[Music]
Lea Alcantara: You are listening to CTRL+CLICK CAST. We inspect the web for you! Today we’re talking about hiring a remote employee, HR and visas. I’m your host, Lea Alcantara, and I’m joined by my fab co-host:
Emily Lewis: Emily Lewis.
Lea Alcantara: This episode is brought to you by Hover.…
[Music]
Lea Alcantara: You are listening to CTRL+CLICK CAST. We inspect the web for you! Today we’re talking about hiring a remote employee, HR and visas. I’m your host, Lea Alcantara, and I’m joined by my fab co-host:
Emily Lewis: Emily Lewis.
Lea Alcantara: This episode is brought to you by Hover. Six of their favorite hipster domains are on sale at really special prices including .co, .me, .io, .guru, .li, and .sh for your first year. I love the potential of creating statements by using what comes after the dot, and it allows you to shorten the domain by making an efficient use of space. Sounds good? They even have a valet transfer service to make moving your domains that much easier. Why not give Hover a try for your next domain. Visit Hover.com and plug in the promo code HRVISA to get 10% off your first purchase.
Emily Lewis: CTRL+CLICK would also like to thank Pixel & Tonic for being our major sponsor. [Music ends] Hey Lea, how have you been?
Lea Alcantara: Pretty good. I had my sister visit Seattle the other week.
Emily Lewis: Oh, that’s right. How was that visit? Now, this is a different sister than you went to Ecuador with, right?
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. This was the twin. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: So it was funny because a lot of my local friends were like, “Why does she look familiar?” [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, I know. It was my sister Via who’s still living in Edmonton and her boyfriend came down as well. So we’re doing a little bit of the touristy stuff that sometimes you move to a city and you don’t do any of the touristy things.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So whenever you have a visit or you kind of end up indulging some of that stuff, that was kind of fun.
Emily Lewis: Nice. So of the touristy things in Seattle, did you experience anything that you’re like, “Oh, that was super cool.”
Lea Alcantara: I don’t know if it was like “oh super cool,” but I guess it was kind of fun like the Fremont Troll. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that, but there’s a giant troll statue head thing, [laughs] underneath the Fremont bridge and it’s really weird and there’s a Volkswagen Beetle in there.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: It’s so odd. It’s so odd, and it’s so Seattle, and I think it’s one of those things that we keep driving by, but you never pause to take photos or do anything.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, and so we paused, took photos, all that fun stuff with the Fremont Troll.
Emily Lewis: Troll and a Bug. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs] Yeah.
Emily Lewis: Yeah, and then I don’t think we have anything quite like that here in Albuquerque, but it’s a really artisty kind of state, really not just town.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: So there’s a lot of public art everywhere, and art varies in terms of weirdness.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: So there are always random statues here and there and mosaics and murals and things like that. Some of which are odder than others.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: There may be some sort of like touristy like tour of all of the public art in Albuquerque. I have to check that out because that would be something good to take my sister on the next time she visits.
Lea Alcantara: It sounds like fun.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: So why don’t we just jump right in. There’s a bit of news in our world. We wanted to take a moment to thank everyone again for their nominations and votes for the 2014 .net Awards. We didn’t make the short list for judges’ voting, but we are really proud to have made the Top 10 nominee list. Thanks to our loyal fans and listeners!
Emily Lewis: Yes, especially because getting to that Top 10 list is really about our fans and listeners.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And so that means a lot to both of us, so thank you. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: All right, so let’s get right to today’s topic, which is really a continuation of our first CTRL+CLICK CAST episode, which was Managing Transitions where we detailed how we joined our businesses last year.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: That discussion focused on branding, messaging and client management, and today we’re going to focus on how you, Lea, got your US work visa and how I hired you as my first employee, remote employee.
Lea Alcantara: Yes. So since we’re going to be talking about topics that are legal in nature such as US labor laws as well as state and federal taxes, I think it’s a good idea to mention that we are not experts in these areas, so we’re just sharing what we did, what worked for us and learned along the way. So if you need expert advice, please seek an expert.
Emily Lewis: Absolutely. So let’s start at the very beginning of it.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: You’re Canadian.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And you ran LeaLea Design from Edmonton. When you moved to Seattle, what did that mean for LeaLea Design?
Lea Alcantara: So the long story short is when you are a Canadian citizen, you can’t just up and work for any company in the United States, and that also means that I can’t run my own business in the United States. There are different types of entrepreneurial visas that you can obtain, but they are for much larger businesses rather than like a freelance business.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And so I wouldn’t qualify to do that. So what it really meant was that if I was going to move to Seattle in a short of time, that meant I had to close down LeaLea Design.
Emily Lewis: And then you couldn’t work for yourself in the States, right?
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, because that would mean that I would be self employed, and when you think about the common sense thing, if that was allowed for anyone like anyone could just go to the States and be like, “I’m self employed.” [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs] Right.
Lea Alcantara: Those types of things were not really open for me as legally possible.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: There are some exceptions to that like not necessarily working for me, but I could have possibly worked for a Canadian company as a remote worker in Canada, but that would mean I was not giving up Canadian residency. And that meant that there are like dual tax implications because of that, and my husband would have been also part of that, and in order to maximize the tax advantages of moving to the United States and not having to pay both Canadian and American taxes, we decided it’s best for us to essentially become non-residents of Canada and move to the United States, and that meant closing down all Canadian working ties.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And that included my business.
