Well, at least Michael Widenius, the most visible head of MySQL and one of two cofounders, is finnish. He also created the MySQL's fork MariaDB. Both names came from Michael's daughters My and Maria.
With so many international contractors (possibly spread out over different countries and jurisdictions), how do you keep track of your possible tax consequences in both your own and their jurisdictions? How do you ensure you don't become liable to treat them as employees in your and their jurisdictions? Asking out of curiosity, because interested in hiring remote contractors across the globe but fearing possible tax complexity.
Because our contractors provide us a 1-6 month, non-full-time, packaged, isolated service by an agreed deadline for a lump sum, they're very far from the definition of an employee in all countries, so it's not a problem with us. However, if your company starts directing tasks, or otherwise starts creeping toward the fine line, then what happens is out of my expertise, sorry. My useless advice is to stay far from the line, but of course some businesses might not be able to easily do this.
But you cannot deposit money into any arbitrary U.S. bank account using ACH. For every account that you want to make transfers to, you first need to sign a bunch of forms. With the European IBAN system, no permissions or forms are needed to make deposits to a new arbitrary account.
Almost all of the US banks allow you to add other ACH accounts that you control. Just confirm the two trial deposits and you can push or pull money from that account.
A few banks also allow to send ACH transfers to third-party accounts that you don't control - for example with USAA that's possible. This still doesn't 100% match how transfers work in Europe (you first need to add the account, then wait 1-2 days, then you can send funds to it), but it's definitely better than "signing a bunch of forms".
1) yes
2) you are assuming that it was even possible to buy health insurance as a single person prior to the ACA. I actually tried and found it incredibly difficult.
So what realistic options did self-employed have before the ACA: either pay for an expensive insurance or be uninsured? What did most typically choose?
(Obivously the IAMAE note applies here)I choose uninsured because I was young...and dumb. There were some options out there, especially for add on things like dental and vision. Insurance was available, but it was hard to find as an individual and very expensive in my experience. COBRA was an option but was still tied to a previous job and had limits.
As an entrepreneurship scholar, I see health insurance as one really strong limiter of entrepreneurial activity in the US. The lack of single payer significantly privileges those with the means, the young, and those without children to conduct entrepreneurial activity.
Yes, at least the tech employers that most of us are likely to work for. And, with the repeal of the ACA imminent, this seems relevant: employer plans usually didn't discriminate on pre existing conditions. Individual plans did.
