This is the same in most countries i.e. income = expenses means no profit and therefore no tax.

However, you need to pay tax in your country of residence still. You also need to file with the IRS for the corp indicating zero profit. Plus US registration fees.

You also need to maintain a legal paper trail i.e. the money coming into the US corp needs to be paid out to an international company anyway.

Yeah, there is overhead, and of-course that you need to pay taxes where you are a tax resident. But, if that overhead enables you to charge much more than it is worth it. I've got stock option to my LLC from one startup recently. It was much much easier than figuring how to do that for one person in other part of the world.

My friends and I have not had issues receiving US stock options either. Carta can assist with this to a degree. NSOs though, not eligible for ISOs.

Admittedly, we're based in Australia, and there are Australia-US tax treaties that make the whole arrangement a bit simpler.