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YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

rt.com

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Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#101

Post by sandworm101 »

sempron64 wrote: post #99
sandworm101 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we will soon be updating our Terms of Service where your earnings from YouTube will be considered royalties from a U.S. tax perspective (we’ve already made this change to the Terms of Service for U.S. creators in November). This may impact the way your earnings are taxed, and as required by U.S. law, Google will withhold taxes." So you will have to file a tax return and get the money back just like every other incom…

I am not a tax expert, and I’m speaking from a U.S. perspective, but if the earnings are via stream donations (not ads), would that not be considered a small gift and not be taxable?

Tax law 101: You cannot turn a transaction for a product into a pair of "gifts" between the parties. Where both parties are subject to contracts for services or payments, there are no gifts. Similarly, all "gifts" from employers to employees are considered non-gift income.

A car given to an employee as a "gift" is income to the employee and a taxable deduction by the employer. See Duesenberg (I'm trying to find the citation. I only remember that it involved an expensive car given to a senior employee in the early years of US income tax.)

And there is an Andy Griffith Show episode about this, about Aunt May having to pay income tax on prizes. The tax man was played by the guy who played the priest on MASH.

"While in Hollywood, Aunt Bee wins several new appliances on a TV quiz show, but when she returns home she loses her friends as a result. William Christopher plays the IRS agent who visits the Taylors to collect taxes on the prizes."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Andy_Griffith_Show...

Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#102

Post by Ajedi32 »

izacus wrote: post #45
mouldysammich wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, occasionally watching videos its almost the exact same. 1. You send me a peertube -- any peertube URL 2. I load that page in my browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Android, iPhone, Desktop, anything) 3. I watch the video I'm not sure what the peertube mobile compatibility is like but newpipe supports it and i assume modern mobile browsers work.

And how much did the owner of the video earn from that link? YouTube is not popular because it's easy for YOU, it's popular because the creator can get money for a video with a few clicks while Google manages ad contracts, bidding and infrastructure to make the money making happen. PeerTube doesn't give you that.

Couldn't the creator deploy AdSense or another ad-based video monetization tool on their site? https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1705822?hl=en Or am I misunderstanding how PeerTube works?

Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#103

Post by bushbaba »

melomal wrote: post #88
yoz-y wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is abiding to the U.S. law, where Google/YouTube is incorporated a "risky move"? It's not like there is a choice. https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/101463270?hl=en

Remote workers will be screwed then. I've worked for companies incorporated in Switzerland and I live in Poland, why on earth would that make sense to pay Swiss tax if I live and work in PL? Also Alphabet is a Delaware incorporated company - tax haven, plus there's the good ol' tax haven of Dublin that FANGs love and Google is located in, like Facebook, Amazon, insert other multi-billion turnover company. For anyone…

Should google pay tax to Poland for ad rev sales made in Poland?

This is no different.

Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#104

Post by bin_bash »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #98
bin_bash wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

slightly OT but does anyone recommend journalism from organizations that avoid this sort of misleading information? I'm not sure if I've just become more sensitive to it but recently I feel like I can't get away from it. WSJ (non-opinion) seems to be one of the few places that tends to have accurate headlines IMO.

RT is Russian state media, thus its propagandist, its not a real news outlet. There is no "journalism" tradition there in terms of ethics, trust, standards, etc. It follows the party line and the Kremlin's needs, which currently are to make the US/West look as bad as possible.

not defending RT, but I've been seeing it in NYT, Verge, Bloomberg too. That's more what prompted my question.

Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#105

Post by mywittyname »

tinyhouse wrote: post #35
chrisseaton wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Won't every other country now demand that they do the same for them? What other countries have major services like YouTube that pay their content creators in the US where they could 'do the same for them'?

I think they meant that Spain can now demand Youtubers to pay tax for money they made from Spanish viewers on Youtube. Etc.

That's not a bad thing. It's also probably not onerous for a company with the resources of Google to deal with. The technical work is already done to handle the US.

Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#106

Post by mortehu »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #98
bin_bash wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

slightly OT but does anyone recommend journalism from organizations that avoid this sort of misleading information? I'm not sure if I've just become more sensitive to it but recently I feel like I can't get away from it. WSJ (non-opinion) seems to be one of the few places that tends to have accurate headlines IMO.

RT is Russian state media, thus its propagandist, its not a real news outlet. There is no "journalism" tradition there in terms of ethics, trust, standards, etc. It follows the party line and the Kremlin's needs, which currently are to make the US/West look as bad as possible.

An important caveat is that they also post lots of normal content, so that it's harder to argue that RT should be blocked outright, and harder to identify the propaganda.

Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#107

Post by bushbaba »

the_svd_doctor wrote: post #50
gruez wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you’re not physically present in the US and are not a US citizen, why would you be subject to (income) tax? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_withholding#International_...

Ha! Very interesting thanks.

California has similar laws. That if the work was done in California even if you live or are currently remote you owe California state income tax on those earnings.

Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#108

Post by bm1362 »

sempron64 wrote: post #99
sandworm101 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we will soon be updating our Terms of Service where your earnings from YouTube will be considered royalties from a U.S. tax perspective (we’ve already made this change to the Terms of Service for U.S. creators in November). This may impact the way your earnings are taxed, and as required by U.S. law, Google will withhold taxes." So you will have to file a tax return and get the money back just like every other incom…

I am not a tax expert, and I’m speaking from a U.S. perspective, but if the earnings are via stream donations (not ads), would that not be considered a small gift and not be taxable?

I believe the IRS would investigate many small donations under the gift tax. An analogy would be restaurant servers claiming their tips as gifts and thus not disclosing it as income.

I’m sure there are clauses to avoid abusing gift tax as a loop hole for providing a service.

Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#109

Post by systemvoltage »

sandworm101 wrote: post #86
tristanj wrote: post #85

This RT article is clickbait and spreading misinformation. The tax is on revenue generated from users in the US, not on all revenue. If creators provide no tax information at all, only then will YouTube tax all global revenue. And YouTube is not doing so by choice, they're a US headquartered company and forced to do this to comply with US tax law. RT is highlighting tweets that are spreading misinformation. For examp…

"we will soon be updating our Terms of Service where your earnings from YouTube will be considered royalties from a U.S. tax perspective (we’ve already made this change to the Terms of Service for U.S. creators in November). This may impact the way your earnings are taxed, and as required by U.S. law, Google will withhold taxes." So you will have to file a tax return and get the money back just like every other incom…

Taxes don’t work like that, anywhere in the world. Your argument is “Someone doesn’t care or know about taxes, so this is going to cause problems to them”. Yes, indeed. As it should IMO.

Re: YouTube tells foreign creators they will soon be charged American tax

#110

Post by sudosysgen »

tristanj wrote: post #85

This RT article is clickbait and spreading misinformation. The tax is on revenue generated from users in the US, not on all revenue. If creators provide no tax information at all, only then will YouTube tax all global revenue. And YouTube is not doing so by choice, they're a US headquartered company and forced to do this to comply with US tax law. RT is highlighting tweets that are spreading misinformation. For examp…

Sorry, but this is still insane.

It makes absolutely no sense that a non-American has to pay up to 24% tax on money from American viewership, and then again pay income tax.

As far as I know, there is no other countries in the world with such an insane policy. Being subject to taxes from a country you don't belong to exactly as if you lived there (these aren't sales taxes), is completely unreasonable.

Remember, this is on top of existing sales taxes, what it really is is the US trying to double-tax non-US citizens on their income.

The title is reasonable.

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