here with Bobby Casey, the founder of Business Anywhere, uh, now Bobby, I’d love if you could, uh, briefly introduce yourself. I know a lot of people already know you. You probably have more of a presence online than I do by far, but, uh, but definitely just in case anyone doesn’t know you, give a brief introduction of yourself.

[00:01:00] Bobby Casey: First of all, thanks for having me, Scott. I always appreciate the time to, uh, get on and chat about this stuff. I think it’s important, especially for the digital nomad community to get more information and better information on how to deal with these situations they’re dealing with because it’s becoming less unique.

[00:01:18] Bobby Casey: Let’s say there’s more and more people doing it, but that also means there’s a lot of really bad information out there. So I like to get on here and kind of spread the gospel, so to speak, on, you know, some good information. So, um, what I do business Anywhere, we are an online platform for startups, business owners, uh, who need a simplified place to register their company.

[00:01:44] Bobby Casey: Uh, registered agent service, virtual mailbox addresses, uh, opening bank accounts, bookkeeping, tax filings, basically everything you need for compliance on your, uh, new business. Uh, we do tax consulting, that sort of thing. We deal from the tax consulting side. We deal primarily almost exclusively with location independent entrepreneurs who either live outside of their home country or have business outside of their home country.

[00:02:11] Bobby Casey: So we’re very much targeted on the digital nomad audience. At least one of our big demographics is the digital nomad audience.

[00:02:19] Scott Pressimone: Yeah. And that’s definitely, uh, pretty prominent here in Thailand, specifically, you know, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, even in the, you know, the islands and down south you’ll, you’ll get a lot of digital nomads.

[00:02:28] Scott Pressimone: So,

[00:02:28] Bobby Casey: um, oh, we got, we got tons of clients in, in Thailand for sure. All, all over Southeast Asia. But yeah, we have tons of clients specifically in Thailand, because it’s a, it’s a digital nomad hotspot, right? I mean, it’s, it’s just a big hotspot. And rightly so. It’s a great place to live. It’s a great place to spend time, great weather, great food.

[00:02:47] Bobby Casey: I mean. It’s a nice place.

[00:02:48] Scott Pressimone: Yeah. And I know you’ve been here, and I know you’re not here right now. This is one of the unique cases where I thought it was worth, um, bringing you on to spot de despite not being here in Thailand yourself. But again, you’re familiar with the area, you have a lot of clients in this area.

[00:03:00] Scott Pressimone: And, you know, honestly, the main reason I invited you on Bobby was because the last couple of years, like I’ve been in Thailand since 2012, a lot of people have heard me say that a million times, but I’ve been here for a long time and I’ve seen a lot of changes happen. I’ve seen governments change. I’ve seen it go from essentially being very, uh, oriented towards bringing in more digital nomads, bringing in more business owners and whatnot, to then cracking down and, and going, you know, just, it sways back and forth.

[00:03:20] Scott Pressimone: Right? Yeah. And right now, in the last couple years, I’ve really seen a lot of people freak out more than they have in the past because there’s a lot more crackdowns about, um, tax residency. And to say, okay, how much money you’re gonna bring in this year? How much money, you know, if you sold a house in the US and then you brought all your money at once, then how much of that is actually taxable in Thailand?

[00:03:37] Scott Pressimone: There’s just all these different scenarios and you have to be careful. And, um, so, so that’s obviously why I thought bringing, bringing someone on with expertise in this area, um, would help hopefully save some people some money. Um, ’cause we can talk through some scenarios like this. So that’s kind of the goal today.

[00:03:50] Scott Pressimone: Sure. But, but one thing I wanted to know from you, Bobby, is, is this unique to Thailand? Because I’ve been here, like, I’ve been focusing solely on Thailand and I’ve seen that shift, but I’m just curious, are uh, clients of yours in other areas also getting a lot more regulations, a lot more crackdowns? Is that happening around the world or no?

[00:04:06] Bobby Casey: Thailand’s a great example of that. I mean, they’re changing their rules. Jesus. Like they, they, they are even at the point where they don’t even know which rules are which now, right? Like there’s, they have conflicts, conflicts in their laws that they’ll talk about one thing and then they pass a law that conflicts with something else.

[00:04:24] Bobby Casey: Um, it’s, it’s a messy situation, so you gotta pay attention. And if you are nomadic, I mean, maybe you need to move to another place if you want, if you want, if that’s like, uh, you know, conducive to your lifestyle, maybe you need to be flexible. Like, and I’m not trying to throw Thailand under the bus here, it’s just using it as an example.

[00:04:44] Bobby Casey: But if you like Southeast Asia, Thailand makes it hard. Philippines says, Hey, come on over here, maybe go there.

[00:04:52] Scott Pressimone: Definitely see what makes sense for, for you as an individual. I, I would agree with that one. One thing I would say though is I do think sometimes people put up their hands, uh, a little too quickly, right?

[00:05:01] Scott Pressimone: Because you’re right that it’s complex and things change. But, but it’s kind of like, I, I don’t know. I personally don’t go to a lot, to a lot of the expat forums, but you’ll see expat forums or Reddit or whatever, and everyone’s, every year is saying, oh my gosh, it’s crazy. No tourists are ever gonna come back to Thailand again.

[00:05:15] Scott Pressimone: No one’s ever gonna live there. And it’s like things, uh, the pendulum swings and it’s kind of okay. I honestly think, I think that’s something I, I really learned about Thailand is you gotta not freak out about things, right? Yeah. I mean, you gotta be mindful, you gotta be chill. Careful, to your point. Yeah, you gotta be careful, right?

[00:05:30] Scott Pressimone: I mean, it’s not to say, oh, don’t worry about it. Everything will blow over nothing. I mean, they’ll never crack down on something for taxes. They will. Be careful. Make sure you’re doing the right thing, but don’t freak out every time a new announcement comes out because it’s gonna be okay. And, and honestly, to your point too, when you said conflicting uh, laws, I mean, it’s usually conflicting departments, right?

[00:05:48] Scott Pressimone: So, so you’ll have one government, government department that’s basically saying, we want more tourists. And another one saying, there’s no way we can actually monitor that. Or they’re saying, we’ll, we’ll we’ll bring people on DTV and we’ll, um, you know, make sure that they qualify in these ways for their bank accounts.

[00:06:01] Scott Pressimone: And then the department that then has to actually look through the bank account says, well, we can’t read all these different languages to assess whether or not these are, uh, real or photoshopped. Right? I mean, there’s just all these things where, uh, you know, it’s conflicting interests. Um.

[00:06:14] Bobby Casey: There’s a huge e every, I see this in almost every country, there’s a big conflict between migration department and the tax office in every country, right?

[00:06:25] Bobby Casey: Yeah. Because, um, people ask me this all the time, like about residency. Residency is a hot topic, right? In the digital nomad world, like it’s probably tax and residency are the two hottest topics in the digital nomad world. Hands down by far. Residency, tax is almost always in conflict because residency is handled by the migration.

[00:06:46] Bobby Casey: Office tax is handled by the tax department, right? And so you have a conflict here. There’s such thing, and people, a lot of people don’t really understand this, but there is a physical residency and then there is tax residency and they are not the same thing. Like people are like, yeah, but I have residency in Mexico, or I have residency in Argentina, or I’ve gotten residency in Nicaragua, I must have to pay tax here.

