Setting up for Business in U.S

Triceratops Ballet

I have recently gone through the process of setting up a c-copr in the U.S as a subsidiary of an Irish parent company, online banking sorted, accountants and legal organised.

But I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction to for getting info on HR and payroll norms in the US, the accountants will handle the actual payroll processing but I would like to have a handle on this myself, has anyone gone through this process themselves and has some resources they'd recommend.

With the time difference it's difficult to schedule contact time with our vendors out there to go through and the areas I have questions about may not necessarily be in their remit.

I've done google searches but it is hard to find unbiased info, there doesn't seem to be the equivalent to our citizens info or even the SFA that I can find all the sites. So much info comes back in the search results it's hard t sort through the chaff

pedroeibar1

I faced this issue several years ago and decided not to have employees. Frankly, employing staff in the US is a nightmare, very onerous admin and it really needs to be outsourced. You are calling the proposed staff ‘vendors’ so I assume that you will have a salesforce rather than office staff.

As they will be salespeople I suggest you set them up as contractors and as a means of ‘paying ’ them for the initial period (until they find their feet) provide them with a monthly “draw” i.e. a sum that is equivalent to the minimum wage, theoretically repayable from their future commission. Instead of a salary they are then remunerated through a good commission rate on sales. That way they are highly motivated, self-employed and it frees you from the admin. & and its associated costs. It also means that the poor performers will leave sooner (no real income) and free you up from employment law worries. (I never bothered trying to recoup the "draw", just saw it as a cheap way of off-loading poor performers.)

In any US sales operation you also need to carefully define sales territories & boundaries; you also need to think down the road to when the operation grows – e.g. consider a head sales agent for a region, with sub agents under him/her. Total commission of X is paid of which a small part Y goes to the head agent to manage the people on the ground and also to spend on support services, marketing, etc. and the balance to the saleperson.

Importantly, I’d talk to Enterprise Ireland (NYC office) first and later hire professional HR consultants to help set everything up correctly.

henryd65

Hello, we also set up in the US, about 20 years ago.
We registered as employers with the IRS and with the State - MA.

We recently outsourced the payroll to a provider called Paychex.com (I am sure there are plently of others). They have an online portal where you login and submit the payroll details. They deal with year end filings etc.
The process was very easy and not expensive.
No help with the HR side I'm afraid.

One thing I note in the US is that checks are still regularly used to pay invoices, even for large organisations. This is changing slowly, but a lot more checks used there than here.

pedroeibar1

henryd65 wrote: »

Hello, we also set up in the US, about 20 years ago.
We registered as employers with the IRS and with the State - MA.

We recently outsourced the payroll to a provider called Paychex.com (I am sure there are plently of others). They have an online portal where you login and submit the payroll details. They deal with year end filings etc.
The process was very easy and not expensive.
No help with the HR side I'm afraid.

One thing I note in the US is that checks are still regularly used to pay invoices, even for large organisations. This is changing slowly, but a lot more checks used there than here.

We set up about the same time and used a LLC. As the OP has already formed a C Corp I sort of see where you are coming from on Paychex, but I wonder if, at the outset, the OP went into this with prefixed ideas rather than an open mind...... I had about 30 sales staff eventually, working as agents, worked extremely well.

The laws in the US on checks (particularly bounced ones) are totally different to the laws prevailing in Ireland, hence the common usage of checks. As I said in an earlier thread on US business, the further you get from the coasts the more "un-international" business becomes, particularly banking!