Which countries allow eChecks?
eChecks (and ACH) are a (desperate?) try of the US banking system to get into the 21st century. All EU countries (and some others) have direct deposits and transfers as the standard way of transferring money since about 20 years, and since about 5 years it is cost-free and one-day across all the EU. The rest of the world runs mostly country specific system, as there is not that large a demand for cross country shifting, and exchange rates are also an issue in any such transaction. Because they have different ways that work fine since decades, other countries will consider the eCheck idea as a step backwards and will probably ignore it, so your answer is 'none'. International companies work with banks in a different relationship than retail customers, so they can do things you and me cannot do - depending on size and volume. Some large companies get a banking license and then handle their own stuff; medium sized companies make favorable contracts with banks (they are golden goose customers - never an issue, no brick and mortar presence needed, banks love them), or they simply suck up the transfer cost (if you move millions, who cares about a 40 $ fee). Small businesses whine and live with what they get...
Yes, that is correct. Note, when there is a tax treaty between Canada and the other country -- [which is pretty much anywhere you have active business](http://www.fin.gc.ca/treaties-conventions/in_force--eng.asp) -- the tax credits are equal to the income received, making it tax free. Here is a better explanation:  &gt; The greatest advantage of having a foreign affiliate in the international business setting is  to repatriate foreign profits back to Canada tax free under certain conditions, for example,  if a foreign affiliate carries on an active business in a designated treaty country (i.e. a  country with which Canada has a tax treaty). The after-tax profit is included in a pool  called “exempt surplus”. If the repatriation of profit in the form of dividend was paid out  of the “exempt surplus” pool to a Canadian corporate shareholder, such dividend is  included in its income and the same amount is allowed to be deducted in computing its  taxable income. In other words, the dividend is not subject to Canadian tax if received by  a Canadian corporate shareholder.   [Source, p3](http://www.canadataxplan.com/test/canadataxplan/files/Book%20-%20English_summary_12-22-2008.pdf)  Edit... here from the NRC site:  &gt; Treaty Countries: **Active business income earned in a treaty country is classified as “exempt surplus.”** The exempt surplus of an FA also includes inter-affiliate dividends received out of the exempt surplus of other foreign affiliates, the exempt portion (25%) of all capital gains, and certain taxable capital gains. **Dividends paid out of the exempt surplus of an FA can be received free of additional taxes in Canada**, since the profits out of which they are paid are considered to have borne a rate of tax in the treaty country comparable to that of Canada.  [Source](http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/mining-materials/taxation/8880) see the section on Subsidiary Income. This is the reason BK is moving to Canada. [Also here is a very interesting deck on corporate tax minimization in latin america by the Canadian mining industry.](http://miningtaxcanada.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/TOR01-5160395-v1-RMLF_Cartagena_Slides.pdf) "If a country had a genuine completely flat income tax system, then it wouldn't matter who paid the tax since it doesn't depend on the employee's other income. Since not many countries run this, it doesn't really make sense for the employee to ""take the burden"" of the tax, as opposed to merely doing the administration and paying the (probable) amount of tax at payroll, leaving the employee to use their personal tax calculation to correct the payment if necessary. Your prospective employer is probably saying that your tax calculation in Singapore is so simple they can do it for you. They may or may not need to know a lot of information about you in order to do this calculation, depending what the Singapore tax authorities say. If you're not a Singapore national, they may or may not be relying on bilateral tax agreements with your country to assert that you won't have to pay any further tax on the income in your own country. It's possible they're merely asserting that you won't owe anything else in Singapore, and in fact you will have taxes to report (even if it's just reporting to your home tax authority that you've already paid the tax). Still, for a foreign worker a guarantee you won't have to deal with the local tax authority is a good thing to have even if that's all it is. Since there doesn't appear to be any specific allowance for ""tax free money"" in the Singapore tax system, it looks like what you have here is ""just"" the employer agreeing to do something that will normally result in the correct tax being paid in your behalf. This isn't uncommon, but it's also not exactly