[00:07:13] Bobby Casey: Well, maybe, or maybe not because residency, physical residency is handled by the migration office. So that’s a big mistake I think a lot of people make making assumptions on the concept of residency because residency just means you have checked the boxes on meeting requirements to fulfill necessary things for whatever, like your visa or your temporary or permanent residency requirements, so you’ve done X and Y and Z. The migration office says, yes, you can live here. Here’s your visa, or here’s your residence permit, or whatever it is, but. That doesn’t necessarily make you a tax resident in most countries. You can be a physical resident without being a tax resident.

[00:08:02] Bobby Casey: In a lot of countries, you can be a tax resident without being a physical resident.

[00:08:06] Scott Pressimone: One thing I’ll share is that, you know, I recently became a Thailand permanent resident, and that was quite a, uh, quite a difficult process. Uh, but I actually think it was, once you knew what you were doing, it was actually quite straightforward in a way.

[00:08:20] Scott Pressimone: Like as in it was, it was, it was easy to understand what was happening, but it was difficult to actually do. The reason I say it’s important to be, and I agree with you a hundred percent, to be purposeful, right, is to, is to say, what do you actually want outta this? What are you trying to do? Uh, are you trying to work from anywhere or are you planning a, a flag somewhere?

[00:08:35] Scott Pressimone: Right? But what you can’t do is just go with the flow because yeah, I made a number of mistakes. I could have got permanent residents years prior, but I had read some. Thing that was just inaccurate about how to do it. And I Right, I’ve written it off right for my situation. What I’m aware about this is that it’s important that you are working for a number of consecutive years and you are paying taxes without breaks.

[00:08:57] Scott Pressimone: And you have and hold the same visa for a long, you know, period of time. And then at that stage you can actually apply and people will think, oh, only only a hundred people can apply a year. No, that’s wrong. Uh, only a hundred people per nationality can apply per year in Thailand for permanent residence.

[00:09:12] Scott Pressimone: That’s true. But then what’s important to note is that if you’re an American or a Canadian or whatever, no one’s getting anywhere close to that. So a quota is never an issue. So you absolutely can, but the most important thing is that you don’t rate it off and think that something’s impossible. ’cause you just actually didn’t do the proper research.

[00:09:28] Scott Pressimone: Right. So know what you wanna do. Right.

[00:09:30] Bobby Casey: You got, you got a good point there on bad information. So one of the other biggest mistakes I see people make going on a Facebook group or a forum or, or, or just asking a buddy. You know, saying, what should I do? And they throw out a scenario like, um, I’m a German with an e-commerce business and I like to live in Southeast Asia.

[00:09:52] Bobby Casey: What I do, what should I do? And then somebody tells them through a Facebook group or a form or whatever, and somebody says, oh, you know what you need to do, man, you just leave Germany and go register a Dubai company and you’ll be good. And the biggest mistake you make, so by the way, I don’t see any problem with people going onto these Facebook groups or forums to get information.

[00:10:12] Bobby Casey: That’s not a problem. I think that’s a good idea. Go watch the YouTube videos and stuff, get the ideas, jot ’em down. But what you really need to do before you pull any trigger on a structure setup, residency structure setup, because to be honest, this stuff is super, super important. Like the structure of your business is critically important.

[00:10:33] Bobby Casey: I mean, this is your income stream. This is not the place to take advice from a Facebook group. Hire a professional to do this. This is not a place to be cheap. Be cheap other places. These things talk to a professional. This is not a place to be cheap. Pay freaking money to somebody who has 5,000 clients that has done this.

[00:11:01] Bobby Casey: This is not a place to watch x, y, z face, uh, uh, YouTube video and make permanent decisions about important things in your life.

[00:11:11] Scott Pressimone: Yeah, I would argue you get multiple opinions too, though, right? Because sometimes you can go

[00:11:15] Bobby Casey: down. I, I don’t, I don’t disagree with that. I had a client call yesterday with a guy, uh, one of my consulting clients, what he does, and I have no problem with this.

[00:11:23] Bobby Casey: Like, this is not a problem for me whatsoever. He has another guy, a little bit similar to me. And he goes and bounces. We discuss, he goes and bounces the idea of the other guy and then he comes back and does a consultation with me. Has he paid a bunch of money in consulting? Yeah, absolutely. He’s paying double ’cause he is paying both of us.

[00:11:42] Bobby Casey: This is an important thing for the structure of his life. He is an American guy. He’s currently living in Spain. He has permanent residency in Mexico and he travels around as a digital nomad. Well, this guy has a minimum of three flags right now American. Spending time in Spain. Permanent residency in Mexico, right, is a minimum.

[00:12:02] Bobby Casey: Three flags. Whenever you have multiple flags planted, there’s so many things that can go wrong if you don’t do things correctly, if you don’t have the business structure correct, if you don’t have the right type of residency or visa. In his case, we talked about what he needs to do in Spain to be in Europe, and the different types of visa options for him so that he stays compliant.

[00:12:25] Bobby Casey: So he doesn’t, like, by default, get trapped in some countries tax trap without knowing about it, you know? And then had like a big surprise, you know, when he goes through immigration and they say, Hmm, looks like you’ve been here so many days and you had to pay tax or something like that. And so he wants to do the right thing and he makes good money, like he makes good money.

[00:12:49] Bobby Casey: So he has a choice. He can read Facebook groups and just, eh. Let’s register the Dubai company, or he can find a professional that’s gonna make sure he’s gonna maintain compliance so he doesn’t get in trouble. Because I’ll also make this statement too, and a lot of people don’t like this statement, but whenever you are living this lifestyle, kind of this digital nomad kind of lifestyle, you’re pe these multiple flags planted or whatever, you’re gonna have to get comfortable living a little bit in the gray area on certain things.

[00:13:17] Bobby Casey: I say it like this, like on a gray scale, like let’s say one being completely clean, 10 being completely black, one being is, you know, I keep joking about it, but you’re living in the suburbs. White picket fence, lifestyle, local business, local job, paying your taxes like normal. That’s kinda one. That’s the complete clean setup, and you can do that if you live in one place.

[00:13:41] Bobby Casey: That’s easy to do if you live in one place. That’s what you should do if you live in one place on the 10 scale. That’s like full black. Your clients all pay you with cash or Bitcoin. You don’t report anything. You don’t, you’re non-compliant in every way, shape, or form. Okay? So the idea is kind of in this nomadic lifestyle, and I’m talking about nomads.

[00:14:04] Bobby Casey: Ones that are moving, you know, maybe they live in two or three different places, or maybe they’re just like the true nomad that, you know, lives a few weeks here, a few weeks here, a few weeks here. But if you’re some version of nomadic, you’re gonna be somewhere on the gray scale. The, the idea is to get it like, let’s say a three to a, a five on the gray scale.

[00:14:26] Bobby Casey: I mean, obviously that’s a subjective number, but, um, the idea is to be as clean as possible. But anytime you have multiple flags planted, you’re probably gonna end up with, there’s gonna be some conflictive laws between countries, and you have to choose. The least bad option in your situation, if that makes sense.

