Although living DownUnder is clearly preferable to being American, there are some occasions when a little camoflage is required.

If your customers, or earnings are predominantly in the US, you may need to find a way to facilitate or reassure any transactions by appearing to be a fellow American. Or at least having a “proper” bank account in the USA.

Signing up with Amazon will require a US bank account in order to get paid. Many other businesses are so US centric that dealing with foriegners is completely alien and inherently impossible.  Even if your customer is happy to deal with you, the intricacies of dealing with currency conversions, routing to foreign banks, extra fees etc may end up straining the relationship.  Much better to have a US account that requires no explanation or difficulty to pay your money.

Since 9/11 financial transactions with foreigners have been subject to much greater scrutiny by most US banks.  The key legislation is commonly called “know your customer”, which many banks interpret as a personal visit to the branch where you are establishing an account. Not very practical when that requires a ten to fifteen hour plane ride each way.

However there is a way around this, which requires a bit of money and dealing with a more outward facing banking sysytem, the online brokerages. The US economy welcomes foreign investors in its listed companies. Almost every brokerage is affiliated with a US bank. In order to establish a brokerage account you will need to transfer funds from your own bank and provide a copy of your passport, possibly other documentation as well. Once you have a brokerage account you can ask for a checking account through their affiliate bank. Your credentials will be accepted as you are known to the brokerage.Thanks to Patrick of microISV for much of this info.

Getting a street address in the US is very easy, if a little expensive in terms of monthly fees and freight costs for forwarding mail. However some of these services will allow you to operate almost completely transparently as a US business. Your mail will be delivered and your US telephone number will ring anywhere in the world. Just so long as no one comes knocking on the door trying to find you!

Some mail forwarding companies to check out are:

http://www.letterlock.com/index.htm

http://www.myus.com/index.shtml

http://www.mailnetwork.com/

http://www.usabox.com/

So there you have it. Don’t forget to check the http://www.irs.gov/ to find out what your rights and obligations are as a virtual US resident.

Don’t forget to leave a comment and let us know how you went about this process.