Can a private individual issue receipts? In certain jurisdictions such as Singapore, sole proprietorships must be registered. In these jurisdictions, can a private individual issue receipts? Perhaps a more specific legal question is: where does the authority to issue receipts come from? Does it rest exclusively with the recipient? If governmental authorities are permitted, by law, to regulate (1) the form and substance of receipts, (2) who is authorized to issue receipts - to what extent may they do so? All this is assuming the individual makes a sufficiently low turnover that we can ignore VAT/GST.
A receipt is just a written proof that money was taken. It is hard to imagine a place on Earth where the legality of giving such a proof would be questionable at all so that you would need to talk about an "authority to issue receipts". Only if you find a place where money itself is illegal. Now, the real question here is whether such receipts (issued by private persons not registered as businesses) can be used for accounting purposes, e.g. to claim that your business, which transacted with those persons, incurred expenses. The mere fact that sole traders need to be registered to do business does not outlaw the use of receipts issued by non-registered persons. For example, your business could be buying old stuff from the public (used cars, electronics etc.) and refurbishing it. Provided that this activity itself is not illegal, receiving receipts from those one-off private sellers, and using them in your bookkeeping would be perfectly legal too.
Generally a person can leave money to any person or organization that the testator pleases. In some US states, a minimum portion must be left to family (spouse and/or children). Aside from that, there is no requirement and no exclusions. US law prohibits gifts (and other support) to a few specific organizations which the government has officially listed as terrorist, and I suspect the Taliban is one of these. Gifts by will would be covered by this law just as gifts from a living person. But if a living person in the US can lawfully make a gift to an organization, a similar gift may be left by will. Even if a particular bequest was unlawful, that would not make the will as a whole invalid. Edit: It seems that the Afghan Taliban is not on the list of terrorist organizations maintained by the US, and so there would be no bar to a US citizen leaving money to that group. There would be to groups actually on the list. The general principle above holds.
Is this actually true? Not really although there may be figments of truth woven in. First, the GDPR does not prevent tax authorities from determining layers of corporate ownership or investigating tax fraud. Second, your substantive tax liability depends upon the tax laws of the countries in question. If you owe taxes under a country's tax laws but the country can't find it, that makes you a tax criminal, and doesn't mean you don't owe the tax. Third, the exact rules on what triggers tax liability in mixed country fact patterns are highly technical and not fully uniform. If you actually do business abroad within the meaning of a country's tax laws in a way that is not subject to its taxes, then it is legal. But this scheme probably doesn't meet that standard under most country's tax laws. So you hire two local directors, as contractors, from country B. On the contract signed, they oversee the day to day operations and work for you as advisor since you're the only shareholder. So their existence, the contract and the structure show that the company is managed in country B, run in country B and has economic substance in country B. This way the offshore company isn't taxed in country A. This allows you to get dividends from the company tax free (after paying corporate taxes in country B) to your account in country A. A few thoughts on this specific example. If you truly are nothing but a passive source of funding for a company, then owning shares in this company is no different from owning shares in a public held company (e.g. BMW). The notion that dividends from the company are tax free in county A in that situation is very likely incorrect. Usually, dividends and other intangible income is taxable income in the country where they are received. Most likely, the dividends are income subject to taxation in country A. There is a concept in tax law which U.S. tax lawyers call the &quot;Economic Substance Rule&quot; which is also true, but with different names (most of these countries don't have English language tax terminology anyway) which means that when someone is going through the motions of conducting a transaction in a tax favored form when in substance, something different is really going on, the tax authorities can choose to tax the substance rather than the form of the transaction. So, if the really valuable work is being done by the shareholder without visible compensation, rather than by the local directors and managers, you the shareholder might be taxed on &quot;imputed income&quot; representing the fair market value of the services rendered, or treated as the true manager of the company in country B. Similar issues can arise when valuable intellectual property is transferred to the company without being duly reflected in a fair market value purchase of equity interests, a sale at fair market value, or a licensing agreement for royalty payments. Tax officials aren't limited to looking at paperwork. They can and do interview the human beings involved in interviews that those human beings are legally obligated to attend and cooperate with and to provide truthful information in with legal consequences for lying in those interviews. Even if no official