[00:14:44] Bobby Casey: Like I’ll give you an example here. Well, I’m gonna pick on Portugal again. So Portugal has a tax regime called NHR Stand for Non Habitual Residency. And so if you qualify for NHR as a, if you have a some type of residence permit or visa in Portugal and you qualify for NHR, the great thing with NHR is you can receive dividends from a company registered in a jurisdiction that has a tax treaty with Portugal, and those dividends are tax free under NHR. So if you live in Portugal and you have a company registered in another country that has the tax treaty with Portugal, your dividends come to you tax free. Okay. So a lot of people in Portugal, they register LLCs in the US because LLCs in the US are very tax friendly for almost everybody in the world.

[00:15:35] Bobby Casey: ’cause it’s a pass through entity from the US perspective. It’s a pass through. If a single member LLC is what you call a disregarded entity for tax purposes, meaning the LLC does not pay tax, the individual who receives the income may or may not have a tax obligation based on the nature of that income.

[00:15:55] Bobby Casey: Well, Portugal does not have an equivalent entity to the us. They don’t have an LLC, they don’t have a disregarded entity. They have corporations. So if you are in Portugal under NHR and you get your income from a US LLC, you can maybe not pay tax. And I say maybe, ’cause there’s a lot of variables on how it works in the us, but maybe you don’t pay tax in the us.

[00:16:19] Bobby Casey: But from the Portuguese side, you can treat it like a dividend from a US company because there is a tax treaty between the US and Portugal. So that’s a gray area thing. What I’m talking about, it’s gray area because there’s a conflict of laws between the US and Portugal. ’cause Portugal doesn’t have. A disregarded the entity like the US does.

[00:16:40] Bobby Casey: So it’s a difference in regulations between the two countries, but you’re kind of arbitraging and taking advantage of two different countries for a tax optimization strategy. Okay. But it is a little bit gray area because in the US. You don’t pay dividends from an LLC, but in Portugal you can take a dividend from the US LLC.

[00:17:01] Bobby Casey: Does that make sense?

[00:17:03] Scott Pressimone: It does, it does. It actually brings up another topic that I’ve heard a lot of, uh, from individuals here in Thailand, which is, uh, a lot of people tend to. Start their companies in Singapore or Hong Kong. I mean, for years and years, that was always the thing to do. And I think something it was the

[00:17:17] Bobby Casey: go-to for a long time.

[00:17:18] Bobby Casey: Yeah.

[00:17:18] Scott Pressimone: Right. And, and, and it, and something that you just mentioned there when you just mentioned the benefits of, uh, US, a disregarded entity in the us whether it be Wyoming or Delaware, I’m not sure if you have any preferences, but the main point is that like, um, sometimes it can make sense to have that in the US and sometimes it’s actually a pretty good option, right?

[00:17:34] Scott Pressimone: So I think sometimes the sexy thing online might be, oh yeah, Singapore or Hong Kong, which one is better? Where it’s like, well you might, let’s say you’re, especially maybe if you’re an American citizen, did you consider starting a company in the us Right? Or if you’re not a US citizen, you know, there’s even ways to do that, right?

[00:17:50] Scott Pressimone: So, um, I’m curious if that, if, if, if you agree with that or not, where maybe people are not looking enough at the US as potentially being a good option to have a company and not necessarily always going to Singapore and Hong Kong.

[00:18:01] Bobby Casey: Yeah, I can comment on all of that. So first of all, Singapore and Hong Kong are generally not good for most digital nomads anymore.

[00:18:08] Bobby Casey: Um, and I’ll tell you why. There’s a couple of reasons and I’m grouping them together ’cause they’re very, very similar now in the way they deal with things. So first of all, to open a bank account for a Singapore or a Hong Kong company, you need to be a resident of Singapore or Hong Kong. Like you need to actually be a resident there.

[00:18:26] Bobby Casey: So unless you actually live there, what you’ll end up having to do is hire someone to be a director of your company who has legal authority in your company, who has legal authority over your bank account. So if you want to go open a company in Singapore, but you don’t live there, you’re gonna, so that raises your cost.

[00:18:46] Bobby Casey: You gotta hire somebody who lives in Singapore. Now there are services that offer that, like, I’m not saying it’s not an impossible thing. Like you don’t, you’re not walking down the street in Singapore randomly going, Hey, you wanna be a director of my company. Like, there are services that do that for you, but it raises the cost ’cause you have to pay them a director fee.

[00:19:04] Bobby Casey: You have to pay them fees to deal with your bank account. And you are exposing your bank to another human being that in reality doesn’t have any real activity within your business. So that’s one downside to it. Um, used to, you could, like, let’s say 10 years ago, you could open a Hong Kong company and open a bank account at HSBC and not live there.

[00:19:27] Bobby Casey: It was no big deal. But that’s not really possible anymore. The other downside is for both of those jurisdictions, the banks themselves don’t, like if you’re not doing business predominantly in Asia, so like a, for years, a go-to thing for people who were doing like e-commerce, like Amazon stores in the us And so they would open a Hong Kong company with a bank account at like HSBC or something like that, and they were linking their Hong Kong company and HSBC account to their Amazon seller account, and they would receive all their funds.

[00:20:05] Bobby Casey: So they were. First of all, that was a big gray area thing anyway, because technically if you’re selling products in the US you have a US tax obligation regardless of where your company is registered. So technically, if you were doing that in the past, your Hong Kong company should have been filing, uh, a tax return in the us but nobody did that.

[00:20:24] Bobby Casey: So, so they were doing that because at the time you could do that, it was possible ’cause it was a loophole people were taking advantage of. It was a very, let’s go back to the gray scale, let’s say that was on the upper shadier range of the gray scale, but you could do that and get away with it. But what has happened since is those banks are now saying, if you’re not doing business predominantly in Asia, we’re just gonna close your accounts.

[00:20:49] Bobby Casey: So I had a client, this has been a few years now, probably three or four years ago, but. He was doing exactly this. He, he was doing e-commerce. He had a Hong Kong company. He had a bank account. They sent him a letter saying, um, we’re closing your bank account because all of your business is coming from US Banks.

[00:21:06] Bobby Casey: Like all of his money was coming incoming from US banks. All, most, all of his money outgoing was going back to the us and so he wasn’t doing business actually in Asia, just had a Hong Kong company. The bank sent him a letter saying, we’re closing your accounts. You’ve got 30 days to move your money out.

[00:21:24] Bobby Casey: Here’s the problem. He had a Hong Kong company. You could, you can’t just easily go to another country and open a bank account for a Hong Kong company, because, especially nowadays, unless you’re like the big multinational, but if you open a bank account in a country, you need your company registered in the same country or in the region where your bank account is.

[00:21:48] Bobby Casey: He tried to open bank accounts in multiple countries and he kept getting shut down. Like, no, you can’t. I mean, you have a Hong Kong company, go to Hong Kong and open your bank account. He couldn’t do it because nobody wanted him. His bank would only send the money to a bank account in his company name.

[00:22:05] Bobby Casey: That presents a major problem. Major, major problem. He could only send the money to a bank account and a company name, but no one else wanted to open a bank account for him. And he had a lot of money in there. Like it, it was, it was seven figures. And he ended up having to go to Hong Kong and hire a law firm, like a big corporate law firm to go fight this with the bank.

