Do the activities of my LLC need to be limited to a particular field?
No. When you file your Articles of Organization, simply state that your business will operate under the law. You don't need to give any further specification.
Pool their money into my own brokerage account and simply split the gains/losses proportional to the amount of money that we've each   contributed to the account. I'm wary of this approach due to the tax   implications and perhaps other legal issues so I'd appreciate   community insight here. You're right to be wary. You might run into gift tax issues, as well as income tax liability and appropriation of earnings. Not a good idea at all. Don't do this. Have them set up their own brokerage account and have them give me the   login credentials and I manage the investments for them. This is   obviously the best approach from a tracking and tax perspective, but   harder for me to manage; to be honest I'm already spending more time   than I want to managing my own investments, so option 1 really appeals   to me if the drawbacks aren't prohibitive. That would also require you to be a licensed financial adviser, at least to the best of my understanding. Otherwise there's a lot of issues with potential liability (if you make investments that lose money - you might be required to repay the losses). You should do this only with a proper legal and tax advice - from an attorney and/or CPA/EA licensed in your state. There are proper ways to do this (limited partnership or LLC, for example), but you have to cover your ass-ets with proper operating agreements in place that have to be reviewed by legal counsel of each of the members/partners, "You can file an LLC yourself in most states, although it might be helpful to use a service if you're not sure what to do to ensure it is correct.  I filed my LLC here in Colorado online with the Secretary of State's office, which provided the fill-in-the-blank forms and made it easy. In the U.S., taxation of an LLC is ""pass-through"", meaning the LLC itself does not have any tax liability.  Taxes are based on what you take out of the LLC as distributions to yourself, so you pay personal income tax on that. There are many good books on how to form and then operate an LLC, and I personally like NoLo (link to their web site) because they cater to novices. As for hiring people in India, I can't speak to that, so hopefully someone else can answer that specific topic. As for what you need to know about how to run it, I'll refer back to the NoLo books and web site." I cant speak for years ago, it coukd be that amazon took those articles to heart and changed its policies. Whatever the case, Amazon is one of the top employers in my area, and for good reason. The only thing i cant say anything aboit is career advancement, but even that is decades ahead of the competition. Free textbooks, company pays a portion of tuition, and automatic time off to attend school if you want it. The only condition is to stay actively enrolled with good grades, and be in one of a few specific fields of study (the idea is that amazon is investing in a skilled employee that it needs) "The ""independent contractor"" vs. ""employee"" distinction is a red herring to this discussion and not at all important just because someone suggested you use your LLC to do the job. Corp-2-Corp is a very common way to do contracting and having an LLC with business bank accounts provides you with more tax deductions (such as deducting interest on credit lines). Some accounting practices prefer to pay entities by their Tax ID numbers, instead of an individual's social security number. The actual reasoning behind this would be dubious, but the LLC only benefits you and gives you more advantages by having one than not. For example, it is easier for you to hire subcontractors through your LLC to assist with your job, due to the opaqueness of the private entity. Similarly, your LLC can sign Non Disclosure and Intellectual Property agreements, automatically extending the trade secrets to all of its members, as opposed to just you as an individual. By signing whatever agreement with the company that is paying you through your LLC, your LLC will be privy to all of this. Next, assuming you did have subcontractors or other liability inducing assets, the LLC limits the liability you personally have to deal with in a court system, to an extent. But even if you didn't, the facelessness of an LLC can deter potential creditors, for example, your client may just assume you are a cog in a wheel - a random employee of the LLC - as opposed to the sole owner. Having a business account for the LLC keeps all of your expenses in one account statement, making your tax deductions easier. If you had a business credit line, the interest is tax deductible (compared to just having a personal credit card for business purposes). Regarding the time/costs of setting up and managing an LLC, this does vary by jurisdiction. It can negligible, or it can be complex. You also only have to do it once. Hire an attorney to give you a head start on that, if you feel that is necessary. Now back to the ""independent contractor"" vs. ""employee"" distinction: It is true that the client will not be paying your social security, but they expect you to charge more hourly than an equivalent actual employee would, solely because you don't get health insurance from them or paid leave or retirement plans or any other perk, and you will receive the entire paycheck without any withheld by the employer. You also get more tax deductions to utilize, although you will now have self employment tax (assuming you are a US citizen), this becomes less and less important the higher over $105,000 you make, as it stops being counted (slightly more complicated than that, but self employment tax is it's own discussion)." The LLC portion is completely irrelevant. Don't know why you want it. You can create a joint/partnership trading account without the additional complexity of having LLC. What liability are you trying to limit here? Her sisters will file tax returns in the us using the form 1040NR, and only reporting the dividends they received, everything else will be taxed by Vietnam. You'll have to investigate how to file tax returns there as well. That said, you'll need about $500,000 each to invest in the regional centers. So you're talking about 1.5 million of US dollars at least. From a couple of $14K gifts to $1.5M just by trading? I don't see how this is feasible. "The answer to your question is...it depends.  Depending on the state you, your friend, and the LLC are located in, it can be very easy to run afoul of state banking laws, or to somehow violate some other statute pertaining to the legal activities an LLC may undertake by doing something like a loan. It is not unusual (or illegal) for officers or employees of a business entity to be loaned money by the company they work for, so something of this nature wouldn't be an issue with regulatory agencies.  Having your LLC loan money to a friend who isn't an employee or officer of your LLC just might not be kosher though. The best advice I can give is that you should call the state banking commission or similar agency in your state and ask them whether what you want to do is alright.  The LAST thing you want is to end up with auditors or regulators sniffing around your business, even if you haven't done anything wrong, and you certainly don't want to run the risk of accidentally ""piercing the corporate veil"", as someone else here astutely pointed out. Good luck!" You don't need a Visa to create or own US property. Your registered agent will be able to take care of most of this, and your new entity will use the registered agent's address where applicable, but you may need your own separate address which can be your office in the UK. If you want privacy then you'll want a separate address, which can also be a PO Box or an address the registered agent also provides. US corporations, especially in Delaware, have a lot more compliance issues than the LLC product. Delaware has a lot more costs for formation and annual reports than most other united states. There are definitely a lot of states to choose from, but more people will have information for Delaware. "This is actually quite a complicated issue. I suggest you talk to a properly licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State). Legal advice (from an attorney licensed in your State) is also highly recommended. There are many issues at hand here. Income - both types of entities are pass-through, so ""earnings"" are taxed the same. However, for S-Corp there's a ""reasonable compensation"" requirement, so while B and C don't do any ""work"" they may be required to draw salary as executives/directors (if they act as such). Equity - for S-Corp you cannot have different classes of shares, all are the same. So you cannot have 2 partners contribute money and third to contribute nothing (work is compensated, you'll be getting salary) and all three have the same stake in the company. You can have that with an LLC. Expansion - S-Corp is limited to X shareholders, all of which have to be Americans. Once you get a foreign partner, or more than 100 partners - you automatically become C-Corp whether you want it or not. Investors - it would be very hard for you to find external investors if you're a LLC. There are many more things to consider. Do not make this decision lightly. Fixing things is usually much more expensive than doing them right at the first place."