documentation or public statements would tip off tax officials, a significant share of tax evasion cases are driven by whistleblowing by disgruntled former employees, ex-spouses, jilted significant others, mistreated business partners, and revengeful angry children who feel that they have been mistreated by their parents. Nothing in the GDPR prevents whistleblowing to tax authorities. Background In E.U. countries, closely held company ownership must be declared and recorded in a notary public's &quot;public records&quot; or a corporate register (unlike, for example, the United States, where, this information was only contained in the internal records of the company in most cases, although a new law called the Corporate Transparency Act effective January 1, 2022, or later if initial regulations aren't adopted, changes this status quo). E.U. directives expressly requires much more public disclosure by private companies than the U.S. more generally. For example, a recent Dutch overhaul of its rules for disclosing beneficial ownership of companies is a model of contemporary modern European legislation on the subject. This affords access to this information as follows (UBO is the Universal Beneficial Ownership registry and FIO is the Fiscal Intelligence Agency, an anti-money laundering agency): The public can only access the publicly accessible UBO-information with a valid registration and in exchange for a fixed fee. The identity of those persons that access the UBO-register will be registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and UBOs may inquire as to how often their information has been consulted. The Chamber of Commerce may register the Citizen Service Number (Burgerservicenummer) of persons who access the register. The FIU and other competent authorities will, upon request, have access to that information. The FIU and other competent authorities may perform a search in the UBO-register based on the name of an individual, thus listing all connections of that individual, while the public will only be able to search the UBO-register for the UBO(s) of a specific entity (and not for the name of an individual). Even though this limitation to search options was presented as a measure to protect the privacy of UBOs, it is generally expected that commercial platforms that register company information will enable searches based on the name of individuals. The FIU and competent authorities have access to both the publicly and not publicly accessible UBO-information. In the Netherlands, the following institutions are, amongst others, qualified as competent authorities with unlimited access to the UBO-information: the Dutch Central Bank; the Authority for the Financial Markets; the Financial Supervision Office; the Dutch Gaming Authority; the Tax &amp; Customs Authorities; the National Police; the Public Prosecutor’s Office; the Dutch intelligence agencies; and the Tax Intelligence Agency. As this example illustrates, taxing authorities are given express statutory authority to gather information pertinent to tax collection. The Dutch situation, prior to the recent reform, collected essentially similar information, but at a decentralized basis in the offices of the notary handling the incorporation of the entity in question, with similar parties having access to the information. The E.U.'s General Data Protection Regulation generally, affirmatively extends to the provision of a good or service to an E.U. person subject to the regulation, something that would not include tax collection. See Article 3(2). Also, mutual assistance treaty obligations between E.U. countries to share information, which would include many tax treaties between E.U. countries, and criminal investigations (which would include criminal tax fraud cases) are expressly exempted from its scope.
As was mentioned in a comment, in the United States, businesses are generally registered at the state level. The information collected, and the extent to which or manner in which the public has access to it, varies from state to state. There may still be states where that's a paper-only process, but I'd guess in most of them it's accessible online, at least for basic information. For example, in Michigan the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs has a Business Entity Search tool. If a business deals directly with consumers, it may be a member of the Better Business Bureau. Even if it isn't, but consumers have complained about it, the BBB will make public the information it has about the purported business. If a company is publicly traded (that is, it's corporation that issues stock, and the stock is traded on a stock exchange), it is required by law to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC's EDGAR tool will display the company's filings, which should include annual and quarterly reports. If the company is or wants to be a government contractor, it generally needs to register with the General Services Administration, and certain information about successfully registered entities is publicly viewable in that system. (Conversely, the same system also lists "Excluded Parties" who are prohibited or partially restricted from doing business with the government.) Depending on what the business does, it may also be subject to registration with and regulation by additional state or federal agencies. For a full picture, however, unless you're dealing with the obvious agent of a Fortune 500 company, you'll probably want to get information from a private credit-check service as well; for example, as also mentioned in a comment, Dun &amp; Bradstreet for the business itself, or for a really small business a personal credit report on each of the owners and officers.
