International business is interesting. You probably need an accountant who specializes in this. I am NOT an expert in this, and you should assume what follows is “bad advice” from an idiot!
Now that I have done the disclaimer part… you might want to look into something like the following:
Set up a company in your local country.
Set up a USA company. You do NOT want to own it or you will need to submit personal taxes to the USA based on your USA income. Create a 3rd company to as a Holding company (see: Blocker corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Your local company owns the app and licenses it to the USA company as its sole worldwide agent for a period of 1 year (renewable). You will need to execute legal docs for this.
Your USA company employs your relative and pays him for any work he does. He is a contractor and supplies invoices and pays tax on what he earns.
The USA company owes your local company license fees for licensing the software. This comes off BEFORE tax. (Check on this!)
After the license fees and any expenses (including the accounting fees to submit your taxes every quarter!), there is some small profit. The company pays USA tax on it.
Your local company submits invoices to the USA company for the license fees and gets paid via international wire transfer. The USA company pays the wire fees (expense it).
Your local company now holds most of the income (but it is still pre-tax… just in your local country!).
Local company pays you in the most efficient/legal way possible.
The trick is that this needs to be a legitimate business deal… NOT a way to avoid paying USA taxes. You don’t want to appear to be scamming the USA tax man, or they will come after you! ASSUME you might get audited! This means you need to run the USA company as a real business entity. ALL costs etc with marketing the app/etc need to be paid through this company and any other legitimate costs.
You really need to find a good international business guy and run this all by him/her. None of this will be worth your while unless the app is making well over $100k/year.
I’m new to android and spent quit some time building my first app.
It’s a free app and anxiously I went to join the Play store as a developer.
To my shock you actually have to pay $25 to register as a developer and release your app. (That sucked)
But what sucked the most was that I’m in an unsupported country.
Wow. This is frustrating where I think pulling out some hair might be justified…
I must say somehow Google always seems to be just one big pain in the a$$$…
I’ve been thinking of overcoming this hurdle and maybe you could just offer the app on your own web site and sell it with a place like avangate.com - Anybody have any thoughts on this? It seems like this could work out nice.
I’m in a country that is not supported for selling apps from, so I found a trustworthy person (my uncle) who is a citizen of a supported country (UK), and has a bank account there.
I have several questions for people who did something similar:
I plan on using a commercial VPN service to change my IP to UK (to register the Gmail and Google Play dev/metchant account). Is Google likely to ban me for this?
Again please note, questions are for people who did something similar, and yes, I’m aware Google can figure out the deception and this approach can trip some red flags - my question is do they ban people for this.
Since I didn’t open a Google Play dev account yet, I don’t know which information they require for opening a merchant account. My uncle has a personal bank account, and also a company bank account. Which should I use to register a dev/merchant account? Should I register it in his name or his company name?
Will my uncle have to pay taxes on any amount that Google pays to his account no matter how small? I’m aware this is a question specific to the UK and best discussed with an accountant, but I’ll just guess not all of the thousands of UK Android developers have accountants to consult with, so I thought I’d just do what they do until I start making some money or give up.
And a comment - I’m very demoralized by what I’ve read on this forum. If you’re an Android dev, then your livelihood depends on Google’s whims. I’ve spent the last few months learning Android development and developing a few apps, but now I find out that it’s basically the wild west where people rake in money using aggressive ads and notifications, and then have to use shady means to get back on Android when Google bans them. Maybe I’m just concentrating on the bad things. I just want to supplement my income with a steady source, but the more I learn about Google Play and submitting apps, the more shady the whole thing seems.
Develop for both Android and iOS to be safe. Ask accountant in UK and your country how to proceed, it might be complicated and pricy to do legally. Maybe easier solution would be for you to create your own company in UK for this (your uncle could help). Don’t do spam apps, avoid not known ad companies that break policy and you should be fine but with Google you never know. Read all policies very closely. Also your Google Play account is the most important - admob account less so because there are alternatives.
Thanks. Developing for both iOS and Android would make me safer from Google’s capriciousness, but that requires learning to develop on iOS and buying some iDevices.
My uncle is fine with helping me out - he’s had his company for 15 years, so assume he can handle the legal side of it. I’m more worried about me using a VPN and whether Google actually takes steps to detect and ban that. That’s the only deception I plan to employ, and unfortunately I can’t ask my uncle to upload apps and manage my account for me.
Is there any realistic way to earn any money without using ad companies? I don’t want ads in my apps, I’m planning to release a limited free version and a full paid version, but I may be a bit naive about that.
I’ll try to avoid that, but I’m seeing more and more proof that ad-supported apps are really the way to go on Android. Too bad my first app is not really meant for mass adoption, it’s a bit specialist but I think it will create actual value for its users.
As for going around Google detecting VPN use, if they do, I have another idea - a cheap laptop always plugged-in in the UK with remote desktop. That way not even Google will be able to detect I’m not there. It’s probably a bit silly to think about that at this stage (my first app isn’t even done yet) but I was spooked by horror stories of devs being banned for silly reasons.
Some paid apps had great success, so it’s not 100% certain you won’t. But most money by big companies is made from IAP, then from ads, then from sales. Small developers such as we mostly make money from ads, then from IAP, then from sales. And it all depends also on how much money you want/need to make.
For example this app is VERY popular for some users (mostly those who have some of the Samsung Notes): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acadoid.lecturenotes&hl=pl - you can easily calculate how much the developer made on it. It was a really hard work for him, too - he responds to all feature requests very fast.
It’s also probably easier to sell an app than a game and easier to monetize with IAP a game than an app.
Can you tell us how you accomplish that? Does he need to pay tax and how much? do you upload apps from country that is not eligible or your friend in australia upload them?
you can use bank acc details of any country as far as you have someone trustworthy over there
2)Taxation is done in the place where money goes, so yes,in this case its AUS
3)I upload apps from my native place, it doesnt matter where you upload from actually…
hope this helps, anyways now that my country is supported , Ive switched it…
Last time when they added new countries was 12 April 2012