SENATE BILL: Break the Shell Corporations Act (law'd)

[bgwah]

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Sponsors: Marokai, Duke

[Napoleon]

What about businesses that can't afford to own their address?

[Marokai Backbeat]

What about businesses that can't afford to own their address?

Then I honestly have to question what sort of business they're even doing. Is this even an actual thing?

The problem here is that there are numerous instances of a bunch of empty shell corporations living under one roof by the hundreds simply for tax purposes and the ability to easily hide assets. They're not real businesses and exist purely for the purposes of abusing loopholes. A business that doesn't actually have it's own address is hardly a business at that point, and could just as easily exist for tax purposes at the owner's home.

[TJ in Oregon]

What about-start up incubators like this?

Many of the companies founded through technological advancements such as this begin as companies run by two or three people in a rented room somewhere with the same address. This bill would make it much more difficult to a small company from an invention.

[Napoleon]

What about-start up incubators like this?

Many of the companies founded through technological advancements such as this begin as companies run by two or three people in a rented room somewhere with the same address. This bill would make it much more difficult to a small company from an invention.

Yeah or renting an office, etc.

This bill needs modification.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I fail to see how this would prevent that. It just prevents multiple businesses from being located at the same address, or from it's headquarters being a hole in the wall.

Yeah or renting an office, etc.

This bill needs modification.

That's fine with me. I was thinking that as well, actually. It's not the radical solution that would stamp out the problem entirely but it requires more effort to own and maintain an actual office than to have some random hole in a wall in Wyoming that one lady oversees dozens of.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The bill says the company must own it's own address. A renter doesn't own his own address.


This needs to be change.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Two people here saying it needs amended here are Senators. You two have that power, you know.

[Napoleon]

Two people here saying it needs amended here are Senators. You two have that power, you know.

Ill wait and see if there's anything I'm overlooking before offering an amendment.

Shua?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Two people here saying it needs amended here are Senators. You two have that power, you know.

It is to show public solidarity. It encourages objector number 1 to offer the amendment, and potentially intimidates the sponsor into not opposing it. It works better when a larger number of Senators does that, though, like 9.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I would, but as a lame duck, it's time I left someone else do it. But I do encourage it to be done. Renters still have an address.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Two people here saying it needs amended here are Senators. You two have that power, you know.

Ill wait and see if there's anything I'm overlooking before offering an amendment.

Shua?

Thanks.   

Some people who run businesses from home list a PO Box as their address  for privacy purposes. Not sure if this would be affected by that.
There are plenty of Atlasian corporations who have Atlasian PO Boxes listed as their corporate HQs. I don't know what the advantage is, but there's no tax shelter benefit to it.

I'm guessing Atlasia isn't considered a tax shelter and so the focus here is on making sure companies in other countries have a physical address in those countries. Is that sort of thing verifiable?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The benefit comes from locating your HQ in CA or NY but officilially incorporating in say DE or some other state consider to have beneficial corporate statutes and/or lower taxes.

[Yelnoc]

A little personal anecdote...

A friend and I are working on a start-up online media company.  Right now we are using a PO box as the business address as we don't live in the same state and don't want to put our personal addresses down on legal documents related to the company (it's just a DBA at the moment, but we have grand plans).  So if this was a real life bill, we would have to deal with an entire new set of paperwork resulting in the loss of our address (as opposed to focusing on building the company itself up).

[bgwah]

I hear there are possible amendments on the horizon, hmm?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Not an amendment:

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How is this?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

So a person can't run a business from home unless they live there for the "purpose" of running a business, and a family can't have more than one business there.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This bill is kind of hard to amend for the purposes of addressing these legitimate concerns and still maintain the ironclad provisions to prevent the practice in question.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Not an amendment:

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How is this?

I think that's worded pretty fairly. You're right about it being difficult to amend without opening up more loopholes, but I think this is the best approach to dealing with the practice of creating shell corporations.

Were you to make it an amendment of some sort I might consider it friendly.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Could we add an explicit exception of some sort for small businesses run out of private homes?

Something like this:

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I also question the necessity of Section 2. I cheerfully despise office parks but they exist for a reason.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

FWIW I know that in some rather remote areas businesses often don't have real addresses valid for mailing, this was common on the Reservation I used to live on (Alcon has reported it's common on other Reservations, even for private addresses.) Some also have addresses but can't collect mail there (The main thing that comes to mind is a strip club I know of, lol, but it still counts.)

And I don't see how this'll work anyway, the proposed change still leaves a pretty big loophole. There's tons of cheap office space, they can just rent out a room and hire a receptionist to handle basic duties and now they have a headquarters.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

In light of Nathan's propose change to section 3, I now offer this as amendment to Section 1:

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[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

FWIW I know that in some rather remote areas businesses often don't have real addresses valid for mailing, this was common on the Reservation I used to live on (Alcon has reported it's common on other Reservations, even for private addresses.) Some also have addresses but can't collect mail there (The main thing that comes to mind is a strip club I know of, lol, but it still counts.)

And I don't see how this'll work anyway, the proposed change still leaves a pretty big loophole. There's tons of cheap office space, they can just rent out a room and hire a receptionist to handle basic duties and now they have a headquarters.

This what I was driving at above. It is hard to create hard core regulations that will successfully deal with the problem. It is even harder to craft those so as to not crimp legitimate business activity.

[bgwah]

Could we add an explicit exception of some sort for small businesses run out of private homes?

Something like this:

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I also question the necessity of Section 2. I cheerfully despise office parks but they exist for a reason.

In light of Nathan's propose change to section 3, I now offer this as amendment to Section 1:

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Sponsor?

[Marokai Backbeat]

I have no problem with either, and accept both as friendly. Though I will stubbornly not budge on altering Section 2, just to let Nathan know.