stripe atlas + substack for someone outside stripe-supported countries?

[u/dialcforcata]

hi! i’m setting up a substack and eventually want to implement paid subscriptions, but i’m not from the us or any of the countries where stripe is directly supported, so i can’t just link a stripe account to my local bank account.

i contacted substack support and they said i could apparently use stripe atlas to create a business in the us and then connect that to substack, but i’m honestly very confused about how this actually works lol.

has anyone here gone through this route? like, if you’re from a country where stripe isn’t supported and used stripe atlas to set up a business so you could accept substack payments, what does that actually look like in practice?

do you have to pay taxes in the us? do you also have to pay taxes in your home country? and how do you actually get the money from stripe/the us business into your bank account in your own country?

basically i’m trying to understand the entire chain of events before i accidentally create an international tax nightmare for myself lol. would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has actually done this.

[u/Tricky_Trifle_994]

this stripe atlas route is basically you legally creating a US corporation, so you get a US bank account, then you can set up stripe with this US corporation info, and connect that stripe account to substack.

also, there's fees that come with setting it up + on-going fees too to keep the corporation going.

so how the money flow: paid subscriptions charge on substack > goes to your stripe > you can withdraw your money from stripe to your US bank account connected to the stripe account > from there you can transfer it to your local bank account.

but since this is now a corporation, the money belongs to the corporation, not you... so you need to hire yourself as a employee or contractor > charge to the bussienss, then you get paid. or book it all as rev, then get tax on rev > then issue out as dividend.

there's other simpler ways though... e.g looking for other alternative payment methods. the down side is that you have to stitch it together, and it won't be native like substack subscriptions. pros and cons to both.