You're misreading the law. You need to keep reading the section you referenced (emphasis added): The disclosure...shall be made in writing and delivered through the consumer’s account with the business, if the consumer maintains an account with the business, or by mail or electronically at the consumer’s option if the consumer does not maintain an account with the business Thus, the option to have the disclosure sent by mail only applies to consumers who do not have an account with the business. Since presumably a large number of sites only maintain personal information for users with accounts, such sites need not provide a mail option. Further, it doesn't say there needs to be a button: you just need the ability to say you'd like it mailed to you in the request somehow, and then they need to comply when you do.
Both law and accounting are subject to state regulation, so, at a minimum, work done remotely by non-licensed persons must be reviewed substantively and blessed by a local admitted professional before being shared with a client, and there are limits on what contacts with the client the back office can have. In a legal context, the back office is limited to what a paralegal can do, and that varies considerably from one U.S. state to another, especially with respect to real property matters. Mere &quot;book keeping&quot; as opposed to accounting is rarely a regulated profession under state law, but as in the case of legal services, the distinction between accounting that requires a license and activities that do not require a license varies from state to state (although less dramatically). The notion of selling &quot;forms&quot; is well recognized, but what crosses over the line from selling a &quot;form&quot; to selling legal or accounting advice varies and can be treacherous. I don't know off hand if this is true for accountants in most states, but in most U.S. states non-lawyers are prohibited from having an equity or profits based interest in a law firm, and referral fee compensation is also subject to significant professional ethics regulation. Non-competition clauses involving lawyers are also subject to heavy professional ethics regulations not common to non-legal professional activities. Without a more concrete example of what the dropservicing business model would entail, it is impossible to do a very definitive analysis. Your model seems to be based upon obtaining services from a third-party and re-selling those services. For the most part, that isn't a workable business model from a regulatory perspective in the U.S. Instead, you need licensed &quot;white label&quot; providers as the face of the business and you may potentially provide services behind them in the back office. There are some services along this line currently in existence with varied business models involving somewhat similar concepts: Legal forms companies like the recently succeeded Bradford Publishing. Hyatt Legal Services Plans Private legal services insurance such as Legal Shield. H&amp;R Block and also tax services. The legal services provided by the JAG Corps to military service members. Nolo.com Union sponsored legal services plans such as Union Plus. Title insurance companies such as First American Title and related transaction execution companies. The legal defense provided incident to a liability insurance policy by companies such as Allstate. Governmental shared risk pools such as CIRSA. Donation driven non-profits such as the ACLU. The Ann Arbor Tenants Union. Temp agencies providing paralegals to companies such as this one. A few also make contract attorneys' available for a firm's one time big project. Tax software companies like TurboTax (a division of Inuit). Westlaw LexisNexis Wolters Kluwer (f.k.a. CCH).
GDPR compliance is a matter between every customer and the business, not between different customers. How did you get the other customer's contact details? If they were provided or leaked by the business, that might be a failure of the business's obligation as a data controller to protect the personal data they are processing, possibly even a data breach in the sense of the GDPR. When you contacted the other person this was presumably a purely private or household activity, just like contacting any other personal acquaintance. In that case, the GDPR simply does not apply to any “processing” you may have done (compare Art 2(2)(c)). Things would be very different if you were promoting your own business, but that doesn't seem to have been the case. If the matter really is as plain as you described, then you can effectively ignore their references to the GDPR until you are contacted by your data protection authority, by their lawyer, or are served with court papers. None of these should happen: even if you were a “data controller” and your processing were subject to the GDPR – only the other customer and not the business would be the data subject, and only a data subject has a right for remedies like making complaints to the data protection agency and only the data subject would have standing to sue you in court for GDPR violations.
Do I have to pay taxes if I register the domain but the website income belongs to someone else? No. The person or company who runs, and/or profits from, the business is the entity under obligation to pay all the applicable taxes: Value Added Tax, income tax, corporate tax, and so forth. Unless you charge a significant amount therefor (see the comments), the mere registration of just one domain is unlikely to trigger tax obligations.