L1 company - nearly time

[mr&mrssunshine]

HI we are new here -Peter G directed us in after we spoke. Although my wife is a nurse we have decided to go the L1 route for speed.
we qualify under the 12 month rule in Feb 2010, (thought it was this Dec but we have had 3 hols totalling 50+ days this year :mad:)

I believe/hope that the Uk company meets all the L1 criteria ( £2.5m pa turnover 8 full time staff,8 full time direct self employed and a further 20+ sub contractors, good profits etc etc) the share split is 51/49 between me and my business partner.
So I have some questions before we start the ball rolling.

1.The US company will be 51% mine 49% an american partner -any problems ?the other UK shareholder will not be involved in the US
2.it will either be an LLC or LLP -any advantages/disadvantages to either ?
3. premises - I know we really should have a business address-can that be the minority shareholders home or should we get a small serviced office.
4. although the 12 month timespan hits Feb 2010 we would like to start up the US company now and start trading in a small way. is that ok ? are there any negatives to having the company running before the 12 months?

i am sure there will be some more q's but this would really help for starters

thanks

Pete

[JulieC]

Be careful on the shareholdings. The shareholdings of the companies in the US should be substantially the same, or alternatively the UK company must wholly own the US company. We were denied L1 renewal and on our green card application because our UK and US companies had different shareholdings. Though they were only 20% different, it was held that that was not substantially the same and the companies had no L1 affiliation. That was AFTER having got through L1 initially on that shareholding, basically we were told that had been a mistake. This resulted in us having to leave the US and as we had been here too long to change the shareholdings and reapply for L1 ( no longer had the one year in the last three in the UK), we had to come back on E2. So be very careful when talking of having different shareholdings in the two countries as it may bite you in the end.

Office, you need a proper one for L1. You can get small serviced units all over specifically for this reason. They are usually all empty and the business is actually run from home so it is all for show.

No problem setting up a US business before time. As long as you dont work for it. Probably makes matters easier if anything.

[mr&mrssunshine]

wow thats interesting -and bad.
as i read the criteria for L1 the UK compnay had to own at least 51% of the US one, so maybe i will be ok if i still go 51/49 in the US but the UK compnay as a whole owns the 51%

is that where you had the problem

office is not a major hurdle

[JulieC]

Sorry if I scared you. You are correct, it works if the UK company owns at least 51 percent of the US one, I was wrong to put wholly owned, should have put majority owned. We did not do it that way. The UK company did not own the US one at all, they elected not to do so for tax reasons, we had two affiliated companies one in the UK and one in the US with almost the same shareholdings but not quite. By any reading of the law we had substantially the same shareholdings in both companies but though we thought we did, they didnt. Not even on appeal.