Starting a Company to Obtain a Working Visa

[bcurcio928]

Hi,

I've been admitted to start a part-time MBA program in the fall at HKUST, with the part-time MBA program being able to provide me with a part-time study visa. However, my Hong Kong resident (but not PR) girlfriend has recently found a job in Hong Kong (we previously lived in Shenzhen), and I would like to move with her to Hong Kong full-time. The university is unable to help me obtain a full-time visa, as I am a part-time student. I don't want to apply for a part-time student visa, tell immigration that I'll only be in HK for say 150 days per year, then overstay that number by living in HK for say 300 days per year.

I currently work remotely from my laptop as an independent contractor (US citizen, file taxes in US, 1099), but this is more a function of the company that I work for, in that I have regular work, earn a regular monthly salary (approx. HK$75-80K), and am affiliated with an American company that has been in business since 2000.

One possibility that I have looked into is starting a Hong Kong company (basically "US Company Name, Hong Kong, LLC") and having my US employer pay my salary into a HK company bank account. I would then have the company hire me as its only employee. My employer in the US has signed off on this, noting that it would legitimately bring benefit to our company in that I would be closer to our small but growing client base in Hong Kong. My work is fairly specialized (industry analyst for a niche industry, and have been doing so for >5 years), so I think it would be plausible to argue that local talent is not available.

I'm wondering, therefore, whether anyone has any pointers as to the feasibility of the above. I've reached out to several companies who help found companies, and they've all been pretty incompetent in actually being able to tell me whether after founding a company, I would be able to apply for a full-time work visa/"employer sponsorship", and if so, what the timeframe would be (i.e., would the company need to be earning revenues for some time or not?) I would have to imagine that this happens quite often that a western company would want to expand into HK and hire one of their own people as their first employee, which is essentially what I would be doing here, but again, I haven't been able to get a clear answer on this.

Any advice would be much appreciated, thank you.

BCurcio928

[HowardCoombs]

What you describe is fairly legit and quite doable.
Contact InvestHK - they should be able to assist you with this.
http://www.investhk.gov.hk/

[HK_Katherine]

That's essentially how our company started as subsidiary of a US firm. Easily doable if you your US firm stands behind it. Otherwise probably not. Although setting up a firm here is trivially easy, don't underestimate reporting and other red tape. You will need your US firm to help or hire a part time local to deal with it.

[bcurcio928]

Thanks for the quick and helpful reply!

[bcurcio928]

Thank you for the quick and helpful reply. Quick question--when you started your company as a subsidiary of a US firm, was there any sort of "lag" that you needed to go through before you could get your right to work in HK? e.g. HK company needed to have some business/economic activity going on for 6/12/18 months? Or it was as simple as establishing the company in HK and after dealing with red tape and so on, you were immediately able to apply for a work visa as a non-local?
Thanks again for the help.

[HK_Katherine]

No lag. But to get the visa the us firm had to supply a lot of stuff.. Their accounts, business plans etc. Some of which they considered confidential and refused to supply which caused a delay etc. US firms struggle with HK way of working... it's just not "like" there!

[Mrs. Jones]

If your US company is 'legit' and has a solid business and turnover, they can just establish a representative office (or subsidiary) here and then hire you as an epmloyee. There might be a couple months lag for them to check out the US company if it's not a MNC or otherwise well known to ImD here. Other than that it should be no issue.

[shri]

And then, you'll need to open a bank account on behalf of your US company.

(Should be relatively easy... but these days the KYC procedures are quite strict at banks like HSBC.)

[bcurcio928]

Great, thanks for the heads up, I'll prepare for the worst ;-)

[bcurcio928]

Thanks for the pointer here, this makes sense. Do you by chance know if this would be at all different given that I am an independent contractor for the US company, and that I would be the sole shareholder in the Hong Kong branch of the company?