[00:22:28] Bobby Casey: And he paid, I don’t know, tens of thousands of dollars fighting this. And ultimately we ended up registering a Wyoming LLC for him. He got a court order to allow the bank to send the money to his Wyoming LLCs bank account, but he spent tens of, he, like, he had to go there. He spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to do that.

[00:22:49] Bobby Casey: And so it doesn’t make sense if you’re not, like, it could make sense. Don’t get me wrong, I still think Singapore and Hong Kong are viable solutions if you’re doing business in Asia. I think it’s a great solution if you’re doing business in Asia, if most of your incoming or outflow your inflow or outflow of money is from Asian markets, I think it’s a good option and it’s a viable solution to go there and hire a, a local director because it is, it is a tax optimized situation.

[00:23:19] Bobby Casey: Um, but I will also say Singapore and Hong Kong are both cracking down. They used to make it really easy if all your money came from non Hong Kong or non sing sources, you didn’t pay tax. But now they, they changed the definition on what it means to earn money in those jurisdictions now, so they’re cracking down on people and actually taxing them on that business.

[00:23:38] Bobby Casey: But that’s a bad solution for the vast majority of digital nomads. Now, they still think it is because you read blog posts that are 10 years old and you think, oh, great idea. The only clients I have right now that still have companies in those jurisdictions are people that do business in Asia. Full stop.

[00:23:55] Bobby Casey: Every other client I’ve ever had that had companies there have since closed them and moved on to somewhere else. Um, but to your point, the US actually, and it sounds weird to say this because everyone thinks the US is this really complex, uh, tax environment. Nobody wants to touch it. No one wants to get involved in the US and stuff like that.

[00:24:18] Bobby Casey: But if you’re not a US person, the US is hands down the best place for you to register your company in like 95% of the cases. Um. I if you in the nomad, in the nomad space, like I, I had a call, a client call with somebody yesterday who has a, a vehicle rental business in Mexico. Well, I told her, you need to register a company in Mexico.

[00:24:40] Bobby Casey: It just makes sense. ’cause you need the permits. Um, you need the, like if you rent vehicles, there’s special license plates. You gotta get to show that it’s a, a commercial vehicle. You can’t do that unless you have a Mexican registered company. That would make, she asked me, she was like, should I register my company in Wyoming?

[00:24:56] Bobby Casey: I’m like, no. That makes no sense. That’s crazy. Um, ’cause you’re gonna have nothing but problems down in Mexico with this business. So if you have a local business that has a physical location, or you’re doing physical work in that country, I mean, you, you don’t really have a choice. You kind of have to register in that location.

[00:25:17] Bobby Casey: But most digital nomads aren’t like that. Most digital nomads are like doing coaching or consulting or like selling some info products, e-commerce software, um, those types of things. And all those are virtual type businesses for virtual type businesses, basically for almost everyone in the world, a US LLC is gonna make the most sense.

[00:25:39] Bobby Casey: It’s easy, it’s cheap. Banking is simple. Uh, your tech stack is easy because all of the major tech platforms deal with us companies. Um, it’s gonna make your life much easier. And, and for non-US people, for virtual businesses, they’re probably not gonna pay tax in the US anyway. Right. And for us, people, if you’re living abroad, you get the foreign earned income exclusion and maybe some foreign tax credits.

[00:26:05] Bobby Casey: And there are some other things you could do if you’re at a higher income level. There’s other loopholes for Americans that make a higher level of income. Um, but you know. You have to justify the expense of a complex structure.

[00:26:18] Scott Pressimone: Right. So that’s definitely what I want to jump into next is there are different structures.

[00:26:23] Scott Pressimone: I mean, it sounds like there are some scenarios where people wanna create a more complex structure than they need to. That was the example of Oh yeah. Mexican, uh, you know, business that you just referenced. So, so I think maybe some people try to do that, but I, but it sounds like there’s the, kinda these tiers, it’s like if you’re, if you’re a solopreneur that’s, you know, doing consulting or coaching services, okay, go with the 1 0 1.

[00:26:42] Scott Pressimone: Go with pretty simple, right? And if you’re in this other scenario, then maybe you graduate, but maybe people tend to wanna rush to something that they don’t need or maybe makes their life worse. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah.

[00:26:52] Bobby Casey: Oh, dude, I, I, I had a Russian client a few years ago who’s big in the crypto space. I’m not gonna mention a name.

[00:26:59] Bobby Casey: He’s a well-known guy in the crypto space with a big platform in crypto. But this guy was so funny, he wanted to register some offshore companies. It was completely unnecessary. For what he was doing. The whole reason he wanted to do it is because it made him, in his mind, it made him look cooler to have an offshore structure.

[00:27:22] Bobby Casey: And it looked more like, literally, it just looked more shady like, but it was unnecessary for what he was doing. And I told him, I’m like, you don’t need this structure. And he goes, I don’t care. I want it because it projects a different appearance. And I’m like, so you wanna look shadier? And he goes, well, yeah, kind of.

[00:27:40] Bobby Casey: And I’m like, okay, we’ll register some offshore companies for you. Like it was funny, but people do sometimes go overly complex.

[00:27:47] Scott Pressimone: Right, right. Well, so let’s, let’s walk through a few scenarios like this and, and we can maybe get from, from simple to more complex. Right? So you mentioned, uh, let’s, let’s talk about a, a solopreneur, I’ll call them, right?

[00:27:59] Scott Pressimone: Digital nomad solopreneur I suppose, but, um, uh, consultant or developer or marketer, whatever, right? Coach doesn’t matter. Um, and let’s say that they are earning about 300 k per year. Um, and in USD, and they have, let’s assume they already have this, but they have a Wyoming or Delaware LLC. What I’m curious about is what mistakes do you often see with that individual?

[00:28:21] Scott Pressimone: Like, number one, is that a decent setup for an individual like that? In which case, um, let’s, let’s keep it simple. Let’s say they’re a US citizen, right? Okay. But a US citizen doing consulting or coaching or development, et cetera. 300 K salary, Wyoming, Delaware, LLC. What mistakes do they make typically,

[00:28:38] Bobby Casey: and I’m assuming here they’re, they’re like fully nomadic, right?

[00:28:42] Bobby Casey: They’re, they’re, they’re doing the real nomad thing like a few weeks here, a few weeks there.

[00:28:46] Scott Pressimone: Sure. Well, actually I would, I would adapt this, just remember, I mean, me being in Thailand to everything that we talk about is in Thailand, right? And so I’m gonna, all these scenarios are, so

[00:28:53] Bobby Casey: this is an American living in Thailand then?

[00:28:56] Scott Pressimone: Yeah. Let’s say that because, ’cause there’s a, there’s, I think there’s a ton of people that fall into this category in Chiang Mai for instance, right? Um, a lot of people I know in Chiang Mai are, are in this sort of scenario. So, um, what would you say for that individual? And, and again, I do wanna add some flexibility.

[00:29:09] Scott Pressimone: It’s someone who planted their flag, so maybe they go back, maybe they have the option to go back to the US three months of the year. Maybe they, you know, but, but for the most part, they’re a little bit, they’re semi nomadic slash planted flag in flag in Thailand for the most part.

[00:29:21] Bobby Casey: Okay. So planted flag in Thailand means, uh.

