

Ask HN: Guides to things surrounding app development like hosting, taxes, etc.? - inDesperateZone

I have a hard time finding the necessary information. There are thousand guides on how to develop an app, get it in the store, choose the right framework, getting ideas, marketing etc.<p>But next to none concerning everything in between. And to be honest, I seem to know jack squat about paying taxes and self-employment.<p>I probably don't even know about many small details and end up in jail or explaining myself to whoever is interrogating me. But a lot of people seem to be able to just "try". But surely they don't jump trough hundred hoops, set up companies and stuff just to try to sell one app they know won't sell a lot anyway. But is that only so because they are American?<p>Imagine this situation as a starting point for a second. A guy (early 20s) wakes up in New York, can't remember a thing. Only has a notebook, a bag full with everything needed for a vacation, a passport, a drivers license, lots of cash and a plane ticket to some random country. Has no job, no home, no bank account, no family, no credit card. Only thing he remembers is all the knowledge required to write apps and a few ideas. He decides to use the plain ticket and the cash to have a "let's go to a nice place and start something new" thingie.<p>The steps he could take would look as following:<p>1. Fly. Buy a gun (if allowed) because having thousands in cash isn't that great. Maybe spread it over several deposit boxes. Check into a hotel to have a place to stay, maybe even find an appartment. If we want to stay for long we should try to get a visa. Hopefully we could bring our money with us, there are certain limits, right?<p>2. Find some wifi and start coding. Necessary are the app, using whatever language or framework necessary. Web app requires hosting, but hosting is required anyway. The notebook and internet access can carry us a long way.
If everything is finished we need:<p>* Hosting, I heard Heroku and S3 are extremely cheap, at least for static content and during development.<p>* A domain. No clue what is "business proof". Only name in my head is Go Daddy, which got a lot of critic. Depending on whether we plan to write several apps we might want to have one identifying me as a person or corporation instead of myniceappname.com.<p>This leads to the first problem, payment. Paying per PayPal is probably possible. But how to add funds? Is a bank account necessary to do so? Getting a bank account without a job or permanent residence is hard/impossible in some places as far as I know. Which might also be true for getting a domain. What are the alternatives? Can we ask someone to send us money to the PayPal account for exchange of real money (better not do that in some countries...)?<p>3. We somehow payed for hosting and a domain and have a static site running. If we want to publish our app to the Apple Store we also need to pay for a license. A lot of (every?) apps in the store seem to be made by one person only but are entered under the hood of a company name. Can I make this one up? Do I need to file for one depending on the country I'm in? Can I just get a domain called thisisthemooninc.com and call myself an individual while the look and feel of the site gives the impression I'm a company selling apps?<p>4. We got our app in the store and someone is buying it. This leads to several problems.<p>* We got to pay taxes depending on the amount of money we made. We assumed we are American, but if we aren't, how to know how much is allowed without paying taxes.<p>* How do we get the status of employed or self-employed? Is this even of importance?<p>* How do we get the money from the PayPal account if we somehow payed for the stuff mentioned above without getting a credit card or bank account? Can we get the PayPal debit card wherever we are? Is this the best way to get money from the account without having a bank account?<p>There is probably a lot more to know. What do I miss? And does somebody know articles that explain some of the problems mentioned in the list?
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alexzender
Find a good laywer and accountant to do all the paperwork. Find a co-founder
as he will watch your back with lots of cash :)

Register LLC. Hosting: Amazon EC2 allows you to run the minimal configuration
for a year for free - <http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/>