Emily Lewis: Right, and so that led to you getting a visa, and I was just kind of want to mention that obtaining a work visa isn’t something that is restricted to the situation you’re describing. This information is also relevant to any kind of company that may be seeking talent that they can’t find where they are, and so they may have to seek talent from another country, and that person who is from another country would have to go through that visa process themselves.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, and I have to mention too that my particular visa process is really specific to Canadians as well.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Because Canada and the US have had a long successful working relationship for several years, so both governments have worked really hard to make it much easier for individuals to work in either country.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So in that case, the visa that I qualified for is something called the TN visa.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And the TN of that visa stands for Trade NAFTA, and that’s only specific to Canadian and Mexican citizens.
Emily Lewis: Okay, and I remember that discussion really started with the podcast that we were doing, not what we’re doing now, but when we were doing EE Podcast at the time that led to us kind of considering you working for my company as an employee because we wouldn’t really be able to continue to do the podcast the way we were doing if you were in the United States and did not have a visa.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: Because we wouldn’t be able to operate the same way that we were operating, and then from that, we were just like, “You know, it kind of does make sense for us to take this step.” So that not only we could continue to do the podcast, but I got the feeling from you that you didn’t want to stop working. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: And become a lady of leisure. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s not me.
Emily Lewis: All right, so once we did make the decision that we would find out how you could come and work for me, what were the next steps on your end?
Lea Alcantara: So previously I mentioned the TN visa, but it took a while to figure out, “Well, what was the visa in the first place?” So we looked at different types of ways for me to work, and in the end, the TN visa made the most sense.
Emily Lewis: And how did you find that out?
Lea Alcantara: And that was mostly through literally searching the Internet. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And also part of it too was my husband works for Amazon, and they were also going through TN visa application for him to work there, and so it sort of made sense that I would possibly qualify for that. Now, in terms of looking it up, the best sources are probably the actual government sources.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: The government links, so the Canadian and American government links, because any other link, there are a lot of like anecdotal information, and some of it is really outdated. So I think the first one was figuring out what do we pursue in the first place.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: But the Internet, that only gives you so much information. It’s not always legally binding or even accurate.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So essentially once we figured it out what kind of visa that we needed to work with and what I qualified for, and specifically … just a little bit more on TN visas: there are only a select number of career types that are applicable under a TN visa.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Timestamp: 00:09:48
Lea Alcantara: So if you don’t have the right college degree or if you don’t have the right career path or whatever, you might not qualify for a TN visa. Fortunately, a graphic designer is one of the applicable careers that a TN visa allows you to work in the United States.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And then so essentially, once we figured it out, “Okay, I qualify under a TN visa,” TN visa seems to be the right choice because it allows me to enter the United States essentially immediately once it’s been applied, but we wanted to make sure that the application actually made sense and that it was complete and that there was no little to no chance of being rejected. So the next step after that was essentially finding a lawyer.
Emily Lewis: Right, and I think if I recall, I took the lead on finding the lawyer.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And it’s not like I have a Rolodex (oh my god, I just used a word from 1990) [Laughs] of lawyers.
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: But I reached out to my network of colleagues who deal with lots of different types of people and just started asking for recommendations for someone, and we ultimately found a lawyer, and it was interesting because it was one of those things where you and I were so anxious and worried.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yeah.
Emily Lewis: And she’s like, “Everything is fine.” [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: “Everything is cool.” Because I think compared possibly to other types of immigration issues, this is relatively straightforward, and I suppose you could do it yourself, but even though it’s straightforward in terms of the information you have to prepare the letter that serves as the actual TN application letter, we wanted the lawyer to draft it.
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Emily Lewis: We wanted her to review everything that was required just to give ourselves extra reassurance about what we were doing.
Lea Alcantara: And one of the main reasons why we also went with an immigration lawyer is because the actual TN application process involved is you get interviewed by a Customs officer at the airport, and what that means is….
Emily Lewis: Is this at the Edmonton Airport?
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Emily Lewis: Or when you arrived in Seattle?
Lea Alcantara: No.
Emily Lewis: Okay.
Lea Alcantara: At the Edmonton Airport before we even get to board the plane and wait for the plane, et cetera. So once you get your boarding pass and you have your documents and all the application stuff together, you go through Security and then you go to the Customs booth and you say, “I’m applying for a TN visa.” Then they take you to another room where you wait to get your stuff interviewed, and the reason why an immigration lawyer I think was really, really important for us is that because your entire application is judged by a Customs officer, one guy.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And his job is to just make sure that everything is above board, and that you’ve got everything, and depending on what border you leave, how strong your application is, and whether that Customs officer was trained enough, and I have to mentioned that because there’s just a variety of people that work at the airport.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: There’s a possibility that you could be rejected at Customs simply for missing one piece of evidence, whether you don’t have your college diploma.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: I had to get, in terms of my application, all originals.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: I had to get my actual college diploma. I had to actually get all, like a reference letter that was signed on my client’s letterhead, which I designed. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: But it had to be the original letter with his original signature, no scans were allowed in terms of that.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And having an immigration lawyer to look through the application and explain all the levels of proof that you are qualified for this position should be there.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And she went through the letters with a fine-toothed comb and made sure that I had every single thing. Even if it’s seemed like almost over excessive, I think that helped me. Things were really smooth by the time it was the interview.
Emily Lewis: I think it’s probably worth mentioning because you have to get originals, you need to allow time for that.