[00:29:26] Bobby Casey: They, they may or may not have a tax obligation in Thailand. So right now, um, it is possible to avoid the tax obligation in Thailand. Let me get this straight. You, you probably know this better than me, but if you’re bringing money into Thailand that you earned in the previous year, you don’t pay tax on it in that current year, right?

[00:29:48] Scott Pressimone: Uh, that’s what they’re cracking down on is they used to just have that delay, but I believe they’re even cracking down on that. So now they’re basically saying any money that you’re bringing, uh, and again, I’m not a professional in this area, but from my understanding is that, um, if you’re there, there’s not that thing of let me wait a year and then bring it in.

[00:30:05] Scott Pressimone: They’re, they’re basically saying if you bring it in at all, um, then, then we might tax that.

[00:30:09] Bobby Casey: This is the thing I understand in Thailand, that’s still a gray area in internally within Thailand. That’s a gray area thing. Like they don’t have any real clarification on this yet. If I remember correctly, there was a, um.

[00:30:24] Bobby Casey: An attempt to pass a law last summer, trying to crack down on the people that were bringing money in from previous years, from their, their company’s earnings in previous years. They tried to crack down on it saying if you bring it in. Um, so they tried to clarify that rule to say you don’t pay tax on it if you bring it in only from the previous year, or something like that.

[00:30:50] Bobby Casey: But then they didn’t completely clarify the rule. So at this point, my understanding in Thailand, this is still a little bit in flux, um, but if I were in this situation, um, A-U-S-L-L-C definitely makes the most sense for the front end of the business, like where you’re getting paid. ’cause it’s gonna be easier in, let’s call him Tom Smith here.

[00:31:13] Bobby Casey: Tom Smith, the American consultant. So it’s gonna be easier to, uh, for, for Tom to get paid through a, let’s say a Wyoming LLC, because he can, it’s easy for him to open bank accounts, he can get Stripe, he can get PayPal or any other merchant processing accountant, uh, gateway he wants. Um, it’s easy for, from a tech stack perspective to like, if you’re getting paid through your website to have the right technology platform for all these things.

[00:31:43] Bobby Casey: It’s like everything works with a US LLC, like a Wyoming, LLC, everything works. Um, a couple of mistakes I would see. The biggest mistake I see with, with this is really only relative to Americans, but the biggest mistake I see with Americans that have US LLCs is they very often register it themselves to kind of the do it yourself model.

[00:32:08] Bobby Casey: And they’re like, ah, I wanna save the 200 bucks or a hundred bucks or whatever to go do it themselves. Like I just had a client. Last week who did exactly that? And the, the problem when you do it yourself is you put your name on the entity in public record. Like Wyoming is very well known for privacy if you do it correctly.

[00:32:28] Bobby Casey: But the vast majority of people do not do it correctly. Oh, I even better, I had a client last week through Business Anywhere who came to us. We, we registered the company for them like, I don’t know, two years ago or something. And they decided they didn’t wanna pay the registered agent service anymore through us and it was in their home state.

[00:32:47] Bobby Casey: Um, they didn’t wanna pay their registered agent service with us anymore. They canceled service with us and decided to be their own registered agent now ’cause they wanted to save 150 bucks a year. And when they did that, they had to do the filing themselves. They had to file their annual report, they had to change, they had to do a change form, the change registered agent service over to them.

[00:33:08] Bobby Casey: And then when they did that, their name and their home address went on public record. And then they emailed us and said. Hey, what’s going on? Why is my name and email, why is my name and address and phone number and everything in public record? I thought, W, we could not have our information in public record.

[00:33:23] Bobby Casey: And I said, well, yes, when we were your registered agent, your name is not in public record, but you fired us as registered agent because you didn’t want pay 150 bucks a year. When you do that, you become your own registered agent. Now your personal information becomes a matter of public record. This person was pissed because they wanted the privacy of the LLC, but they didn’t realize they, that’s something you actually pay for.

[00:33:48] Bobby Casey: Like, you have to have a paid registered agent. And so very commonly, especially for Americans, they think, well, I’ll just register this thing myself, um, and save a hundred or 200 bucks a year on registered agent service. So that’s a big mistake people make is giving up their privacy. Thailand’s a good example of this.

[00:34:05] Bobby Casey: Thailand is kind of in this gray area situation right now where they haven’t fully decided how they’re dealing. With people earning money from abroad, if that person living in Thailand will ever get audited by the Thai tax office and they find out that all of his income is wired over from a Wyoming LLC to his Thai personal bank account, it’s super easy for the Thai tax office to go to the Wyoming Secretary’s State website and see that guy’s name on public record, if he registered it himself, if he used a professional service, you know, like us to do the registration form and the registered agent service form, his name is not gonna be in public record.

[00:34:44] Bobby Casey: So at least in that regard, Thailand can’t verify that he owns that company or has any association with that company. So I don’t know, may, maybe that seems sketchy, maybe that seems gray area, whatever, but I’m just a big fan of privacy. I don’t think anyone should know your business and financial details unless you want them to.

[00:35:05] Bobby Casey: So to wait for you to protect what you want protected. That’s a big mistake I think people make is do it yourself. LLC formation. And now it’s not like it’s expensive. I mean, you’re talking a couple hundred bucks to pay some money to register this thing for you. It’s not that much money. And like we talked about before, this is your business.

[00:35:27] Bobby Casey: This is not the place to get cheap. The thing that makes you money, the core of your livelihood should not be the place where you get cheap. Um, so that’s a big mistake. People make other things like, and I don’t wanna say this as a mistake for this case study example, but something he could do a bit better is a more complex structure, but I would say in his income rank, yeah, it would make sense for him to do this.

[00:35:53] Bobby Casey: So what we could do in his situation is create a offshore holding company for him that owns the shares or the membership interest of his Wyoming LLC. And so, what did you say? 300? He’s making, yeah, 300. So instead of that, it’s a, so a single member, LLC as a disregarded entity for tax purposes. If Tom owns the LLC, that means 300 K goes to Tom as the individual.

[00:36:22] Bobby Casey: So it’s as if Tom, the individual earn 300 k if it goes through this Wyoming LLC. If we shift it instead to an offshore holding company. So instead of Tom earning 300 K, let’s call it Hold Co Limited, we can shift it to hold Co Limited. Now Hold Co Limited can retain earnings, whereas, uh, Tom, LLC can’t retain earnings ’cause it’s just, it shifts automatically to Tom.

[00:36:47] Bobby Casey: But Hold Co Limited can retain earnings and then Tom pays his salary. From HoldCo Limited. In that scenario, that would save Tom about $25,000 a year in taxes. In the first scenario, Tom is paying self-employment tax in the us, which is your, um, uh, Medicare, Medicaid, social security. It’s 15.3% on your first 169,000 last year, 169,000.

[00:37:16] Bobby Casey: So 15% of 1 69 is about $25,000. If he shifts that profit over to an offshore HoldCo and pays a salary from there, he doesn’t have an obligation to pay that self-employment tax anymore because his paycheck comes from a foreign company. So right off the bat, that saves him about 25 KA year. So at, at, I mean, that’s a not an insignificant savings.

[00:37:38] Bobby Casey: That would help him tremendously. The other benefit there too, is having to retain earnings in that HoldCo. So from the Thai perspective, now he can pay himself a dividend instead of a salary. And even if he’s taxed on dividends, he can pay himself a dividend of only what he needs to survive in Thailand.

