[gnulinux]

> On the other end of the spectrum are organizations that offer "full anon friendly" where they don't request any information about your legal identity.

I don't think that'd be legal in the US. Employer has to at least verify that the person is allowed to work in the US (i.e. a citizen, permanent resident, or a legal alien with some work visa) which requires revealing employee's true identity to HR. Or do you think there is a way to perform this (and other tax regulations) without HR knowing the identity of the person?

[bombcar]

Do it as business to business - IBM hires Proglonox to do whatever, and Proglonox verifies the required documents and reports income as necessary for the employee.

The employee happens to be the sole owner of Proglonox, but IBM never needs to know the details about that.

In general if the government gets their cut, they don't care about shell games. It's only when using them to hide from them that they get interested.

[michaelt]

If you were a normal business then sure, you might well be officially incorporated in America.

But what if you were intending to build something more like Silk Road - a business, but with no identifiable legal entities involved? And avoiding prosecution not by following the law, but by being unidentifiable?

[gnulinux]

Hmm, I guess this is merely semantics and some would disagree with me, but I suppose I wouldn't consider that "employment". I don't say this as a value judgement, merely as a legal status. The same way someone would be "single" if they're not married (even though they live with a partner), if they work for an organization that do not report to respective country's sovereign authorities, that doesn't sound like an "employment".

[pilsetnieks]

Shell corporation and contracts instead of employment.

[throwaway81523]

I think in the past decade there has been some crackdown on shell corporations in the US. It is still very easy and cheap to start a corporation in some states but there has to be ownership disclosure. OTOH, money moves around without a lot of prior documentation and it's the recipient's responsibility to report the income.

I can say I was nervous enough about the whole picture to decline some work some years back, because the person wanted to pay in crypto and I felt like it would get me in for tax complications even though I was willing to do all necessary reporting. The person was outside the US, so some parts of US employment rules wouldn't have applied. I didn't know the other person's name and I don't think he knew mine. Neither one of us was being cloak and dagger afaict, but we had met online and the question simply didn't come up.