what you asked for. And in particular if you have two jobs in Singapore then they can't both be doing this, since tax is not flat. The example calculation includes varying tax rates for the first X amount of income that (I assume without checking) are per person, not per employment. Joe's answer has the link. In practice in the UK (for example), there are plenty of UK nationals working in the UK who don't need to do a full tax return and whose tax is collected entirely at source (between PAYE and deductions on bank interest and suchlike). In this sense the employer is required by law to take the responsibility for doing the admin and making the tax payments to HMRC. Note that a UK employer doesn't need to know your circumstances in detail to make the correct payroll deductions: all they need is a so-called ""tax code"", which is calculated by HMRC and communicated to the employer, and which basically encodes how much they can pay you at zero rate before the various tax rate tiers kick in. That's all the employer needs to know here for the typical employee: they don't need to know precisely what credits and liabilities resulted in the figure. However, these employers still don't offer empoyees a net salary (that is, they don't take on the tax burden), because different employees will have different tax codes, which the employer would in effect be cancelling out by offering to pay two people the same net salary regardless of their individual circumstances. The indications seem to be that the same applies in Singapore: this offer is really a net salary subject to certain assumptions (the main one being that you have no other tax liabilities in Singapore). If you're a Singapore millionaire taking that job for fun, you might find that the employer doesn't/can't take on your non-standard tax liability on this marginal income." Context: assessed project as part of a tech internship in an investment bank, working in small groups, task: to design an app using a financial solution that has an ethical impact.  We came up with (what I hope) is the smart sounding idea of an app for impoverished farmers in developing countries who lack the information and market access that larger or unionised farmers would have. The app would use some kind of decision tree (which may grow with machine learning) to assess the best kind of crops to grow given the region and local conditions for max profitability, and would provide access to some kind of derivatives market, and insurance, allowing the farmers a consistent income.  Struggling with the specifics of how the business/finance side of things would work. Let's assume the bank builds the app and puts it on the app-store as part of some charitable initiative. 1) Would the farmers go directly to the bank to price and purchase derivatives on their crops? 2) Options/futures/forwards - which is most appropriate, or would it make sense to offer all three? 3) Is there any way this could be adjusted to provide regular payments, with a lump sum at the end? Would this be something the bank chooses to do, or is there an existing financial instrument for this kind of setup? 4) How does this tie in with the commodities markets (or is that what the derivatives already are?) 5) Probably a long-shot but any chance of know-your-customer implementations for countries with terrible infrastructure?  6) (probably a dumb question) Say the farmer sells an option on his crops, would this be sold directly to the bank or a 3rd party who'd be more interested in actually buying the crop? Or is this a far too simplistic view? Basically who would the farmer actually deliver the crops to? 7) Any other issues/oversights? Any ideas to make this sound somewhat viable?  It doesn't have to strictly be realistic in any sense, but it also can't be flat-out incorrect!  tyvm in advance, edited to make questions clearer "&gt; they want to lower the standards we have for goods and services  Their avowed goal is ""regulatory coherence"" but its [not being done in a good way](http://www.ciel.org/Publications/ToxicPartnership_Mar2014.pdf), its an attempt to sneak through a [huge long long list](http://www.ttip2014.eu) of bad ideas that would not fly in any kind of light of day, and then make them permanent, with special [eternal entitlements](http://tpplegal.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/isds-domestic-legal-process-background-brief.pdf) for multinational corporations, so permanent that future elections can not change them, nor can states individually protect people, their laws would be preempted to the extent that unaccountable trade tribunals [can order huge fines against countries and states for merely doing their jobs](http://www.italaw.com/sites/default/files/case-documents/italaw3206.pdf), because they impinge upon  new suddenly materialized ""rights"" as perceived by the trade agreements. Almost nobody knows they are doing this. often countries dont realize that they have lost their rights to determine their policies, and then countries usually lose.  There are SO many problems I don't know where to begin.   &gt; in part by opening up public services to private business?  Privatization often goes badly. They are hiding that and portraying privatization as the only possible future.   Well at the beginning, the prototypes FTAs, NAFTA and GATS mandated the privatization of most public services in countries that signed them, with services (everything you can't drop on your foot) especially some of the add on documents to GATS. That was in 1995. It contains a ""standstill"" (they all do)  which said that countries could not change anything if it was a move back towards public ownership and control, in the case of services, they frame that as bad, as a theft from businesses..  So standstill typically says things like they can not create any new public services and [if there was any money involved in the market sector at all that it would have to be privatized](http://www.iatp.org/files/GATS_and_Public_Service_Systems.htm) in tiny steps. No going back to public services allowed.   But of course, people dont know that and often don't believe it when told. For example, do you believe me when i tell you thats the reason US health care is so bad-?    Can you see how and why they might lie about what they,, politicians, can do, can do about things because they want to win elections by promising things - like affordable health care- But also hide the ugly act [that they gave away the store](http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/lwp/nafta.pdf) starting in 1995.   The FTAs that we can read (the early ones) tried to do it by being undecipherable to non-experts- they are so complicated and ambiguous only a few people really know what they demanded, at least up until recently. Now they are top secret. Really secret. Only the 600 lobbyists have access.   Now, a growing number of people, especially in Europe, seem to realize this is really scary and a red flag., but its not because the news was any help, its because of the net, the media - especially in the US, has been completely unhelpful. They dont cover this at all. TTIP is a huge controversy. But I have a feeling the worst one is TiSA, which has remained largely out of the news. Except for Wikileaks and the financial services chapter. Just one chapter is known. And its an old version.  Now they want in TiSA to greatly [expand the scope of these FTAs to millions of service jobs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_pPqnbXpA4) in a huge number of countries. Countries want things, like the US wants to be able to charge more money for drugs and they want to force other countries to allow US companies into their markets, for example, insurance, or financial instruments, it seems that they are trying to deregulate banking when it should be re-regulated to avoid a repeat of the 2008 GFC. Another thing the US wants is to limit generic drugs and make it easier for companies to open factories, send contractors, etc. elsewhere.  Its not always a good thing to open markets up to ""liberalisation"".  In many cases, it could lead to substantial job losses, as it has in [Central America after CAFTA](http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2014/08/central-america-crisis-belies-caftas-empty-promises.html)." Lol you moron. Chip and pin significantly reduced physical retailer fraud when we introduced it in Europe (a decade ago? 15 years?) - a signature is absurdly easy to fake and retailers have little to no way of protecting against it. PayPal. Or even Western Union or MoneyGram.  Despite their fees, there is a reason those companies are still in business. &gt;I would imagine that given any lack of compulsory regulation, that Americans are using whatever means of payment that suits them.  I'd agree, it's almost entirely about competition and consumer protections in areas like banking outside of the US rather than compulsory regulation pushing people to use particular approaches.  I run a company in the UK, processing cheques is expensive and awkward (its a manual process, it costs money at basically all points of the process and is more likely to result in a failed payment) for me compared to almost every other method of payment, so I prefer (and actively encourage) the use of electronic payments instead.  I can do that because my bank doesn't charge extra for processing electronic payments, in fact it's now cheaper to process them than cheques. That also makes sense from the banks perspective given it costs more money for them to maintain, offer and process cheque payments (to the point that they are already essentially converting them into electronic payments by scanning..).   It's not Americans being backward, it's US banks.  I doubt that if you had safe, secure, cheap and reliable electronic payment facilities, with the same level of protection and control as with a cheque, most Americans would take the same approach as they do elsewhere (After all, its convenient..). Caveat: I have never owned an Indian card but the items below are true for at least three different countries where I have lived in