krissovo

Hey,

I have just been given a job offer for a role in the US by my company on we think a L1b visa (Lawyer meeting this week). I am a UK citizen but currently live in Ireland. Salary is a basic wage of $105,000 plus 20% annual bonus plus any sales bonus which should be a minimum of $50,000. They have given me a start date of 11th March.

The role is a home based role with a couple days a month traveling mainly to the East Coast.

Does a non office based role have any impact to the visa process?

Can I keep my home in Ireland and live between the US and Ireland? I assume as long I am in the states for 185 days then I am a tax resident in the US.

Where should I live? I am leaning towards Austin, Texas as it appears to be a nice cost of living and nice city.

Freshie

Wow...I am in a similar situation right now and asking myself a lot of questions as well...I am waiting to win a lottery <<<snip>>> to get a permission to live in the U.S. - I am keeping my fingers crossed for you!

Jerseygirl

Just wondering...why are you considering moving to the US if you are only working a couple of days a months on site and half the year in Ireland?

TimNiceBut

@krissovo, if you have to travel to the East Coast every month then living half across the country isn't really what I'd call a good starting point. It's not like you're living in Brum and have to attend meetings in London. Not to mention that you probably just extended your travel time to Ireland by another 5-6 hours if you live that far West.

Also Austin, TX is fairly expensive by US and Texan standards.

I assume you're already working for the company? Otherwise an L1 isn't going to work for you.

As to the "can you keep your house in Ireland", I don't think USCIS cares if you have a house abroad or not. I guess part of the question is if your employer is OK with you being out of the country that much. I also foresee practical issues with that unless you like spending your weekends in the air and working around your jetlag.

I don't think that you have to be based in an office over here if a company is willing to sponsor you, so I don't see any immediate issue with working from home.

krissovo

This may sound strange but the role is less travel than I currently do and its a chance to spend more time with my family. I currently work in a global role and last year was on the road 41 weeks of the year. Most of those weeks I had less than 24hrs notice.

The new role is 90% US based business with around 10% global. My new boss would prefer that my main base is in the US.

krissovo

Good point, Texas was a "money" option to pay a little less tax. My salary in Ireland is getting hammered by taxes and levies, so much so I am seeing less than 40% of it at the end of a hard month. I was planning to spend time in each country in blocks of two or three months so not so much the jet lag. I can get to NEw York and Chicago easy from Ireland so boss is happy I do that, plus cost is similar. I have plenty of air miles to upgrade to business when I need to.

I will have another look at the east coast and to Charlotte and Atlanta anyway.

TimNiceBut

You have to look very careful at the overall picture - states with no state income tax tend to make the money back by other means (car registration, personal property tax etc) unless they have a large number of casinos like NV.

There are a couple of cost-of-living comparison websites out there, have a look at those, that should give you a better idea where it's cheap and where it isn't.

Also, don't forget to look at health insurance costs, they don't tend to vary from state to state but depending on where your employer is based, the "local coverage" might not be that good - my employer had a policy based out of Tennessee for a while and it wasn't that easy to find specialists out here that were in network. That cost us a bunch more money.

Steve_

Depends on the basis of your L-1B application, if you're going for "specialized knowledge" then I would say no, but managerial or supervisory is going to be a tough sell for someone based outside the office.

Well yes of course you can, I think the question you are really asking is where would you be a tax resident of. Read IRS publication 519 and also the US-Ireland tax treaty, publication 901 will explain how it works to some extent. However there are also the Irish tax residency rules that are more strict IIRC. How it generally works is if you are an intracompany transferee and you are in the US less than 183 days a year you can be tax resident of where you came from and non-resident in the US for tax purposes, although you still have to file a 1040NR, pay US taxes on your US-source income and claim a foreign tax credit from wherever you reside.

If you are actually planning on spending less than 183 days a year in the US, the more logical category to go for is L-1 intermittent rather than L-1B because L-1 intermittent can be renewed indefinitely.

Mmm, it depends, Florida would be the usual suggestion but only LPRs and citizens can claim the homestead exemption. New Hampshire has no sales tax or income tax but high property taxes, as does Texas.

Steve_

Nevada has pretty high property taxes. If you're going to still be resident in Ireland for tax purposes, I would say aiming for somewhere with low property taxes would make the most sense.

nun

I'd be careful when it comes to where you are resident and how you are being paid by your presumably US company so that you don't get into payroll tax (FICA and Medicare) issues.

Jerseygirl

It's also very expensive keeping two homes running. Cars, insurance, healthcare, phones, utitlities etc etc.

TimNiceBut

Well, you have to balance the low taxes on "x" against low(er) income taxes/service fees/what have you. I didn't think ours are that bad, but this is one of the taxes that also varies from county to county which makes it even harder to compare.

I wasn't suggesting that the OP should move to NV - if he has business on the East Coast that's a very long flight, especially from Northern NV.

krissovo

Thanks for the feedback, there are other elements to the story which are driving me like a nearly finished home and not being married to my long term partner.

Awesome Welles

Does your sponsor have a business in the US - by that I mean a presence, with property, employees, inventory etc?

If not, I think you could have some issues making an L visa fly for a home-based employee...

krissovo

Yes they have ~10,000 employees in the US, most of the support organization like HR etc is based in Houston and the remainder are dispersed in most major cities often on customer sites. Around 4000 are remote workers already.