

 Is my startup idea legal? - guybrushT
https://yenbe-beta.appspot.com/

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tomfakes
Any time you cross a border with goods, there's a question that is asked about
if this is for personal use or not. Sometimes this is on a form, sometimes in
person, but the answer to this question changes what is allowed and what fees
need to be paid.

Since you are operating a business service, you need to ensure that a) it is
legal to take that item across that border, and b) The relevant fees are paid
for an import business (not for personal use)

It doesn't take a lawyer to see that you'd be in trouble for not following the
laws of the land your couriers are traveling to. But you do need to run this
past a lawyer (and probably a set of lawyers, one for each jurisdiction)
before you get one of your couriers thrown in jail.

It is possible to run this legally, but then the process won't be as cheap as
I think you're expecting it to be.

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chaporkar
Couldn't have explained it better. Just one thought though: What if you buy it
in a duty free shop?

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tomfakes
Duty Free shops, I believe, are for personal use only. Gifts to family and
friends are overlooked, but the limits are small enough anyway that you can't
possibly give too much away - i.e. 1L of booze, a few bottles of wine.

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iamwithnail
Also, airlines are very sketchy about people carrying stuff for other people.
Major security problem right there, as well as the fact that the import rules
and rates will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction - the fact that people
are being incentivised to carry it may also bring it into them "carrying on"
as an import business, rather than just general travellers.

~~~
guybrushT
I was thinking that this is about people buying stuff for others and bringing
it for them. So this isn't necessarily an unknown item being asked to carry.
But I see your overall point.

~~~
iamwithnail
Oh, no, I get that - but if you're a (paranoid) security conscious airline,
it's a fairly short hop/easy exploit to make sure someone buys something bad
to take on the plane - presto, fresh skinned mule.

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tomfakes
On a positive note on how to move forward on this idea, there's an example in
the Seattle startup scene that is tackling a similar government regulation
issue by focusing on exactly one set of regulations at a time.

Remitly [https://www.remitly.com/](https://www.remitly.com/) provides a
service to send cash overseas to the families of immigrants who now work in
the US

Sending cash has a lot of regulatory hurdles, so they picked 1 US state (WA)
and one overseas country (the Philippines) to start their business, and then
expanding their reach, first to other US states, and eventually to other
countries. Focusing on exactly one set of regulations at each end vastly
simplifies the legal issues (and costs)