[00:37:58] Bobby Casey: So let’s say he wants to make, I don’t know, let’s say 50 KA year, and let’s say now Thailand says we’re gonna tax foreign dividends. Well, at least he would only be paying tax on the 50 K of the foreign dividend instead of the full 300 k. So again, I don’t wanna say that’s a mistake he’s made, that’s just something he didn’t know that existed.

[00:38:18] Bobby Casey: That would be a good strategy to optimize for what he’s already doing.

[00:38:22] Scott Pressimone: Okay. Understood. I, I threw out a number. Um, but, but to your, I was hoping it was kind of one of the simple scenarios, but I mean, we could put any number into that. I was just trying to think of a simple scenario. So let’s just assume it’s a hundred K, right?

[00:38:34] Scott Pressimone: So we’re not in the holding. I, I just want what is a simple scenario, because like I said, I know Mo most of these people are in Chiang Mai that I run into. I don’t know how much they’re earning. I threw out a number, but I know that they’re usually working for themselves. They’re usually doing one of these online spaces.

[00:38:47] Scott Pressimone: Right. And they usually just want something simple. So let’s assume that it’s a different number. Let’s assume it’s a K instead.

[00:38:53] Bobby Casey: So let, so let me tell you the, the, the big variable there is American versus non-American. Okay. Because even if we drop that down to a hundred K, he’s still paying about 15 K in self-employment tax.

[00:39:06] Bobby Casey: Mm-hmm. In that scenario. It would probably still make sense for him to have the hold code because if the hold code costs, let’s say three grand to set up a hold code, but he saves 15 K in tax, I mean that’s a net $12,000 savings, right? So in that scenario, the hold code still makes sense, but the variable is American versus non-American because Americans, we are one of two nationalities where we are what’s called citizenship based worldwide taxation.

[00:39:34] Bobby Casey: So if you’re a citizen of the US you’re taxed on worldwide income regardless of where you live. Um, you do get some loopholes like with foreign earned income exclusion and foreign tax credits, self-employment taxes, you can’t get out of that if your income is US source. You can only get out of self-employment tax if it’s non-US source income.

[00:39:54] Bobby Casey: So that’s the point of shifting it to a foreign country. Um, so as an American, if you’re making it, let’s say the structure itself costs you, let’s say it costs you 5K. So if your savings is $5,001, then you have a marginal $1 benefit. So you gotta decide anything above that where it becomes a valuable thing for you to spend that 5K to do everything.

[00:40:17] Bobby Casey: And I’m talking with the consulting advice, instruction, the company and everything. Let’s say it costs you 5K. Um, so if you save 10 K, then your marginal benefit is 5K. Is that worth it for you? I don’t know. That’s up to you whether the the additional stuff, the additional complex strategy makes sense. But a simple strategy would be take that exact same scenario, but say it’s a, a German doing the exact same thing.

[00:40:44] Bobby Casey: A German with a Wyoming LLC, uh, with a plan, uh, a flag planted in Thailand, living there a few months out of the year, and then nomadic the rest of the year doing consulting. A Wyoming LLC would be the super simple solution. Literally he would need, it’s a couple hundred bucks to register and maintain that Wyoming LLC.

[00:41:02] Bobby Casey: He does need to do, there’s one additional filing he has to do that Americans don’t need to do. There’s a filing they have to do. It’s called a 5 4 7 2 and a proforma 1120. That informs the IRS. Uh, that LLC is owned by a foreign owner. So German owned LLC, um, that’s one thing that’s a one form you or, well, it’s two forms.

[00:41:24] Bobby Casey: Technically. They go together. It’s two forms you have to file one time a year. So it’s not a complex thing you need to do. It’s one time a year. So that’s the only additional thing they would do. But in that scenario, German doing consulting through a Wyoming LLC, they would pay zero tax in the US They do have to do the filing, but they would pay zero tax.

[00:41:43] Bobby Casey: Every penny goes back into their pocket on the Thai side, um, most likely, at least in the current system. They probably wouldn’t be paying any tax in Thailand if they would pay tax, they would only be paying tax on the money they they bring into Thailand. So if they wired into their Thai bank account. So if they made 300 K and only wanted to live on 50 K, then worst case scenario, they wire in the 50 K and they pay tax on the 50 k in Thailand. But that would be a super simple solution basically for everyone non-US.

[00:42:18] Scott Pressimone: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great scenario. Uh, one little thing I want to tag in there, ’cause it’s, I meant to bring this up earlier, but I think people also need to think about taxes slightly different. Now, I don’t love paying taxes, but one thing to keep in mind is I just meant mention permanent residents in the past, I mentioned, uh, citizenship.

[00:42:34] Scott Pressimone: Just know that, I assume for other countries too. But for Thailand it’s important the amount of tax that you pay because that has a lot to do with your application for some of these, in these things like residents and citizenship. And so if someone is trying to say you use this scenario of maybe they bring in just 50 K, uh, well, I dunno if you’re talking about dollars, but let’s say it’s Thai baht, right?

[00:42:53] Scott Pressimone: 50,000 Thai baht.

[00:42:54] Bobby Casey: Yeah. I was.

[00:42:55] Scott Pressimone: Okay, well let, let’s just pretend.

[00:42:57] Bobby Casey: Let’s 50,000 Thai baht. Not very much, but

[00:42:59] Scott Pressimone: no, not very much.

[00:43:00] Bobby Casey: No, no. I was evening out into dollars.

[00:43:02] Scott Pressimone: No, no, totally fair. Well, I’m just, I I’m just saying, ’cause I’ve seen some people do this sort of thing, uh, is they’ve literally tried to minimize the amount of money they put into bring into Thailand.

[00:43:10] Scott Pressimone: ’cause to your point, then you don’t have to pay as much Thai tax, but I’m saying that can burn you because then when you’re, um, you’re going after something else, then you’re not paying as much Thai tax in Thailand. And, and I actually saw the amount of tax I paid in Thailand as a benefit for my application.

[00:43:23] Scott Pressimone: So just something to kind of keep in mind. Now, another scenario, since you brought up the, the German example, what about we keep on referencing Wyoming LLCs a lot, right? So let’s assume that, uh, we have a, uh, I’m gonna use American again, but an American, uh, individual from California, let’s use an extreme example.

[00:43:43] Scott Pressimone: So they’re, they, they live in California, but they like to travel to Thailand six months outta the year. Right. And so since they live in California, a question becomes like, let’s say they’re doing consulting work. So sometimes some of their clients are based in California, sometimes they stop by the office in California to their client offices.

[00:44:00] Scott Pressimone: Then sometimes they go over to Thailand and they take some remote calls to their, you know, their clients in California. Right. And so what I’m curious about first is should they be registering a business in California, or should they be registering a business in Wyoming?

[00:44:14] Bobby Casey: So if they’re still maintaining residency in California, they need to be a California LLC.

[00:44:19] Bobby Casey: Um, got it. It’s doesn’t, it doesn’t benefit them. Because what’ll happen is in that scenario, you just gave me six months in Thailand, six months in California, six months in California means, first of all, they’re not qualifying for foreign earned income exclusion.