Lea Alcantara: Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I wanted to just backtrack a little bit in regards to the immigration lawyer. We actually got several different quotes from the immigration…
Emily Lewis: Oh yeah.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: Oh my gosh. Let me pull up these numbers.
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Emily Lewis: Because they really were all over the board in terms of what we would have to pay.
Lea Alcantara: And not even what pay, timing too.
Emily Lewis: Yeah, how long it would take to get it done.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: It’s interesting too because I don’t want to make it sound like the lawyer’s involvement was minimal because it was huge for at least my peace of mind.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: But it really is ultimately they draft the letter.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: It’s not like we had tons of consultations and that she reviewed your birth certificate or anything like that.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Emily Lewis: It was ultimately a letter and ultimately her reviewing all of the information. So I talked to a number of different lawyers who had different costs. One would just give me a consultation on what would be required for $40, and I’d have to pay for that consultation in advance. That would not even involve the visa application letter. Another lawyer said $900 for the whole thing, and that that would take 60 days. Another one said it would take three months and it’d be $1,500. What we ultimately found was a lawyer who would do it for $500 and could do it in the short time frame.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And so compared to all the other quotes we had gotten, that seemed the most reasonable, and especially the time frame worked for us.
Lea Alcantara: Absolutely.
Emily Lewis: But definitely get some quotes. Don’t just go with the first name. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yeah.
Emily Lewis: Because it really is just a letter, but it’s an important letter.
Lea Alcantara: Well, another thing too is that she drafted the letter, but she also gave advice over what kind of things, evidence, that you should put in your application package as well, and another thing to mention about the immigration lawyer, immigration law changes every year. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Every year something is new. So for example, this year I was actually very lucky. The TN visa used to be only valid for up to one year.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And then you would have to renew, but because there has been a lot of work in like immigration reform and all this kind of things, TN visa can last up to three years, and that’s what I was able to qualify for. So I wouldn’t have to necessarily reapply for a TN visa for another three years.
Emily Lewis: Yeah. Ultimately, I feel like it was totally worth it, and even if we couldn’t have found the lawyer we found who is willing to do it for a flat rate in the time frame, we still would have done it.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Emily Lewis: No question. It was just too stressful of a time to leave just on our shoulders.
Lea Alcantara: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, the weird thing about it there’s just so much riding on the interview, because you can’t even get the interview until you have your boarding pass, so you have to pay for your flight and you have to be at that interview two hours before your flight because you can’t have it any earlier because they won’t take you in for the interview [laughs] until you’re through Security and meet the Customs guy.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So it’s a lot rides on that little amount of time.
Emily Lewis: Yeah. Now, once we got the application letter and you’ve got all of your documentation, you got your ticket, your boarding pass, what was it look like actually crossing the border, going through the interview?
Lea Alcantara: That part I think was actually not bad because we were so prepared.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: We were so maybe even over-prepared. [Laughs] And my husband and I were really strategic too, like we decided to fly out on a non-busy day on a non-busy hour.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So we didn’t want to have to fight with other people like all these things, so we were the only people in the office at the time, at the interview.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: We were the only ones being interviewed. So it was a more relaxed atmosphere for everyone involved, so no one was like stressed or anything like that. So basically, once you’re there, you just kind of wait until you’re called, and then you go up to a window, and it seems like a banking window. It’s really just kind of like a guy behind glass, and then he just looks at your application, flips through it, looks at his computer to check to see whether the category you’re applying for make sense and the stuff that you’ve shown make sense for that particular category, and he just asks you a few questions, “What are you working for? What are you applying for?” Et cetera and so forth.
Emily Lewis: Was it an intimidating experience, even though it was pretty simple and straightforward? Or I don’t know. Did you feel relaxed or really freaking out?
Lea Alcantara: I don’t know if I was freaking out, but I was on alert because Customs officers, and I’m sure a lot of even Americans who visit Canada and vice versa, going to a conference and things like that, you have to be careful over what you say. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Right. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Because if you say phrases like “I’m here to work,” that’s a trigger phrase. You shouldn’t say that because if you’re saying, “I’m here to work,” that means you require a work visa.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So generally speaking, there are trigger phrases that Customs officers are trained to listen to and look out for that are red flags to them. So I was really very careful over what I was saying. That being said, it’s like all I could do is be honest.
Emily Lewis: Right.
Lea Alcantara: It’s not like I was lying over anything. It’s just that you have to phrase things properly, so “Yes, I’m here to apply as a graphic designer. I’ll be working at Seattle, Washington.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: All those types of things, just to say the answer. My only advice is don’t ramble.
Emily Lewis: Right, just be straightforward.
Lea Alcantara: Exactly, otherwise, you might accidentally say something that’s a phrase that they think is shady or whatever. But at the end of the day I remember asking our lawyer about it, “Are there any phrases or anything like that I should avoid?” And she thought, “Oh, come on like it’s fine.” [Laughs]
Timestamp: 00:19:57
Emily Lewis: Yeah, I think there were several times in this process that you and I both said to each other, “We’re not doing anything illegal. Why are we afraid? Why do we feel like…” [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: I know for me, anytime I deal with the government, I have an inherent mistrust.
Lea Alcantara: Yes, yeah.
Emily Lewis: And so I think … that they have an inherent mistrust.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: So which they probably need to do, I get that, but it does make you feel all of a sudden that you’re doing something that doesn’t feel right even though it’s 100% above board.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yeah, I know, and the guy like he was friendly, there was nothing wrong, and then basically at the end, he’s like, “Okay, give me your $50.” [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Because that’s basically the application cost for the TN visa, so it was pretty painless after that.
