Payroll records, board or directors' resolutions, and documented management decisions from the foreign entity showing the applicant actually performed an employment role, not merely held shares.
Show employment activity, not just ownership status
Gather evidence of actual duties performed, decisions made, and compensation paid as an employee, separate from dividend or ownership records.
Create parallel evidence tracks for ownership, the corporate relationship, employment, and duties. Incorporation registers and share certificates can establish a parent, branch, subsidiary, or affiliate link, but they do not prove that the owner worked full-time abroad. Use payroll ledgers, tax reporting, employment agreements, calendars, signed decisions, reporting charts, and contemporaneous work product to show one continuous year of full-time employment physically abroad within the relevant preceding three-year period. Then describe whether those foreign duties were managerial, executive, or specialized knowledge; for a new-office L-1A petition, that employment year abroad needs managerial or executive duties. A common mistake is submitting dividend statements as a substitute for wage and responsibility evidence.
Hypothetical example: A packaging-machinery manufacturer near Tecumseh is owned by its managing director, whose records show distributions but inconsistent salary entries. The company reconciles payroll, banking, tax, board-consent, and project-approval records month by month, explaining rather than concealing gaps. It also supplies dated organization charts showing who performed assembly and sales beneath the director. Those materials let the reviewer distinguish actual executive direction from passive shareholding without inventing an independent board that never existed.