This could be easily simplified by sending them via mail. We’d be able to print them out ourselves. For me and many other authors that travel this is a huge liability since we won’t be getting the mails and if someone else gets them and opens them, well, great news, they know where we live and that we earn money.
I totally agree with @Enabled . Paper forms that are mailed with a regular post are just insane in the 21th century. But as @realmag777 already mentioned there is no warranty that a paper mail will be delivered. E-mailed PDF form looks like much more reliable option.
Another question: What if some people are obliged to left their houses because of war in their regions? Personally I’m from Ukraine, and the war on the East Ukraine continues almost 3 years. What can people do in such situations? I’d like to hear some suggestions from Envato.
It will be sent to our postal address, not as PDF - because in some countries, the physical paper is needed as proof.
In Romania, for instance, I asked at the financial institution where we pay taxes (ANAF) and they require the physical paper from the company (Envato in this case) that paid the taxes -they do not accept something else like electronically signed pdf or printed by us stuff.
I’d like to check my information but even though I did submit my tax information, my address doesn’t show up in my billing/personal information section and I don’t see a way of checking what I submitted last year in the tax information section.
Thing is - I did move houses right before Christmas. And chances are I sent my old address for consistency reasons because I had to hang on to the old place through February.
Long life story short - what best to do? Submit a support ticket? Re-submit tax information?
I doubt they don’t accept a printed paper. And the reason is simple, if you have a business that sells online you’ll most likely have to print invoices. They don’t accept those either?
As other authors mentioned, there are countries that are at war, that have political problems and that have mail problems that cannot guarantee the fact that the mail will arrive.
Having a PDF ( 1:1 copy ) of the document they send and printing it out will most certainly do for all financial institutions. The logic is extremely simple. If you can print an invoice and they’ll accept it, they’ll certainly accept this printed out.
This should be done in much simpler fashion and would solve the issue instantly for everyone.
Checkbox 1: I want to receive a physical letter with this form.
Checkbox 2: I want to receive an electronic copy of this form that I will print out myself. Some legal text here that Envato is not liable if you don’t print out the PDF
@matthewcoxy what’s the benefit of this for non US authors? I already gave money for free to US gov and I don’t want to provide my personal information.
@matthewcoxy - I think you should really consider emailing them. If you are sending them via the postal office they might arrive too late and we can miss the opportunity to get the tax returns, then we will have to wait another year… which isn’t that nice giving the amount of taxes we pay.
Just to be clear, I don’t mind getting a hard copy at my company office, so you can send that too, but what i care about is to get the soft copy in time so i can print it and have my accountants add it to the file and get those taxes back.
Let’s just make sure you don’t make us lose the tax returns please.
I completely agree with you I was not saying that I’m against pdfs and electronic stuff, I just wanted to explain that maybe some countries have stupid financial laws which require the physical paper.
In fact, if you ever come to Cluj and you hear the employees from the fincial institution (ANAF) saying about a woman who continuously complains about things not being exclusively online, that’s me. I would love to live in a world where you can have everything online.
I’m glad you agree with the checkbox thing. And I’m not sure how things run for your taxing agency, but if the paper you bring in, printed, is a legal accepted documented in your country, and the lady at the counter is giving you an attitude, I’m most certain the following phrase will help " I’d like to speak to your supervisor "
Now in all seriousness, it does suck printing things, but I’m sure it sucks more loosing a mail that has a printed thing with your name and money!
So @matthewcoxy, can we get a checkbox for this and have the ability to manually download this ourselves?
If you sell at Amazon, you can give your consent and receive an electronic version of the 1042-S form, without this consent, Amazon sends no later than March 15 a printed copy.
A mail is not reliable in my country and I don’t have guarantees that I will recive this tax summaries. It would be good to recive the form to e-mail adress also.
Problem solved, everyone happy! Easy and safe for everyone! Add checkboxes, everyone is happy about it. Half the web including big sites like Amazon and EBay use this system, I doubt Envato can’t!