Emily Lewis: Now, after you’ve got your visa and finished settling into Seattle, where there any issues or challenges that you experienced once you got into the States that you didn’t really anticipate until you got there?
Lea Alcantara: Well, I don’t know if there was a lot of things that I didn’t anticipate. It’s just that things were a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. So what I mean by that, for example, is like banking.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Again, because Canada and United States have a lot of trade going on, there’s actually banks in the United States that have ties to banks in Canada. And the bank that I bank with is TD Bank and they’ve got a lot of American presence on the East Coast, and so one of the things that I remember reading online was that how difficult it was to get credit card with a decent credit limit, especially if you’re new to the country. So one of the first things I did before I even moved to the United States was applied for a special Visa, and when I say Visa, I mean the credit card Visa. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: A credit card, I applied for a credit card where the company actually looks at my Canadian credit score.
Emily Lewis: Oh.
Lea Alcantara: And then applies what I would have gotten as a credit limit in Canada, but it’s actually a US credit card with US dollars based on a US bank. That being said, when you first do this, and even if you get the card and everything like that, that doesn’t mean it’s building towards your credit score until you have a Social Security Number.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Lea Alcantara: Sometimes I get confused because Canada I think it’s Social Insurance, and America is Social Security. It’s the same thing. It’s like your government ID.
Emily Lewis: Right.
Lea Alcantara: And until you get your government ID, then it’s like you’re a ghost in the United States. So that was fine, but we didn’t anticipate a few things in terms of how much money we should have exchanged ahead of time.
Emily Lewis: Oh.
Lea Alcantara: And in terms of transferring things, and it wasn’t so, so bad because they were able to, again, I think a lot of it is because TD Bank is so used to working with Americans as well, they’ve got a cross-border banking customer service line, et cetera.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So when I was in the States, I had to apply for US checks for all my Canadian bank, so that I could deposit stuff easily into my new American bank.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And in terms of that too, I feel like I was very, very fortunate and lucky because I wasn’t doing this by myself, I was doing this with my husband.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And my husband, because he works at Amazon, they’ve got cross-border relocation specialists, and due simply to that association, banks were a lot more friendly towards us.
Emily Lewis: Oh.
Lea Alcantara: Because they’re assuming that if he was hired by such a multinational corporation like him, that his risk assessment is low.
Emily Lewis: Legit.
Lea Alcantara: Right?
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So basically, we were able to open a bank account without a Social Security Number, et cetera and so forth. But really, the first thing that you need to figure out after you set up all your banks and things like that is a Social Security Number. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Right.
Lea Alcantara: You need to get that ASAP, but the annoying thing is you can’t. You can’t get it as soon as possible the moment you land. You have to wait two weeks because Homeland Security needs to check whether or not we’re terrorists.
Emily Lewis: Right, right.
Lea Alcantara: And that takes a couple of weeks. Once we get the TN visa, they do like a background check or whatever. You could go to a Social Security Office and apply for it, but then you’d have “pending” status or whatever until Homeland Security has figured out you’re not a terrorist.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: But usually, they tell you wait two weeks because then you’ll be in the system.
Emily Lewis: So like wait two weeks before you apply?
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Emily Lewis: Okay.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: And then once you apply for that Social Security Number, how did you have to wait before you actually got it?
Lea Alcantara: Okay, we’re an odd situation because everyone, every other Canadian I spoke to said it took way longer than it did.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Ours took one week.
Emily Lewis: Oh.
Lea Alcantara: We applied the week before, and we got our Social Security Number the week after, and I’m wondering if it’s because the TN visas, for example, they’ve become digitized. It used to be like a paper square thing that you stapled into your passport.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: But now it’s stamped, plus you get a digital number and then all of that fun stuff. So we got our Social Security Number right away. The good thing though is like even though that is one of the main things that you should try to get ASAP, especially if you’re a Canadian, and like my husband works at Amazon and everything, banks and AT&T like your cellphone provider and everything, they’ll put in a fake SSN for the first two weeks essentially because they want your money right away. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs] Right. Hey, they’re American companies.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, right, exactly. Well, it’s true though. Like they’ve give you a temporary SSN to set everything up in their system, and it’s not that easy either because they will all demand a giant deposit. Like Rob and I had to put in $1,000 cash to AT&T the moment we signed up.
Emily Lewis: Ouch, ouch!
Lea Alcantara: Because essentially we have zero credit score in the United States.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And so we’re high risks. The thing is though you give that deposit, then after 12 months, you get that deposit back.
Emily Lewis: Okay.
Lea Alcantara: So when you’re deciding to move to the United States, I think one thing to make things really easy for you is just set aside a ton of cash.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Lea Alcantara: Just make sure you’ve exchanged a bunch of cash right away, and it just makes things easier once you move to the States.
Emily Lewis: Speaking of money, this is something I hadn’t asked you before, but are you comfortable working with US money? Was it something you had to adjust to?
