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LES CÈDRES · E-2 FIELD GUIDE

Does buying my Canadian company's assets count as the E-2 investment?

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THE DIRECT ANSWER

A genuine asset contribution can enter the analysis depending on ownership, valuation, lawful source, and commitment to the U.S. enterprise. An entry between related companies alone does not prove all these elements. An asset committed to a credible launch need not necessarily be operating already; document the rights transferred and planned deployment.

Show the assets working in the U.S. enterprise

Describe where the assets are located, what the business does with them, and how they fit the operating plan. Equipment already in production is helpful, but a case can also rest on credible prelaunch commitments such as delivery schedules, installation contracts and a signed lease. Owning the U.S.

company does not by itself permit the investor to work there; the role of developing and directing is what the classification contemplates. Hypothetical example: a landscape construction equipment dealer forms a United States company and transfers a service fleet, a parts inventory and its dealer agreements. What makes that file work is not the transfer entry but the description of use: which vehicles are in the new territory, where the parts are stored, who services what, and what the company expects to sell in its first year.

Dated photographs, the lease for the yard, an insurance schedule listing the vehicles by identification number, and the first purchase orders together show assets doing work. Keep the operating plan consistent with those documents, since a plan describing a scale of activity the assets could not support is a discrepancy the rest of the file cannot repair.