Two clocks are ticking
On paper, the road to the USA looks straight. It isn't. Two clocks are ticking at the same time.
One clock runs over here in the US: structure, company, bank account, visa, entry. The other runs back home: shares, your business, exit taxes, social security, deregistering. Almost every expensive mistake we see is not a mistake in thinking but a mistake in timing. The client deregistered before the US company was in place. Or sold the shares after leaving instead of before. Or entered in June and only found out in February what that meant for the tax year.
That's why the nine steps are numbered, but step 6 really starts in your head at step 1. With twelve to twenty-four months of lead time, you get to shape things. With three months, you pay.
Clarity before anything gets formed
"We're moving to the USA" is a sentence, not a plan. The plan starts with three questions, and the first has nothing to do with taxes.
How will the US business make money on day one? Who is coming with you, and what does that person need to be happy over there? And when does it all have to be in place, counting from the start of the school year, the end of a contract, a planned sale?
Almost everything else follows from those three answers: the state, the legal form, the visa route, the order of things. We sit down with you for one to two hours before anyone touches a form. A first consultation that shows the timing isn't right yet is a good first consultation.
The path that works for you
There is no best way into the USA. There is the way you qualify for, and that depends on where you are starting from, not on your wish list.
Three routes matter for European entrepreneurs.
L-1, the intracompany transfer
If you own a company in your home country that can transfer you to an affiliated US company, the L-1 is the best route. It is faster, it is simpler, and it is dual intent, so you can pursue a green card at the same time without putting your visa at risk. At its core, the requirement is that within the last three years you worked for the foreign company for at least one continuous year in a managerial or specialized role, and that the two companies have a qualifying relationship.
The numbers as of today: the petition (Form I-129) takes around six to seven months in standard processing. With Premium Processing, USCIS decides within 15 business days, for a fee of $2,965. Then comes the consular appointment, usually one to three months after approval. If you can be transferred, you can realistically be over here in four to six months.
E-2, the investment
The E-2 is the route for everyone who has no company behind them that could transfer them. It isn't the lesser route; it's the route for a different starting point. Most European countries are E-2 treaty countries, and what counts is your citizenship, not where you live.
There is no statutory minimum investment. The law requires the investment to be substantial and the business to support more than just your own living. What that means in your industry, we'll tell you in the first consultation, because the figure from someone else's case won't help you. Important for planning: there is no Premium Processing for the E-2. The application goes straight to the consulate, and it currently takes around two to three months to get to the interview. The consulate independently checks whether the company exists, whether the EIN has been issued and whether the account is active. So the structure has to be in place before the application goes out.
EB-5, the green card through capital
If you don't want your residence tied to a business you have to run yourself, EB-5 takes you straight to the green card. The minimum investment is currently $800,000 in a Targeted Employment Area or qualifying infrastructure project and $1,050,000 outside one. The filing fee for the I-526E is $11,160.
On timing: on 1 January 2027 the amounts rise for the first time to account for inflation, according to current calculations to roughly $900,000 to $950,000 in a TEA. If you file your petition by 30 September 2026, the grandfathering provision of the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act locks you in at today's amounts. Processing times vary widely: rural set-aside petitions are currently sometimes decided in under six months, while unreserved petitions take two to three years or more.
The structure that fits the visa
Legal form and state aren't a formality you tick off after the visa. They are part of the visa application.
The L-1 needs a US company with a qualifying relationship to your company back home. The E-2 needs a vehicle into which the investment has demonstrably flowed and which is majority-owned by nationals of the treaty country. Build the structure after the visa route instead of alongside it, and you build it twice.
The second question is the legal form. LLC, C Corporation or LP determines how your profits are taxed, how you take money out of the business and how your home country sees the whole thing, which regularly leads to surprises, especially with the LLC. Then there's the state of formation. Delaware, Wyoming and Florida all have their place, but the state where you actually work almost always wants you registered too.
This page and this firm are about businesses with a real presence in the USA, meaning people who live and work over here. If you're only looking for a US LLC without US substance so you can work from somewhere else, that's a different topic with different rules, and that's what zerotax.llc is for.
Forming a company that stands up to a consular officer
You can form a company in an afternoon. A business that a consular officer believes is real takes longer.
After registration comes the real work: the EIN from the IRS, a business bank account, a business address, business registration and state licenses where needed, bookkeeping, insurance and, if you have employees, payroll with everything that goes with it. Plus the ongoing reporting obligations, which differ by state and legal form.
This is the step where applications are won or lost, long before anyone sits down for an interview. A lease, an active account with real transactions, signed customer contracts, a staffing plan that matches the numbers: that's the material an approval is made of.
The application and the day at the window
Eventually it all comes down to an appointment that lasts twenty minutes and decides two years of preparation.
With the L-1, the petition goes to USCIS first, with or without Premium Processing, followed by the consular application. With the E-2 there is no petition; the whole application goes to the consulate, and every consulate has its own requirements for how extensive the file must be. With the EB-5, the focus is on a complete paper trail for the source of funds, traceable down to the bank statement.
The same holds in all three cases: the file wins or loses the case, not the interview. Inconsistencies between business plan, numbers and CV are the most common reason for a Request for Evidence, and an RFE costs you months, even with Premium Processing.
Your status begins when you enter. And with the stamp in your passport come obligations nobody mentioned before.
Leaving cleanly
This is the step the emigration guides skip, and the step that costs the most money.
Switzerland
Switzerland has nothing of the kind for private assets. Private capital gains are tax-free, and when an individual moves away, the hidden reserves in private assets are not settled. Business assets are. The questions are different instead: pension fund, AHV, vested benefits, and what of all that comes with you to the US and what better stays behind.
In every case, the valuation is the real lever, followed by the question of what stays behind at home as a permanent establishment and what that means for your residence under the tax treaty. And in every case, this has to happen before the move, not after.
Arrive
The first six weeks won't decide the fate of your business. They decide whether your family is still here a year from now.
In practice, arriving means: applying for a Social Security Number, getting health insurance before anything happens, converting your driver's license, sorting out school or homeschooling, a car, an everyday bank account, a credit card, and your first fight with a credit history that starts at zero, no matter how much you built back home.
Then comes the question no agency asks: rent or buy. We almost always advise renting for the first year, in the area where you think you want to live. Down to two blocks, America is different from how it looks from Europe.
Your first tax year
In your first year, two systems have you on their books at once. That works fine when it's planned, and very badly when someone notices.
You become a US tax resident through the Substantial Presence Test, a presence formula that counts the current year in full, the previous year at one third and the year before that at one sixth. Green card holders are residents anyway, wherever they are. In the year you arrive, this typically creates a split tax year, with different rules before and after the cutoff date.
Once you're a resident, the US taxes your worldwide income. Add to that state tax, the reporting requirements for foreign accounts and holdings, and the question of how the US treats the company you still own at home, which is regularly less pleasant than expected. The tax treaty prevents double taxation, not double filing.
Staying
At some point you notice you've stopped thinking about going back and started thinking about the green card.
If you came on an L-1A, you have the short route: the green card as an intracompany transferred executive in the EB-1C category, with no labor market test. That's one of the main reasons we recommend the L-1 wherever possible. The E-2 is different: it can be renewed indefinitely as long as the business is running, but on its own it leads nowhere. If you want a green card on an E-2, you need a second route. With the EB-5, the green card is the goal itself, conditional for two years at first and then made permanent.
Then come the questions nobody asks at the start: naturalization or not, what happens to your home country passport, how your wealth passes to the next generation, and what leaving the US would one day trigger. US tax law doesn't simply let citizens and long-term green card holders walk away. Know that early, and you build the structure differently.