[00:44:33] Scott Pressimone: Uh, yep.

[00:44:34] Bobby Casey: Even if they had a residency in Thailand, the US is still gonna consider them a tax resident because they’re gonna say they have too many connecting factors to the US and to California.

[00:44:48] Bobby Casey: Um, you by the way, there’s two, as an American, there’s two ways to qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion. One is the physical presence test where you’re physically out of the US 330 days a year. Um, but the other is the bonafide residency test where you actually legally immigrate to the other country and become a resident.

[00:45:07] Bobby Casey: You get a resident visa or resident permit in that country. And if you do that, you have a lot more flexibility on the amount of time you stay in the us. Mm-hmm. So a lot, that’s a misunderstanding that a lot of people, a lot of people just think I have to be out of the US 335 days a year, or I don’t qualify.

[00:45:24] Bobby Casey: Well, that’s not true. You can actually go immigrate to another country, get a residence permit, and then you can be in the US kind of the, this, there’s nothing, by the way, there’s no. Number of days that qualify you if you have bonafide residency. Actually, if you read, I could pull up the tax form and show you.

[00:45:44] Bobby Casey: It’s extremely ambiguous actually, when you read the, the IRS form on the determination. But basically what it says is it’s based on the you connection to that other country. So do you have a home there? Do you go to the doctor there? Do you have a gym membership there? Uh, do you have a phone number there?

[00:46:04] Bobby Casey: Do you get your teeth cleaned there? Um, do you have a pho, like, a car registry, those types of things. Do you like your center of vital interest? Is your center of vital interest in this scenario in Thailand or is it in California? So if this person still has the home in California, car in California, blah, blah, blah, these types of things, health insurance is a big one.

[00:46:25] Bobby Casey: If you still have all that stuff, the US and California is still gonna consider you a tax resident because your center of vital interest is still California, which means you’re still filing a federal tax return and a California state tax return. So if you live in California, but you say, I’m gonna be sneaky and register my LLC in Wyoming or Delaware or something like that, what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna file your California state tax return, and on your income you’re gonna show income.

[00:46:53] Bobby Casey: Let’s say you made. Uh, what did you say? 300,000. So let’s say you made 300,000 that came from a Wyoming LLC. Well, that’s going to appear on your California state tax return. The California Department of Revenue is gonna send you a nasty letter saying, Hey, you’ve gotta register that LLC to do business in California.

[00:47:11] Bobby Casey: You gotta pay the $800 a year franchise tax. You gotta register it as a foreign entity, and we’re hitting, hitting you with penalties and interest for the amount of time it wasn’t registered in California. So there’s zero benefit if, if your center of vital interest and your residency is California, almost all cases, there’s zero reason for you to have a non-California registered entity.

[00:47:32] Bobby Casey: I mean, there are exceptions to the rule. Like that would be like if you owned a real estate portfolio in Ohio, maybe you have a bunch of properties in Ohio. Well, in that case it makes sense maybe to have Ohio LLCs to own your real estate in Ohio because physically the property’s there or maybe you own, um.

[00:47:51] Bobby Casey: A software company with an office in Austin, Texas, then in that case it might make sense to add a Texas registered company, a corporation or an LLC registered in Texas. But here’s the crazy thing. In most cases, if you’re the owner of that company and that company has an office in Texas, even if you had 10 employees that punched a clock every day in Austin, Texas, but you’re the owner of that company and you do your work like remotely, physically in California, California Department of Revenue is still gonna ask you to register that Texas LLC in California to do business.

[00:48:27] Scott Pressimone: Yeah. So that, that idea, that’s

[00:48:28] Bobby Casey: an interesting point you bring up though, by the way. ’cause California’s the only state that does that.

[00:48:32] Scott Pressimone: Ah, okay. Well, yeah, I tried to use an extreme ’cause I, I figured I, I’d been hearing in the news a lot of, uh, uh, stuff about how people trying to leave California sometimes might, um, be a little bit stuck because, uh, yeah.

[00:48:44] Bobby Casey: Let me just bring up one, kind of an add-on to this.

[00:48:46] Scott Pressimone: Hmm.

[00:48:47] Bobby Casey: If you are nomadic, if you are living this nomad lifestyle and you’re from California, what you really need to do before you leave to leave the US and go take on your nomad adventure here, you really need to move to a different state before you leave California,

[00:49:07] Scott Pressimone: ah,

[00:49:07] Bobby Casey: to a zero tax state.

[00:49:09] Bobby Casey: Um, and by move, I mean you need an address in that state. You need to move your driver’s license. If you’re a registered voter, you need to move your voter registration. Um, basically everything that connects you in a public record perspective to California, you need to cut those ties because. Even if in the scenario, if you’re from California and you wanna live this nomad life, and maybe you don’t even set foot in the US or California for the next five years, California still expects you to pay California state tax even if you qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion at the federal level, because your connections, you still have that driver’s license, you still have everything connected to California address, blah, blah, blah.

[00:49:54] Bobby Casey: They consider. That to be your intention to return to California.

[00:50:00] Scott Pressimone: Wow. Wow. That’s quite an extreme. Um, and that’s good to know. I mean, the, the main thing that I was, I mean even just the level 1 0 1 of what we were talking about, I wanted to draw the parallel between the individuals that think they need a Hong Kong company or a Singapore company, and then sometimes they’re making it, you know, it’s unnecessary.

[00:50:15] Scott Pressimone: They don’t necessarily need that. Maybe it’s just a us Well, it’s the same thing. I’m just wondering, some people might read the blog articles and say, Wyoming or Delaware looks such a great place to start up a company. Maybe I’ll do that. But if they still reside or are part of the year in their own home state, maybe it doesn’t make sense to do that.

[00:50:30] Scott Pressimone: Right? Maybe, maybe That’s not really unnecessary complication, right? Um,

[00:50:34] Bobby Casey: it does. Yeah, it does. E you e even you pick Ohio. If you live in Ohio and that’s still your center of vital interest and you’re living half the year in Ohio and you go spend half the year in the Philippines or whatever, it probably just makes sense to have an Ohio LLC ’cause you still, you’re still gonna be a tax resident in the US and Ohio.

[00:50:55] Scott Pressimone: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:55] Bobby Casey: No matter what, ’cause your center of vital interest is still Ohio.

[00:51:00] Scott Pressimone: Great point, great point. Now, um, I just was curious, Bobby,

[00:51:04] Scott Pressimone: is there anything that we didn’t talk about, we talked about quite a bit. You’ve been very generous with your time, so thank you for that. But is there anything that you wish we would’ve, uh, discussed today that we didn’t have, uh, that we haven’t yet?

[00:51:13] Bobby Casey: Uh, I’ll hit on a couple of things. Some of it’s gonna be a little bit of, uh, rehashing, but I’ll get to the point. But some of the mistakes that people make in this, um, digital nomad kind of lifestyle I mentioned before, taking advice from online platforms and not getting professional guidance on that. I think that’s worth reiterating that you, you can’t you can’t do that because if, if you’re living that white picket, this lifestyle, you, you don’t have that much complications in your life. If you’re roaming between 3, 4, 5 countries in a year, you’re adding a lot of variables to your particular situation, and you need good guidance there of people who have experience doing those things, who have clients that have been through that, or who have been through it themselves.

