A year back I put my ebook on the US site Amazon, it didn't sell at all but what the heck at least I tried to give it some international exposure.
Now I recently got an email from Amazon demanding that I fill out a tax information form for the US government. The explanatory link in the email doesn't explain much: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=200641090
Apparently the US government wants to charge income tax on Amazon royalties.
Since many of you guys publish your own ebooks, I wanted to ask:
- This tax form thing, is it a new thing or has it been around for a while?
- What info do you have to share? I'm not keen on sharing my personal details with a rising neo-totalitarian state.
- It appears that the US government wants to withhold a percentage of royalties as income tax. I haven't made any money worth mentioning but I wonder how does this translate into figures if you are a successful kindle author?
- Also, it appears even non-US residents will have income tax deducted from their royalties and they will have to claim it back from the IRS on a tax return. Am I understanding this correctly? Are foreigners even eligible to file a tax return to get a possible refund?
- Bizarrely even the Canadian, Indian, and Japanese websites fall under the US taxation system. How does that work?
- Overall, this appears to be a way of mining the royalties of small scale non-US authors. As a foreigner, am I really going to be able to get my tax return from the United States? I'd imagine most foreign authors would not have the time/money/resources to actually claw back their taxes. Or is getting a tax return from the IRS easy?
I'm thinking of just letting my ebook page on Amazon lapse rather than hand over all my info to what for me is a foreign government, but I want to find out what other people think of this.
Now I recently got an email from Amazon demanding that I fill out a tax information form for the US government. The explanatory link in the email doesn't explain much: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=200641090
Apparently the US government wants to charge income tax on Amazon royalties.
Since many of you guys publish your own ebooks, I wanted to ask:
- This tax form thing, is it a new thing or has it been around for a while?
- What info do you have to share? I'm not keen on sharing my personal details with a rising neo-totalitarian state.
- It appears that the US government wants to withhold a percentage of royalties as income tax. I haven't made any money worth mentioning but I wonder how does this translate into figures if you are a successful kindle author?
- Also, it appears even non-US residents will have income tax deducted from their royalties and they will have to claim it back from the IRS on a tax return. Am I understanding this correctly? Are foreigners even eligible to file a tax return to get a possible refund?
- Bizarrely even the Canadian, Indian, and Japanese websites fall under the US taxation system. How does that work?
- Overall, this appears to be a way of mining the royalties of small scale non-US authors. As a foreigner, am I really going to be able to get my tax return from the United States? I'd imagine most foreign authors would not have the time/money/resources to actually claw back their taxes. Or is getting a tax return from the IRS easy?
I'm thinking of just letting my ebook page on Amazon lapse rather than hand over all my info to what for me is a foreign government, but I want to find out what other people think of this.