Lea Alcantara: Oh, it’s the same. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: It is. Okay. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, I know. It’s totally like in terms of US money, getting it and all that stuff like, well, that’s about the same. Banking, however, is weird here in my opinion. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: There are certain things that you just kind of take for granted as normal in Canada like banking in Canada is a lot more friendly, especially when there are exchange rates and things like that too.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: In the US, there are a lot of weird delays and there are a lot of extra fees. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Oh yeah. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Well, and at the same time too, and this might just be a reflection of what’s going on in the world economy and stuff like that, but you have really, really low interest rates here in terms of like savings accounts and all this stuff.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: It’s like barely nothing. And then in Canada, not that it’s high right now because still the economy is not great, but it’s way, way better. And oh yeah, another thing that I have to mention too, especially if you’re a Canadian deciding to become a non-resident of Canada, so there’s no tax implications and you just work in the States, you need to make sure that you close certain bank accounts.
Emily Lewis: Oh, your Canadian bank accounts?
Lea Alcantara: Not all of them. There’s no penalty if you have just like a regular savings account there, like Rob and I still have a bunch of money in regular savings account in Canada, and we’ve got a checking account there that barely has anything, but it’s just there, and you won’t get any penalties. What I’m mentioning is if you’ve got something called the tax-free savings account, and what that means is each year anyone can contribute to this savings account up to $5,500 per year tax free.
Emily Lewis: And it earns interests?
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. You can put it in whatever you want, and as long as you don’t go over $5,500 per year, it’s a 100% tax-free.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And there’s something called RRSPs, which is I think equivalent to like your 401Ks, a retirement account in Canada. The retirement account is safe in Canada. If you get earned interest in the retirement account in Canada, then America is not going to penalize you for earning any interest over there because there’s that NAFTA agreement over retirement accounts or whatever. Our listeners can do more research on that because it gets really complicated, but the TFSA, I have to say, you have to close it down, and the reason why, and it’s really BS, is that the United States considers a TFSA a foreign trust, okay?
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: And so there are weird implications regarding that, and it’s really BS because it’s not even the IRS that’s worried about the TFSA. Apparently, it could be used as a shelter for terrorists.
Emily Lewis: Oh, I see.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. So it’s one of those things where it’s just like just close it down, and close it down before you leave because there could be tax implications if you keep it open or close it after you moved to the United States. So that’s something that we didn’t anticipate right away because I guess in our minds, no matter how much research you do, there’s always something that you miss. That was one thing we were kind of shocked about like, “Why do we need to close our TFSA? It’s like maximum $5,500 a year. ”
Timestamp: 00:30:04
Emily Lewis: Right.
Lea Alcantara: It’s not like a huge moneymaking thing that there could be anything that the US would want a piece of. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Right.
Lea Alcantara: I would think, but yeah, now, apparently, there are weird implications in regards to that.
Emily Lewis: It was certainly a lot. It’s a straightforward process, but there are just so many details involved, and it’s about identifying those details in advance. I mean, I think that was the lesson I took away from the immigration and working with you, providing my information to your application letter and everything. It’s just finding out what the details are.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: And just sticking with them, just doing it, and over preparing.
Lea Alcantara: Oh yeah.
Emily Lewis: Just do as much research as we possibly could, get as much expert opinions and feedback that we could, because yeah, we’re both bright people, but this is not what we do for a living.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: And it’s important. You getting the ability to come to the United States and work here is a big deal so we don’t want to miss any of those details.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, absolutely. So I was wondering then, now that I’m here like what were you doing to prepare in terms of hiring me in terms of HR?
Emily Lewis: Yeah, so it was interesting because, ultimately, we didn’t know that you would get your visa until you went to the border and sat at your interview.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: And so there was a bit of a timing, I don’t know, just sort of like me not knowing what to pull the trigger on when because, ultimately, kind of like what I was just saying, I don’t do anything with human resources. I’ve worked for myself, I’m my human. I’m my human resource. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: So I didn’t know what was involved, and immediately, I was, “Well, let’s hire a consultant. I don’t want to try and be an expert in this, and I want to make sure we do everything the right way.” Just as a little caveat before I go into that, this is something that sort of surprises me that even larger companies than mine don’t do this. You hear about HR issues and the company has been around for five years and they’re just getting an HR person on board.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And that sort of boggles my mind, like I’m not in a position where we can hire a human resources person to have always available. We don’t even really need that.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: But from the beginning, I knew I wanted to turn to an expert to not only find out what I needed from you, but also to identify what my responsibilities where, and I’m not just talking about payroll and taxes, I’m talking about legally, what do I have to do to make sure that I don’t violate any US labor laws or any discrimination laws or any harassment laws.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: I mean, that stuff is really important, and it shocks me when you hear bad news when people don’t hire an HR consultant … GitHub …
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: So it’s shocking to me that this isn’t something that seems to be a priority. It should be the number one thing you do first. So that’s what I did, I actually talked to my accountant who I’ve been with for a number of years and asked her to recommend someone to talk about HR, and ultimately, she guided me through all of the basic stuff that you have to do to hire any employee regardless of whether they’re remote or a US citizen or not. I will also state that once you came into the United States, I could basically treat you just like I would any other employee.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: So everything I did from HR in hiring and taxes and all of the other stuff is what it would be had I hired someone down the street to work for me, and so some of the basic stuff, which if you’ve ever worked as an employee for a company, you’re probably already familiar with, I had to create a job title for you and description for your position. The description has to specify either an annual salary or an hourly rate that meets the requirements for the state in which the employee works.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And I just want to reiterate that, I’m in New Mexico, you’re in Washington.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: Because you are the employee, I had to meet Washington’s requirements, not New Mexico’s. The job description has to indicate whether it’s part time or full time. I also needed to create a job application that you could fill out that would have everything, like your contact information, your skills, your previous employment, and it’s funny because I know you. I’ve known you for a lot of a years. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: Like in my head I was like, “I don’t need that.” But I do legally. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Emily Lewis: And when say legally, it’s not like I’m running this paperwork through someone. It’s in the event anything were to happen, God forbid, if my company is sued, or god forbid, something happens, I need to show that I have all of this paperwork prepared and have been prepared from the moment you came on board because that’s when it becomes an issue.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: You also have to find out whether the state in which your employee will be working is an at-will state to determine whether you needed an employment contract. Washington is an at-will state, which basically means you can leave at anytime you want, and I can fire you anytime I want.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: There’s no contract that says you must work for me for a year or something like that.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And the good thing was all of that stuff was stuff we had to do for your TN visa offer anyways.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yeah.