[00:52:03] Bobby Casey: And so one of the biggest mistakes people make is being cheap and just saying, oh, I’ll figure it out myself. I’ll figure it out online. And it’s kind of like, I, I kind of am, my analogy to this is I can figure out how to change the oil in my new car also, like. It’s not like it’s impossible. I can go online and watch some YouTube videos.

[00:52:26] Bobby Casey: You know, let’s say I just bought a brand new Lexus. I can go online and find some YouTube videos and see how to change the oil, my new Lexus, and how to change the filter and where the oil goes in and where the filler or the, uh, drain cap is and all that stuff. I could do that. Absolutely, I can do that.

[00:52:42] Bobby Casey: Um, I’m a pretty smart dude. I actually raced motorcycles for 20 years. I know how to rebuild engines. Like I can do all that stuff, but should I, should I do that? Like, probably not. Um, because I have things that I’m really good at and I should probably stick to the things I’m really good at and hire somebody to change the oil in my car.

[00:53:05] Bobby Casey: And so the mistakes people make in structuring their business is the same mistakes they make later on. In being kind of cheap is, is what I’m saying. Um, but getting your business structure set in place first is super, super critical. Staying on top of the rules of the places where you’re living is a big thing that most people ignore.

[00:53:26] Bobby Casey: People are like, oh, well I’m gonna go to Spain for five months, it’ll be fine. Well maybe, you know, or, or maybe not. Maybe you get a nasty surprise one day and you know, you end up owing a bunch of tax. Like had a client years ago, Swedish guy who thought he was gonna go move to Southeast Asia and spend, you know, not pay tax in Sweden anymore because he read on Facebook, it was gonna say, you know, just to register I think at the time he registered a Hong Kong company. This was a long time ago. This was probably 10, 12 years ago. And he did that for a long time. But what happened is when he came, he decided to move back to Sweden. He got married, wanted to raise his kids in Sweden and all that stuff. And he got back and he re-registered as a resident and they said well, where have you been paying tax for the past 10 years? Because he didn’t exit the country in the proper way. There are things you can do to properly exit your home country if you don’t do them, the country doesn’t know you’ve exited and they treat you like you’re still a resident, but non-compliant.

[00:54:26] Bobby Casey: He ended up owing over a million euros in tax when he went back because he didn’t do things in the right way because he’d said, I’m just gonna read a Facebook post and do what somebody said online. Big mistake, obviously. Um, like a million euro mistake for him. Over a million euro mistake for him. Not paying attention to things and being a bit lax there, like we’re entrepreneurs, you and I, or entrepreneurs, probably most of your listeners are entrepreneurs and you can all resonate with this.

[00:54:55] Bobby Casey: I guarantee you, Scott, you’re exactly the same way I am when it comes to this, is we think about the next hire or the next client or the next deal. Or the next sale. We’re, we’re forward thinking. We, we, I mean, we log in, we look at our revenue numbers, the number of new clients we had today, X, Y, Z, right? The new website we’re building, the new AI agent we’re building, we’re forward thinking, what’s the last thing in the world? Any entrepreneur wants to think about?

[00:55:25] Scott Pressimone: All the paperwork at all. The other mess, right?

[00:55:27] Bobby Casey: Yeah, the paperwork. We don’t wanna deal with that bullshit. We don’t wanna deal with bookkeeping, we don’t wanna deal with legal structure and tax filings.

[00:55:35] Bobby Casey: And so we’re like, eh, yeah. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, we’ll deal with that tomorrow. But in my experience that tomorrow problem eventually becomes a today problem. And the longer you procrastinate dealing with that tomorrow problem, the bigger that problem becomes when that day happens. Like most of my clients, I will, like, full disclosure, most of my clients come to me after an oh shit moment, like most sudden come to me like.

[00:56:01] Bobby Casey: Hey, like, uh, I remember a German guy, I had a consultation with him like four years ago, and he told me, he’s like, oh, I don’t, I’m just gonna stay registered in Germany and keep my company registered in Germany. And he moved, traveled all over the world. I, I told him, I said, well, we should register your company outside Germany.

[00:56:17] Bobby Casey: Like he was doing consulting coaching or something like that. And I said, we should probably do a Wyoming LLC for you. And he goes, oh, I don’t wanna do that. I’ll just keep it all in Germany. It’s easier for me to keep it registered in Germany. And I thought, okay, you know what I mean? Do what you want, man.

[00:56:30] Bobby Casey: Shit’s your life. And I, like two years later, he came back and did another consultation and it was an oh shit moment because he owed like 150,000 euros in tax. And he’s like, Hey, we need to fix this. What can we do to fix this? I’m like, we can’t fix the 150,000 you already owe in tax. We can fix you going forward.

[00:56:50] Bobby Casey: Like we should have done two years earlier when we had our initial calls and then you wouldn’t have this problem. But that’s normally when clients come to me is when they have that oh shit moment. They’re like, oh God, I owe a stupid amount. I didn’t know I owed all this money in tax. Or you know, or like the Swedish guy.

[00:57:09] Bobby Casey: ’cause he came to me after he moved back to Sweden and he had that oh shit moment that he owed over a million euros in tax. And I’m like, I can’t do anything about that. You didn’t exit Sweden in the right way 10 years ago. Just be vigilant in these things. ’cause they matter. They’re, they can create serious consequences for you.

[00:57:29] Bobby Casey: And if you think they don’t just wait two or three years or four years or five years ’cause they will eventually, you know. Yeah.

[00:57:37] Scott Pressimone: Now Bobby, what’s the best way for people to either find more about you or, uh, get in touch?

[00:57:42] Bobby Casey: Uh, best way to reach out to us is Business anywhere.io through our website. We got a lot of resources on there.

[00:57:50] Bobby Casey: Um, I mean, I think at this point we have over 2000 blog posts on most every topic you can imagine. Honestly, we write a lot, a blog post that every time I see our new schedule of like content. I’m like, who thought of this stuff? Like we, we had a pretty good writing team and I’m like, who came up with this stuff?

[00:58:08] Bobby Casey: I di I couldn’t even think of this topic. Like, but it’s good. Like we have a ton of content on a diff bunch of different things. Um, could be very helpful if you’re doing some research. But again, I will stress if you’re reading an old blog post, take it with a grain of salt. Hire a professional hire us or somebody like us to help you get your structure organized and set in place.

[00:58:30] Bobby Casey: Um, we also have, we’re also on all the social channels. I mean, you, we have a pretty good YouTube channel. Um, we’re on, you know, if you like watching shorts, YouTube shorts or Instagram TikTok, we’re on all that. But if you want real information, go to our YouTube channel. We have a lot of YouTube videos on, on a lot of this stuff.

[00:58:48] Bobby Casey: So that would be the best way to reach out to us.

[00:58:50] Scott Pressimone: Awesome. Well, I’ll put, uh, the, uh, contact information in the, in the description as well, but I just wanna thank you for your time, Bobby. It’s been really insightful. So, uh, so thanks so much again and, uh, here’s to optimism. Right. We’re, we’re gonna do okay.

[00:59:04] Bobby Casey: Thanks for having me, Scott. I appreciate it.

[00:59:06] Scott Pressimone: All right. Cheers. Bye.

[00:59:07] Bobby Casey: Cheers.