Writing a business plan for a US company: the format, the American numbers and what visa officers look for

A business plan for the US is read by more people than the one you wrote at home. A lender wants to see how the loan is repaid, a consular officer deciding an E-2 visa wants five years of projections that show the company is more than a way to earn a living, and USCIS wants proof that a new office will support a manager within a year. The plan also has to carry costs Europeans tend to forget: employer payroll taxes, state taxes on the company and sales tax in the states where you sell.

Who reads your plan, and what each reader wants

You do not need seven plans. You need one honest model and a few versions of the narrative, each written for one reader. The numbers must be identical in every version; an officer who sees two different revenue forecasts for the same company will stop reading.

The two formats the SBA describes

The Small Business Administration distinguishes a traditional plan, detailed and comprehensive, which lenders and investors commonly request, from a lean startup plan, often a single page, for owners who need to move quickly, run a simple business or expect to revise the plan often.

The SBA's traditional plan has these sections:

1. Executive summary
2. Company description
3. Market analysis
4. Organization and management
5. Service or product line
6. Marketing and sales
7. Funding request
8. Financial projections

The lean version follows the business model canvas: key partnerships, key activities, key resources, value proposition, customer relationships, customer segments, channels, cost structure and revenue streams.

For a European company entering the US, we recommend writing the lean canvas first, in an afternoon, and test it with ten potential American customers. Then build the traditional plan around what you learned. A visa file or a loan application needs the traditional format; your own decisions are usually better served by the canvas. Our overview of how to start a US company covers the formation steps that the company description section has to explain.

The American lines most European plans miss

The cost side of a US plan has lines that do not exist, or look different, in Europe. Leave them out and the plan is wrong before the first customer arrives.

Employer payroll taxes

For each employee the company pays social security tax of 6.2 percent on wages up to $184,500 in 2026, Medicare tax of 1.45 percent on all wages, and federal unemployment tax (FUTA) of 6.0 percent on the first $7,000 of wages, reduced to a net 0.6 percent when the state unemployment tax is paid in full and on time. State unemployment tax comes on top and varies by state and by the employer's history.

A worked example for an employee earning $90,000 a year:

Then add health insurance, which American candidates expect an employer to offer, plus paid time off and any retirement plan. Our page on hiring staff for a new US company covers the rest.

State taxes on the company

Plan for the taxes of the state where the company is formed and those where it does business. In Texas, for example, companies file a franchise tax report every year and owe tax only above a revenue threshold; our guide to the Texas franchise tax has the figures.

Sales tax

There is no VAT, but each state taxes sales on its own terms. Once your sales into a state pass its threshold, you register, collect and file there. Texas, for instance, applies a safe harbor of $500,000 of Texas revenue in the preceding twelve months for remote sellers. Your plan should show in which states you expect to cross a threshold and when; our overview of sales tax nexus for sellers explains the rules.

What visa officers look for in a plan

For many of our clients the business plan is first of all a visa document. The requirements are written down, so write to them.

E-2 treaty investor

The State Department's Foreign Affairs Manual lists, for a new business, financial projections for the next five years, supported by a thorough business plan. The plan has to carry several of the tests the officer applies:

• Real and operating. The enterprise must be an actual commercial enterprise, not a paper company or an idle investment.
• Substantial investment. There is no minimum dollar figure. The officer weighs the funds invested against the cost of the business (the proportionality test), and the investment must be large enough to show commitment and to make success likely.
• More than marginal. The enterprise must have the present or future capacity to generate more than a minimal living for the investor and family, or to make a significant economic contribution. The projected future capacity should generally be realizable within five years from the start of normal business activity.
• Nationality. Nationals of the treaty country must own at least 50 percent of the enterprise.

A plan that shows hiring, wages and revenue growing over those five years answers the marginality question directly. A plan that only shows the founder's salary does not.

L-1 for a new office

When a manager or executive comes to open a new US office, the petition must show that premises have been secured and that the US operation will support an executive or managerial position within one year of approval. The regulation asks for the proposed nature of the office (its scope, organizational structure and financial goals), the size of the US investment, the foreign company's ability to pay the employee and start doing business, and the organizational structure of the foreign company. In practice that is a business plan with an organization chart for month twelve.

EB-5

For an immigrant investor creating jobs directly, the regulation requires a comprehensive business plan showing that the enterprise will need at least ten qualifying employees, with approximate dates within the next two years when they will be hired.

Our visa strategy for founders shows how the company and the visa application fit together in time.

Market analysis with American data

The US government publishes more free business data than any European statistics office, and a consular officer or a lender is impressed by a market analysis that uses it. The useful sources:

• Census Bureau, County Business Patterns: the number of establishments, employees and payroll by industry code and county. It tells you how many competitors or customers of a given type exist in a region.
• Census Bureau, American Community Survey: population, income, age and household data down to small areas. Essential for consumer businesses.
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: wages by occupation and metro area, which you need for your payroll budget, and the business survival tables, which keep your projections honest.
• State economic development agencies: sector reports and incentive programs; our page on state business incentives lists the main ones.

Define the market from the customer's side: who buys, where they are, what they pay today and to whom. Then show how much of it you can realistically reach with your sales budget in year one. A plan that starts with the size of the whole US market and claims one percent of it is the plan every reader has seen a hundred times.

Financial projections that survive scrutiny

1. Three statements, linked. Profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet, built from the same assumptions. A lender reads the cash flow first.
2. Monthly for 24 months, then yearly. E-2 officers expect five years; your bank cares about the first two.
3. Assumptions on one page. Price, conversion rate, sales cycle, hiring dates, payment terms. Every number in the model should trace back to one of them.
4. A downside case. Revenue 30 percent lower and three months later than planned. If the company runs out of cash in that case, the plan needs more capital or a smaller start.
5. Respect the base rates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 79.6 percent of the establishments opened in the year to March 2015 were still in business after one year and 50.2 percent after five. Your plan is a bet that you will be in the better half; show why.

Our guide to the warning signs that a business is failing lists the metrics worth tracking monthly once the plan meets reality.

A plan for an e-commerce business

Online sellers coming from Europe need a few sections that a service business can skip:

• Fulfillment. Shipping from Europe, a US third-party warehouse or a marketplace's fulfillment network. Each choice changes delivery times, returns and where you may have to collect sales tax.
• Landed cost. Product cost, freight, customs duties and broker fees per unit. Duties on European goods have moved a lot recently; our page on US tariffs on imports from Europe covers the current state.
• Channel economics. Marketplace fees, payment fees, advertising cost per order and return rates, by channel.
• Platform setup. Store, payment provider and tax settings. Our guide to selling on Shopify in the US shows how sales tax and customs fit into a store.

The core question of an e-commerce plan is contribution margin per order after advertising. If it is negative, growth makes the problem bigger.

Reviewing the plan every year

A business plan that is never opened after the visa interview is a missed opportunity. Every January, take an afternoon and answer these questions in writing:

• Which assumptions were right, which were wrong, and by how much?
• Where did the cash actually go, compared with the budget?
• Which customer segment brought the most profit, not the most revenue?
• Did the company cross a sales tax threshold in a new state, or a franchise tax threshold?
• Who do we need to hire next, and what will that person really cost including payroll taxes and benefits?
• For visa holders: does the company still show the growth the original plan promised? Renewals are easier when the numbers have followed the story.

Then update the model and the one-page assumptions. It is the cheapest strategy meeting you will ever hold.