Emily Lewis: So that was pretty straightforward. But then there were also some like specific government documents that are important. The first of which is the Employee Eligibility Verification, which is known as an I-9.
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Emily Lewis: And also your W-4, which specifies your withholdings from your payroll.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: And then some other things that are there to sort of protect my business as well as protect you as an employee, a conflict of interest statement, a summary of your consumer rights, a disclosure that releases my business to conduct any type of background investigation necessary into you, emergency contact information.
And then the HR consultant also said that there were a number of good-to-have documents like they’re not required, but they’re just sort of good to have. And that would be a confidentiality agreement and then policies like what’s the internet policy, what’s the telephone and email policy, travel policy, and even company-specific policies like work ownership and releasing information to the media. Like you’ve done interviews before, so it’s not unheard of to think that you would do one again, and having a policy of what you can or cannot say to the media protects my business and also protects you from saying something that we don’t want to disclose.
Lea Alcantara: Sure.
Emily Lewis: So all of those things, when she told me them, I’m like, “Oh, I trust Lea. I don’t need to do background check. Like I don’t need that stuff.”
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: And it’s not about trust and it’s not about need, it’s that these will protect you in the event you need to be protected.
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Emily Lewis: So it’s just worth doing, and so we got all of that information out, or I gathered all of that information, all that documentations and sort of prepared it for when you got your TN visa. I paid the HR consultant an hourly rate to help prepare these documents for me. I did tweak a number of them, particularly the telephone policy, the email policy, the Internet policy to sort of reflect the type of work that I know we do in terms of communicating with our clients. But other than that, I really just worked from the templates she provided me.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And then I had you fill out a ton of paperwork. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yeah.
Emily Lewis: And that was sort of just the preparation for once you got to the United States, and so I was doing all of that while you were doing all of your visa stuff.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, and I just want to mention in terms of the I-9, that it had weird timing situation too.
Emily Lewis: The I-9 is the Employee Eligibility Verification, and if you’ve ever worked for an employer, this is the one where you have to like show two types of ID and they sort of just verify that you can be working in the United States. Whether you’re a citizen or not, it’s just proof to be able to work here. But the I-9 is one of those documents that has to be signed by the employer or an authorized representative.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And not just signed, but that a person has to physically examine the documents that show proof of your eligibility.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: You were in Seattle and I was in Albuquerque, and it was kind of, “Well, do I want to fly out to Seattle just to do this.”
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: But fortunately, you can have an authorized representative, and an authorized representative can be a public notary.
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Emily Lewis: Which is really nice.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, although with me, there was a little bit of an issue. So this is another little piece of real advice that happened to us. Get a notary that knows or understands remote work.
Emily Lewis: Right.
Lea Alcantara: So I went to a local UPS that does public notary, and the guy actually refused to sign it at first. He kept reading it. He’s like, “I’ve never seen this before.” He just was not comfortable with notarizing it for some reason simply because he was interpreting the document incorrectly.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: And it wasn’t until his boss walked in. He’s like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.” Because he was familiar with it, that he’s like, “Yes, we can notarize this. There’s no issue. Just fill in the blanks essentially.” The form itself, there’s nothing complicated or whatever like basically he just had to check over my TN visa document. He had to check over my passport. He had to check a bunch of those different documents that’s listed to prove that I’m able to work, and then he had to write it down, and then sign it that day. Make sure to phone ahead and ask if they understand what this means.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So you won’t have the kind of minor panic that I had when I had to argue for about five minutes and was actually just lucky…
Timestamp: 00:39:52
Emily Lewis: [Laughs] That his boss was there.
Lea Alcantara: That his boss walked in, and so it was one of those things where I think it would be better if you phoned ahead and verified it, got that person’s name that verified it and then ask if that person who verified it is going to be in the office or in that notary place the next day.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So that everything that had been discussed is understood and above board, and so you won’t have the weird misunderstanding while you’re standing there trying to get his signature. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Right, and I think it’s worth mentioning, they’re actually not notarizing the I-9.
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Emily Lewis: So there’s no notary seal. When they sign their name, they have to indicate their title. They don’t indicate their title as notary public, instead they are verifying so they are simply signing it and their title is authorized representative.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: And it’s also important that once you have the I-9, me as the employer have to maintain it in its original format so you couldn’t scan it to me and that would be acceptable.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: We had to like overnight the document to me so that I could keep the original myself.
