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I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

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Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#121

Post by droithomme »

The comments here are good.

One point not addressed in the comments is that whether PayPal ever gives you the money back or not, OP has earned $200,000 in income while in the United States and he owes the IRS and possibly the state government as well full US income tax on this amount since he was in the US at the time he did this work. It doesn't matter what his visa situation is, that has nothing at all to do with if he owes taxes. He is required to file an income tax return this year, and pay the taxes, end of story. If he doesn't pay the taxes, he might go to jail and probably will get a felony record and be permanently banned from returning to the US after release.

So this is a pretty serious problem and requires a legal team, which undoubtedly will cost the full amount on deposit to untangle.

He can't just walk away from the situation and let PayPal keep the money, unless he can get the amount he owes in taxes from a relative and pay it, which then puts him into debt.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#123

Post by preinheimer »

revelation wrote: post #67
nlh wrote: post #23

Sorry to hear about the troubles :( If this wasn't the umpteenth time I've heard this story, I wouldn't say this so pesteringly: To everyone: Stop stop stop stop stop using PayPal. This happens over and over again. For once, thankfully, there are viable alternatives out there -- Stripe & WePay to name two (both of which I've had excellent experiences with). Not saying they're panaceas or that there won't be security/…

If you have to use PayPal: regularly transfer any money to an actual bank with actual responsibilities, not some fake holding bank registered in Ireland or whatever PayPal is using today to evade tax and consumer laws. You are not getting interest by letting that money sit with PayPal.

PayPal allows itself to pull money out of a bank account associated with the account as required.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#124

Post by blasten »

blantonl wrote: post #62

Disclaimer: I have a love hate relationship with Paypal. My organization runs most of our payment processes through Paypal. With that said, some questions: 1) How were you able to process 30k/month through Paypal out of the gate without providing a government ID? 2) How much of the 200K were you able to withdrawal? If any? Do you have any of it in cash? 3) Did you experience an abnormal amount of chargebacks? I'd lov…

33K while I was in Venezuela. I had an old U.S. account, so I wanted to change it to Venezuela. My PayPal U.S. account had crazy address like: Avenida GRGRGR, Estado GRGR, United States. They said to me, you can't change the country, so you should create a new account. I did that, but once I noticed less features in PayPal Venezuela, I decided to keep the same code in my website and move the money from the U.S. account to the Venezuela account. I have 1% or less of chargebacks. My customers are happy.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#125

Post by marizmelo »

Sorry about what happened with you. The only why you could get the money is to had the PayPal account linked with one account in Venezuela instead of US. According with your F1 status (and mine) you cannot earn any money in US while studying, unless you get authorization from school to work out of campus (CPT), or after conclude your studies (OPT). Even under CPT/OPT you cannot earn money other from other place than the place you work on. Sorry, I wish you the best luck.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#126

Post by canttestthis »

patio11 wrote: post #53

Apply for a TIN - taxpayer identification number. PayPal can use it in lieu of an SSN. This will take you six weeks. In the alternative, consult a local lawyer and have them nastygram Paypal for you.

If he's an international student, he's only allowed to work on campus. If he gets a US tax ID and files income under that, his library sales will count as off-campus income (I think?). So I'm not sure if this is an option. Of course, IANAL.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#127

Post by mrchess »

anigbrowl wrote: post #13

You have $200k sitting in your paypal account? Don't you have a bank account? What country are you in? What exactly did they say to you? How you mean you 'don't know how' you made $200k - you didn't expect to sell so much, or you sold $200k in one go with no idea who gave it to you? This seriously needs more information.

I'd guess it's more like 2-20K, but if it were only that much would HN have discussed it?

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#129

Post by mylittlepony »

preinheimer wrote: post #123
revelation wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to use PayPal: regularly transfer any money to an actual bank with actual responsibilities, not some fake holding bank registered in Ireland or whatever PayPal is using today to evade tax and consumer laws. You are not getting interest by letting that money sit with PayPal.

PayPal allows itself to pull money out of a bank account associated with the account as required.

I'm not sure I got you. Are you saying Paypal can withdraw money from your bank account?
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