UK entrepreneur moved to Austin to grow his SEO agency

Thomas Phillips, 33, left Southampton in 2024 to run his DTC SEO Agency from Austin, Texas. He had long wanted to live in the United States, drawn to its car culture and entrepreneurial energy, and moved his businesses stateside after a six-week honeymoon in Texas.

He now lives in Austin on an E-2 Treaty Investor Visa. That visa required creating a company, hiring a number of US nationals, paying himself a reasonable salary and can be renewed after five years. Moving has helped him win more US-based clients and meet them in person, which he says builds trust and fits the larger American consumer market his brands target.

Phillips prefers the US tax setup because state tax is added at the point of sale rather than embedded like the UK’s 20% VAT, so businesses don’t have to absorb that portion of the listed price. He says his pre-move calculations showed a roughly 1% tax saving if he had moved to California, and that relocating to Texas adds about a 13% benefit on top of that.

United States, Austin, Texas

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