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Emily Lewis: So no photocopies, no scans or anything like that.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: Kind of along those same lines, that sort of leads me to the other part of being an employer that I learned is document storage and recordkeeping.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: So I mentioned I had to have the original I-9 document in its original format and have to maintain that here in my office, but the I-9 also should be stored separately from all other employment-related documents. This was something my HR consultant advised me and she said it’s basically because the I-9, at any point, officials from the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Labor or the Department of Justice could come to my office and say, “We want to see the I-9 for Lea.” And if I keep the I-9 with other files, those officials, by virtue of accessing the I-9, could access the other files, which is outside their purview and could violate the rules of protected information, your protected information.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And so I ultimately bought a whole separate safe for just your I-9 and have all your other personnel files in a totally different safe.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. It’s so weird sometimes.
Emily Lewis: It is weird.
Lea Alcantara: Like whenever you deep dive into these types of things, I had no idea the extra things like that.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Like I mean, filling out forms is one thing. It’s another when it’s like, “Put it in a different safe.”
Emily Lewis: Right.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: And in terms of the documents that I did keep, I mean, you and I are as virtual as we can get, we try not to deal with paper too much.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: I chose to keep some hard copies of some documents like your emergency contact information is an example of that and like some of the policies that you signed, but I also chose to use Dropbox as a digital storage solution, which is allowed. You basically have to prove that your digital storage solution is, and these are straight from the IRS: “reliable, secure, accurate and accessible.” And there are detailed descriptions of what those each represent, and after sort of my brain exploding in trying to determine if Dropbox met that, I ultimately did, and so I do keep some documents in the private Dropbox folder as well for digital storage.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: I’m also as your employer like responsible for retaining certain records for specified periods of time. If you and I ever part ways, I have to keep your job description and your job application for one year from the date you leave. I have to keep your payroll records for three years from the date you leave. All employment documents with protected information, that’s like your Social Security Number, address, things like that, for three years from the date of termination, and tax records for four years from the date tax is due or paid, and so basically, again, these are like details. Once I found out what the details were, I wrote them down and where necessary, I set up calendar reminders to make sure that I’ll get pinged in a year when something might need to be renewed or revisited or something like that.
Lea Alcantara: Sure.
Emily Lewis: But these are things that are important to keep my business legitimate, your employment legitimate, and anyone who has employees should really be talking to an HR consultant or have an HR person who can advise on all this because it’s stuff that doesn’t make sense to an average layperson like me. I was like, “Why will I need to keep all of that stuff?” But you just do.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. So there’s a lot going on in regards to just even the beginning, document storage and retention, but there is a lot more in terms of establishing a presence here in Washington while you’re in Albuquerque. So what else did you need to do to hire a remote employee?
Emily Lewis: Yeah, this was interesting. So because you’re in Washington, I mentioned I have to follow the employment rules for Washington, but I also needed to register my business in Washington. I couldn’t just be a registered New Mexico LLC. They call it an economic nexus, and there are lots of different situations that qualify as an economic nexus, one of which being I have an employee in Washington, therefore my business has a nexus with Washington, so I had to apply for a business license in Washington.
Once I got that business license, I also had to apply to be a Foreign Limited Liability Company in Washington. This meant I had to register with the Washington Department of Revenue, and then that also triggered kind of my company going into all of their different departments that handle everything from the departments that handle worker’s compensation to the business and liability insurance that I have to have in Washington. These are the things that are not necessarily required in New Mexico, and so I was very surprised to discover I had all of these responsibilities that I may not have had in New Mexico had you been a New Mexico employee, and so it’s different for every single state, so it comes down to where your employee works. You need to find out what that state’s requirements are, if they have economic nexus rules, and then what you have to do to follow them. I will say this took I’d say, as a lot of things running concurrently, like a month, if not five to six weeks to get all of the paperwork.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: So once you have all of the business registration and you can operate as an LLC in another state, then it comes down to sort of the quarterly responsibilities an employer has, primarily the taxes for which I’m responsible. Previous to hiring an employee, I was simply responsible for quarterly estimated taxes for my business, and then New Mexico basically sales tax for any business I do in New Mexico, and that was it.
But now, because I have an employee, I’m also responsible for the federal insurance contribution act, that’s the FICA 941, and also the federal unemployment tax, that’s the federal 940, state unemployment tax, and worker’s compensation insurance, and those are due every quarter, usually around the same time my estimated payments are due for the business. And really, it came down to I had to create accounts with all the different Washington departments that I would be making tax payments to and filing my tax reports with, which was somewhat time consuming, but it was a breath of fresh air compared to dealing with New Mexico agencies.
I feel New Mexico is just sort of ten years behind everything. I could pick up the phone, call Washington, someone would talk to me, answer my questions. I’ve called New Mexico agencies and I still never get calls back because I have to leave voicemails for random people. And Washington also had tons of web-based accounts like I didn’t have to do everything with paperwork. So I set up all of those accounts. Basically, every quarter, I tell my accountant what my income is and what your payroll was and then she fills out the forms for me, tells me the amount to pay. I go online to the different accounts and pay it. It’s not fun to pay it. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: But it’s simple and straightforward to pay it.
Lea Alcantara: Okay. So the accountant is the one that’s handling all the payroll.
Emily Lewis: Yeah. Oh, yeah. She does the payroll for me, and that was something that I knew I didn’t want to handle. I’m terrible with numbers, and it just stresses me out.
Lea Alcantara: Sure.
