Recently by Bill Rounds: Make Your Home a Castle With PrivacyFencing
State of Colorado jobs are drying up as the heat of legislative pressure beats down on them, causing Colorado-based streams of income to evaporate before they ever reach the sea. Meanwhile, the mighty river of income known as Amazon.com meanders on, passing nowhere near state of Colorado jobs. Navigating Colorado law and the profitability of an Amazon.com affiliate account requires learning how to use the tools and master thetechniques of a mariner to find the safest harbor to earn your income.
Laws Effecting State Of Colorado Jobs
Colorado recently passed a law which upset the big boys over at Amazon.com and prompted Amazon to stop using Colorado-based affiliates. The law created strong incentives for internet based companies to keep track of sales tax on products sold by Colorado-based affiliates. Some observers have noted that the law required retailers such as Amazon to report who bought what products to the government. The requirement to report a list of books purchased should be a red flag to anyone, privacy minded or not. Such a requirement would make anyone who buys the Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, The Flying Saucers Are Real, How To Vanish, and The Joy of Vegan Baking, a potential target for political persecution anywhere that a neo-con taxman is on the prowl. Rather than deal with the implications of the new law, Amazon made a business decision to stop using affiliates based in Colorado. That means that about 4,200 people who were earning income from their Amazon affiliate program were suddenly cut off from that income because of their physical location.
Vanish From Unfavorable Jurisdictions
Large corporations and governments both have a lot of economic power. Sometimes their powers conflict, causing pain to those who don’t comply with the requirements of one or both of them. Geographic requirements are no longer as imposing as they once were. People can easily become a resident of another state, or even become a resident of another country very easily. Virtual commuting, electronic filing, and the ability to work completely in the cloud have changed the ability of individuals to travel wherever they want to earn their income. Now you can operate your business from the location of your choice, taking advantage of the tax benefits and other benefits this provides to your personal, business and family privacy. Not having to be in any particular physical location makes it hard to exert unjust power over you. One of the great advantages might even be avoiding having your business shut down because of political constraints on geography.
Choose The Right State To Incorporate
Corporations have been taking advantage of the ability to select their geographic location for years. Most people are aware that Delaware or Nevada are common places to be incorporated. The reason being that the laws of those states, both tax and otherwise, are very favorable to a business and can reduce costs of doing business dramatically, even if the individual owner has little connection with those states. You can take advantage of relative geographical freedom by choosing the state of the LLC to suit your needs.
Establish Location Independence
Individuals can do the same thing. If you move around a lot you can establish a home base by getting a ghost address in a particular state, opening a bank account there, and doing other things that demonstrate residency. Just because your office is located in Las Vegas Nevada doesn’t mean you have to live there. You might be able to work out of Lake Tahoe Nevada, have your phones forwarded from Las Vegas to Tahoe, have your mail picked up on a regular basis forwarded from your Las Vegas address to your Tahoe address. Lake Tahoe is much better for your health anyways. When you are done visiting Lake Tahoe, and you decide to spend some time fishing in Montana, keep the same Las Vegas address and have everything forwarded to where you are now staying in Montana. Any requirements to do work in Las Vegas can be met by visiting that office as often as the law requires.
This same principle can be exploited by the Colorado-based affiliates of Amazon. They can operate out of Kansas as easily as they can operate out of Denver. There is very little which keeps them tied to Colorado and many incentives to leave Colorado.
Conclusion
Don’t be locked down into the potentially harmful requirements of geographic location whenever possible. Set up your business in the right state, establish residency in the right state and avoid having your business shut down due to government or corporate geographic requirements.
Reprinted with permission from How to Vanish.
Bill Rounds, J.D. is a California attorney. He holds a degree in Accounting from the University of Utah and a law degree from California Western School of Law. He practices civil litigation, domestic and foreign business entity formation and transactions, criminal defense and privacy law. He is a strong advocate of personal and financial freedom and civil liberties.
