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by notpushkin 1442 days ago
Not sure about the U.S., but in at least in Russia and Estonia sole proprietorship is a form of business – in a sense that you have to register it, do annual reports (or more often), calculate taxes etc.

In Russia, it is a bit easier than running an LLC, so many entrepreneurs choose to start as an SP. In Estonia I've seen zero sole proprietors – the burden is the same, but LLC taxes are more favourable (0% income tax until you pay out dividiends) and limited liability (which you don't get as an SP).
1 comments
notpushkin 1442 days ago
I've done some research (which in this case is a fancy way of saying “opened up Wikipedia” [1]) and looks like in the U.S. you can just run a sole proprietorship without filing anything. Neat!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_proprietorship#United_Sta...

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skinnymuch 1441 days ago
This is confusing. Are people legally allowed to get a lot of income from Bitcoin without a SP or more in these countries? Will Stripe automatically deny people without a sole proprietorship in these countries? What happens if people are able to get on Stripe without an SP in these countries? I assume no one is going to jail over this.

I don’t expect you to know the answers to these questions, but the focus was on the difference between Bitcoin and Stripe/PayPal, etc. The thing I replied to specifically said there was an onus of several hundred dollars which I was disputing as well and which is not correct for the US.

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notpushkin 1440 days ago
> Are people legally allowed to get a lot of income

In Russia, they aren't if it's systematic [1] (and if you get caught, which is usually not a concern for many unregistered one-man businesses). Stripe isn't available in Russia but most local payment gateways check your paperwork thoroughly, so if you're not a registered SP, card payments are mostly off the limits and the main payment method is card to card transfer there. (There's a few options, but those aren't widely popular because who cares)

[1]: https://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_10699/cc12ef... article 171 of the criminal offence code (in Russian)

I don't really have any experience with SPs in Estonia, but I think it's pretty similar. Let me try and sign up for Stripe and see what happens :-)

Update: I've just signed up as a “sole proprietor” and charged myself 1 EUR. I've only had to fill in my name and home address. Not even I had to submit any documents, perhaps because I already have an LLC registered with Stripe. Still not sure if it's legal, but from the technical standpoint yeah, you probably can use Stripe without any paperwork here in Europe.

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