Emily Lewis: So she’s set up an account with Sage50, which I believe used to be like Peachtree or something like that.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: And I give her your hours at the end of the month, they do whatever they do. They send you a pay stub, you get direct deposit, and that’s all there is to it.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: I mean, there’s a lot to it. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: But it’s pretty straightforward. I will say it now, it’s now almost a year, and the quarterly tax responsibilities are just kind of now part of the workflow. I expect them. I’m prepared for them, and so it’s not as stressful as it was the first time, trying to make sure I was doing everything right. And of course, having my accountant who I really, really trust. I can ask her any question at any point in time, and so I really feel like I’ve got a trusted adviser when it comes to that stuff.
Lea Alcantara: I feel like the overall summary of everything that we just talked about is make sure you talk to experts about their specialty. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Yes.
Lea Alcantara: All the way from the immigration lawyer to an HR consultant to a trusted accountant. These people are your resources. Don’t try to do everything yourself.
Emily Lewis: And I think another thing that I’ve taken away from it is that it’s worth it to hire someone who like you who is really good at your job, who brings value to my company, who brings value to our clients. When I was sort of running this idea by people before you and I were like, “Yeah, we’re definitely going to do this,” almost to a T, people were like, “Oh, don’t hire an employee, just do a 1099 contractor.”
Timestamp: 00:50:03
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Emily Lewis: And they were like, “It’s just not worth it. It’s just not worth the taxes. It’s not worth the headache.” And I can say like when we were in the beginning of it, yeah, it was super stressful and just so many balls in the air.
Lea Alcantara: Sure.
Emily Lewis: But at this point, I don’t like paying my taxes.
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs] Like who does.
Emily Lewis: So yeah, I ultimately think that there is value. Yes, there is a lot of work involved. You’re dealing with the government, which isn’t always fun. There’s paperwork and it can be stressful, but that is totally worth it because this is an investment in my business. Having an employee is an investment in my business. No, you shouldn’t just hire anyone. You should make the investment in the right person, and when you find that right person, it’s worth going through all of this.
Lea Alcantara: Well, I’m glad I’m worth it. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: This is such a flattering statement.
Emily Lewis: Yeah. It’s true though. I think people perceive bringing on help “Oh, a 1099 contractor, it’s just maybe a one-time thing, or there’s no relationship there.” But does that grow your business or does that help you in a moment?
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: So I found it to be really valuable and looking back, I feel kind of cool that I learned all this extra stuff that I never knew.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: I feel my business is more of a business than it’s ever been before.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, absolutely. Having all these structures and processes in place, I feel like just even going through these processes helped us as professionals just like as web developers and designers to look at our own processes, period. Right?
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Just making sure that we cross our t’s and dot our i’s and make sure that everything is above board, so that everyone is protected and our clients are protected too.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Because all of this discussion about making sure that my application doesn’t get rejected and all these fun things … my clients moved to Emily Lewis Design. And the fact that I was able to do all of that successfully allowed them to have no interruption in service.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So making sure that we were over prepared allowed things to move smoothly for everyone involved, not just for us, but also for our clients.
Emily Lewis: Yeah. It’s amazing. We are really almost out of a year in this situation. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Oh my god, yeah. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: And it’s going by so fast.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, like I can’t believe it. Like I really do believe like it was around a year ago when I said, “I think I’m moving to Seattle.”
Emily Lewis: Yeah. This is unfortunate that I know you’re right, but it was right before the Boston Marathon bombing that we had our conversation.
Lea Alcantara: Oh.
Emily Lewis: Because I actually spoke to my accountant the day of the bombing to find out what would be required to even consider this. So it was, it was really a year ago that we started talking about it.
Lea Alcantara: Oh wow!
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Lea Alcantara: Time moves and flies when you’re having fun like this.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs] It sure does.
Lea Alcantara: Although there’s like kind of a somber anniversary there.
Emily Lewis: Yeah, it is, but it kind of brings for me when I think about that first talk, it’s a very positive thing that’s changed in my life. So if I tie to that, it makes a little positive bright light to it.
Lea Alcantara: Hurray!
Emily Lewis: So before we finish up, I just want to let our listeners know that everything we’ve talked about today, we’ve actually written about as well.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: Both Lea and I are writers, but also it’s impossible to keep all this information in our heads, so we want to put it down somewhere for us to reference, and maybe help someone else who’s considering this in the future. So we’ll have links in the show notes. We have a 7-part series that covers everything we talked about today.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: With tons of links to the actual resources from the IRS, from the banking that we talked about with Canada, so everything, we’ll have it in our show notes.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, and even though it’s a rather long episode right now, but I’m sure we’ve missed something.
Emily Lewis: Oh, I’m positive about it.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah, yes. But we’ve written it all down so if you want further information, check out those articles. [Music starts] All right, so well, that’s all the time we have for today. We’d now like to thank our sponsors for this podcast, Hover and Pixel & Tonic.
Emily Lewis: We also want to thank our partners, Arcustech, Devot:ee and EE Insider.
Lea Alcantara: And thanks to our listeners for tuning in! If you want to know more about CTRL+CLICK, make sure you follow us on Twitter @ctrlclickcast or visit our website, ctrlclickcast.com.
Emily Lewis: Don’t forget to tune in to our next episode when we’ll be talking about .htaccess with Jonathan Penn. Be sure to check out our schedule on our site, ctrlclickcast.com/schedule for more upcoming topics.
Lea Alcantara: This is Lea Alcantara …
Emily Lewis: And Emily Lewis.
Lea Alcantara: Signing off for CTRL+CLICK CAST. See you next time!
Emily Lewis: Cheers!
[Music stops]
Timestamp: 00:54:53
