Posts by hiddentiger51

shadowridge48 said:Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly! I was totally rushing when I sent that last one—anyway, here’s my Tax ID 🙂

So, quick question—have you ever had international clients hit you up asking for proof of insurance? Since I'm in business consulting, I haven't really felt the need to get covered up to this point, but it feels like more and more big-time American clients are asking to see an insurance certificate. Maybe it's just standard practice over there and they ask out of habit?

I'm dying to know, though—do you actually manage to talk them out of it, or did you end up biting the bullet and grabbing some professional liability insurance? And if you did go that route, is there a specific provider you swear by?

Thanks a million! 🙂

I work as an IT contractor and I ran into the exact same thing (I deal with a firm in the USA, so it's not just Americans breathing down my neck). You can grab a policy through GEICO that runs about $400 to $600 a year and gives you $1 million in coverage.

shadowridge48 said:Sorry if this sounds like a total newbie question—I’m still playing catch-up trying to scroll through all the previous posts! If an American client asks me for my company's tax ID, should I be giving them my EIN or my VAT number?

If they want the EIN, do I just stick 'US' at the beginning or something?

They’re asking for my "tax number and insurance," and honestly, I’m kind of stumped... I don't have any kind of business insurance set up right now.

The VAT ID is usually just the EIN preceded by a country code. I'm pretty sure the IRS issues documents where that specific ID is clearly listed.

Processing those applications can be a total slog. For me, it took a good few weeks from the moment I finally hit submit before anything actually moved.

neonsurfer13 said:I’m telling you, it’s incredibly confusing because one person tells me one thing, and someone else tells me the exact opposite.
One accountant told me it was totally fine to use my personal car and just write off 50% of the gas and 100% of the registration and insurance.
Then I reached out to AECOM for clarification, and they told me there's no way to claim vehicle expenses unless the car is listed as a long-term asset—which basically means the car has to be owned by the company, not me personally.
The accountant swears up and down that AECOM is wrong... so now I'm stuck in the middle.

All I want is to make sure I don't screw this up and end up getting hit with a massive fine from the IRS.

My accountant is preaching the exact same gospel. People use these loopholes constantly without even realizing they're breaking federal law. And then, when the audit finally hits? They get absolutely wrecked by the penalties.

Drew Allen77 said:Yeah, you'll definitely need a business account. You can't really get one set up until you have your LLC registration, your articles of incorporation, and all that other paperwork ready to go. Maybe a corporate seal too...

I just started my own small LLC recently, and honestly, I haven't had any use for a company seal yet.

From what I gather about running a small business, you really need a dedicated commercial checking account under the business's legal name. A personal account is a totally different beast—if you're looking at JPMorgan Chase, for example, their consumer app and their business banking platform are two completely separate worlds.

Chris Chase5 said:I’d be pretty shocked if the maximum fee was capped at $10 regardless of how much you actually transfer :-)

Look, the total amount matters, the country matters, and your bank matters. But honestly, it’s all fairly straightforward. I’d say the author has most of the necessary info... they just seem to be missing the specific fee schedules from the banks' websites.

JPMorgan Chase is $10 via online banking (supposedly 90% in the branch) no matter how much cash you're sending or where it's headed (assuming the destination isn't part of the EU or SEPA system, then it obviously can't be a SEPA transfer)

Chris Chase5 said:Most banks offer foreign currency accounts. If you're starting with USD and dealing with a significant amount—say, upwards of $3,000—it might be worth asking a teller if they can offer a better exchange rate through the treasury department rather than just using the standard retail FX rate.

Then there’s the matter of incoming wire fees; every bank publishes their fee schedule online. Are your funds already sitting in an account somewhere, or are you still looking to open one?

If you haven't opened an account yet, your best bet is to aim for a bank that offers the lowest outgoing transfer fees.

As far as I know, SEPA transfers don't really work when moving money from the US to other EU countries; I was actually moving a larger sum of EUR just yesterday, and a wire transfer was my only option. For instance, moving money from Austria to Slovakia works seamlessly without extra fees since they are both part of the EMU.

If the bank where you open your account belongs to the same international banking group as your current one, the fees are usually much lower. For example, if you have an account at JPMorgan Chase now and you go to Austria to open an account with Bank of America, my advice would be to stick within the same banking network to make those initial and future transfers much smoother...

Look, SEPA definitely works within the EU. I've sent transfers from JPMorgan Chase over to Estonia and Ireland before and didn't run into a single hiccup. Generally speaking, the funds show up by the next business day.

wiredtinker11 said:So what you're saying is—if you're using Citibank, the transfer limit is capped at $3,300? That is absolute garbage.

Sent from my SM-N910F via Reddit

Look, I’m with JPMorgan Chase, so I can't speak for them. But honestly, what's even worse is how you can't just move money between different foreign currency accounts here in the US unless you have power of attorney over both of them. I have no clue if you can actually open a JPMorgan Chase foreign currency account and pull funds directly from Citibank, or if you're forced to deal with physical cash to make it happen.

What you could probably do is just park your cash in the Citibank account and use that to pay for everything abroad, then just wire over whatever small amount you need to the other bank later. For your day-to-day spending, that Citibank Visa card works perfectly fine—there's really no point in moving massive chunks of cash around unless you're dealing with some seriously huge sums.

ironcyclist58 said:Transferwise.

Look, that’s only a smart move if you’re sitting on a pile of USD and desperately need Euros. If you already have the Euros ready to go, just stick to a standard SEPA transfer and call it a day.

Look, you don't have to dump all your cash in one giant lump sum if you don't want to, but since our banks here love to nickel and dime us with those annoying SEPA transfer fees, I’d say just do it in as few transactions as humanly possible to save yourself the headache.