Glasgow Girl

This link will give you an idea of salaries in the Henderson area. Find a job that is similar to what you will be doing and adjust accordingly. This will give you an idea of what is considered fair for the position and also enable you to see what you might need to maintain a certain standard of living. Those salaries will include the standard US holidays (XMAS, New Year, Labor Day - last Monday in May, July 4th, Memorial Day - first Monday in September, Thanksgiving Day and sometimes the day after) and typically 2 weeks annual leave to start with. Negotiate in whatever you have in the UK, you will be much better off.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/l...urce=searchBtn

Those salaries will also include health benefits with hugely subsidized costs. Beyond housing costs, this will be your single biggest regular expense. You will need to add on an amount to cover that. Health insurance in the US is complicated and you will have to do your own detailed research however as a starting point if you are healthy I would go with the "Bronze” level and ask that you can expense the out of pocket expenses which could be up to about $8,000 a year if you need any kind of regular care, tests or procedures. Or add on an allowance of up to $8K a year to cover that. A regular doctor appointment could cost anywhere from $20 - $150 depending upon your package. Just breaking a leg will be in excess of the out of the pocket maximum, never mind a lot of surgical procedures, but with insurance at least your exposure is limited to the out of pocket maximum. If you are need regular care for any reason then go with the “Gold” level. This link will get you started with an idea of the cost which varies with age and where you live, but as an example about $250 a month for the Bronze level for a healthy 40 year old, plus your actual expenses until you reach the out of pocket maximum. Do not go without health insurance.

https://www.valuepenguin.com/best-ch...surance-nevada

Your next biggest expense will likely be car insurance. Until you build up a credit and driving history you will be paying in excess of $2K a year. Add that on. It gets a lot less once you have history but still more than you will pay in the UK.

Find out if your visa will make you self employed in the eyes of the IRS (I think it will, but others can confirm). If that is the case you will have to pay the employers social security amount as well as the employees. The employee portion of about 6.5% will be baked into the above salaries but you should gross up to include the employer amount which is an additional 6.5% if you will be considered self employed.

I would also add an allowance for the first couple of years to accommodate professional tax advice, Maybe $1K annually but others could advise more on current costs. Tax wise, again its complicated but once you factor in UK tax and National Insurance, and compare it to US Federal and State tax, social security contributions, and other local taxes as a rule of thumb there is not a huge difference until you get into $100K or more and then you are generally better off paying US taxes. But like I said complex and varies with personal circumstances.

Negotiate air fares out and back for the initial term and once a year annually to allow you to go back home on vacation.

Also negotiate a temporary relocation package. Unless you have kids you are better off buying household furniture and other stuff here, and bringing only personal or special items from the UK. $25K would be a reasonable starting point for 6 weeks temporary car hire, furnished apartment and the costs to start up a house for one. More if you have a large house, kids or expensive tastes,

I would work out a rough number based upon the above and throw that out there, stating that it could maybe up to 25% more once you really dig into the details. They may be aware of the costs involved, or not. Either way that would give you all a rough number to determine if this is still a go or not before you do serious research and negotiation.

Good luck. It is daunting to do it by your self but many succeed and never look back. I did.

penguinsix

Have you had a sit down with them about the corporate entity that will be set up to employ you in the USA? I'm sure they'd love to just give you a check each month and be done with it, but it's likely they're going to need to set up a US corporation and have that be the employer of you. That's going to open up a lot of USA-based paperwork and tax filings that the USA corporation will be responsible for, and some additional filings if the USA corporation is owned by a foreign national or foreign company.

Do they have a budget for establishing a US presence? It's the USA entity that's going to be responsible not only for benefits, but also tax withholding and social security / medicare payments (think PAYE-type payments) on your behalf.

Rete

Doesn't a group plan require more than more one individual?

SanDiegogirl

Probably .... and that's why I asked if this new company of the OP's is intending to hire folks or just be a one man band.....?

tht

ok, that’s makes more sense, because very few places allow actual “tax free payments”.. but the big corporates can pay their big 4 firms to work out how to gross up for all the jurisdictions a move involves.

tht

If you are not familiar with Federal and State employer requirements and workers comp etc. and are not hiring a local HR person, from personal experience doing it I recommend going with a PEO, they have the platform and can provide all benefits etc for a fee (nit cheap but it makes your life a lot simpler). The only thing we hand to get before we setup was a bank account and general liability coverage. I used TriNet but there are lots of others with a similar product. The benefit is although you are only 1 employee they have 50k or more “co-employees” and are able to negotiate better rates on insurance. It was NYC, but I recall the cost for family medical, dental and vision was around $30k a year for a OK family plan (before the co-pays and deductible limit). As others have noted an employer often splits the cost e.g. 25% of the monthly cost would be deducted from your salary (pre-tax).

scrubbedexpat099

E2 suggests employees.

ash.russell

The company is a Hydroponics company. We design and manufacture agricultural systems so the job will consist of operating a small office and a warehouse.
I will be starting off as a one man band but will most likely hire a couple of people within the first 12 months. Our company is currently small with only around 10 employees.
The E2 visa was recommended to us by our lawyers based on the criteria that we gave them. I was aware that an E2 visa could never lead to a green card. The problem with the L1 visa, and I don't think that this is the only problem, is that you have to have been working for the company in the UK for at least 1 year. I was hired specifically for this job so I've only been with the company a few months....Although, with how slow things are probably going to go i'll probably end up being there a year by the time I get the visa anyway.

ash.russell

Thank you for this. It's all very helpful and a lot to think about. I'm going to spend the day researching some of those numbers and then compile a good estimate for those costs.
I am sure they are completely unaware of the costs involved as we are a small company but successful and this is the first time any of us have done anything like this.

ash.russell

Thank you, that's helpful I'll look into that!

Nutmegger

And you do this design work remotely? If you are targeting the California market, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense not to be on the ground in CA.

ash.russell

The design is all done in the UK. Essentially the business in the US will be a distribution hub that supplies shops and public customers with our systems so we don't necessarily need to be in CA. Nevada has low delivery costs to CA but not the unfriendly taxes for small business that CA offers.
We currently receive a lot of orders for our systems from the US but due to the shipping being nearly as high as the systems themselves we can't actually get people to buy them. Hence the move to the US.

tom169

Sounds reasonable. A lot of businesses are moving out of CA for this very reason.

SanDiegogirl

Are the majority of your customers in the UK, private individuals and/or small holding type of customers?

Hydroponics,(which is a method of growing plants, usually crops, without soil) while a growing market with the 'green movement' is not widely used on a large commercial basis.

You say you manufacture the product. Would you be doing this in the US or bringing in the product from your current manufacturer?

ash.russell

Hey, yeah it's all private individuals who use our systems.
We may look at expanding into the commercial market at some point but it's not going to be on the cards for a long time.