Changes To How Authors Receive Earnings Payouts From Envato

Not to be mean, but nowhere on the website it says that you can’t work in teams. Also, competition is good and that’s how any market stays healthy. No one forces you to work alone and also, you can work alone while still creating good products and competing with other larger teams. Also, you got the whole point wrong, this feature mostly affects small teams or lone authors whose earnings are little. It forces you to withdraw monthly so you have to pay the withdrawal taxes even though you could save money by saving a few months before withdrawing.

PS: I am also a one-man-team and have no issues with others working in teams or as a company and creating products for the Envato marketplaces.

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50$ per month for transaction fees == 600$ a year!! Very very bad :-1: :-1:

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Is it a problem if there is “John” in Envato account and “Jon” in Payoneer account if the rest of information is the same? In my situation i have “Pavel” in Envato account and “Pavlo” in my Payoneer account and both is actually correct (i had two variations in my documents before 2016)?

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We have to update these data from March 1 to March 31.

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I’m honestly amazed from the backlash this post is getting. You guys do realize that these rules were added almost 2 years ago, and now they are just getting enforced.

1. ENVATO IS CHANGING EVERYTHING
Uhm, nope. The rules were the same, this was in the TOS. Now they just added a NEW rule which says " withdrawals will be automatic, so no one will ever complain that they forgot.

2. THIS WILL KILL PARTNERSHIPS!!!

Why?
PayPal to PayPal - COST = 0
Payoneer to Payoneer - Absolutely Free.
Swift to Swift - well, Payoneer is free. Why do you want to transfer using Swift? It’s not available? No worries. Travel. If you can send 50.000$ via swift and you don’t want to pay 2500$ in taxes, plane tickets are cheap. Go on a holiday and make a cash transaction with a contract.

Therefore, all the fuss in this thread is over the fact that Envato will now automatically send you the money so you no longer forget to the name and details you’ve added in your account?

I’m really, really struggling to see why there is so much scandal over this. Envato sends you 50.000 you send 25.000 to you partner. The fact that Payoneer or PayPal will ask for a tone of verification for large amounts stands in the case of partnerships AND individual authors. Therefore, the entire scandal here is pointless.

Envato just added automatic withdrawals. Absolutely nothing else has changed.

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We’re amazed that you didn’t see the same backlash in the original announcement post

If fact the uproar was so big that @collis himself had to provide (temporal) solution for split withdrawals:

You’re kidding, right? Paypal has huge fees to make transactions from one account to other that ranges from 3.9% to 5.4% of everything you transfer depending the country. The only way it doesn’t cost is if you transfer from USA accounts to other USA account

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Not kidding, but I just noticed it works only for the US - https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/what-are-the-fees-for-paypal-accounts-faq690

Therefore, Payoneer, and from what I see on their website…

Payoneer doesn't block any specific country, however as a US based company we are required to follow strict rules, laws and regulations.

The US Office of Foreign Assets Control does enforce economic and trade sanctions on certain countries.

The list is of course subject to change, but Payoneer does its best to offer services to every country, unless prohibited by laws and regulations.

Problem solved. Get Payoneer, withdraw to Payoneer, send it for free to your partner, create an invoice that is a deductible for company expenses, and voila. There you have it.

If Envato would have said. We’re only using swift and nothing else, I would have understood all the fuss, but in this situation, everyone is aggravated for absolutely no reason.

Got a partner? Great! Get Payoneer! Split earnings directly from Payoneer. So, where’s the problem? What did Envato kill? Absolutely nothing! A lot of drama for no reason! :slight_smile:

What?!

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It was a figure of speech… a phrase used in a non-literal / rhetorical sense.

Maybe not so smart to advertise tax evasion in such a thread, don’t you think? :slight_smile:

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How is it tax evasion if I meet up with you, give you 25.000$ and you give me an invoice for services provided. Only I choose to give you that money in cash rather than via a bank transfer? Let’s not interpret things to illegal depths.

oh boy I have no idea what country you are from but stop advicing people to cross borders to get their money in cash please…

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I see your nickname is Creattive. It’s not “accountant” and last time I checked, any company from any country, can pay for goods and services to other companies from other countries using MONEY. Therefore, by your logic, no one can purchase anything outside their own border using cash.

The whole purpose of CASH & Bank Transfers for companies is to PAY Invoices.

Person 1 has a company in the Country 2. Person 2 has a company in Country 1. Person 1 can travel to Person 2’s country and withdraw money from a bank. After that, he can PAY an Invoice. I mean, seriously, who travels with $10.000+ in cash in their pocket. Of course there are banks where you can withdraw money from.

Seriously, have you hear about multi-national companies? I’d strongly suggest talking to your accountant. I know at least 5 authors here who do this, and have companies and use invoices and it’s completely legal. So therefore, please talk to your accountant.

We’re not talking about smuggling 5 cargo containers filled with cash here. It’s paying for a legal invoice between 2 company managers in 2 different countries that meet and sign the invoice in the others country. How can you even think that’s illegal?!

I mean, seriously, by your logic, absolutely all technology companies in the world are making BILLIONS of dollars worth of tax evasion.

I’ll tell you a huge secret, there are a lot of countries in the world (in addition to the US and Australia), and in many of them its own tax law. For example, what do you know about the so-called “Google Tax Law”? I’m sure you do not know anything. Due to the fact that the number of withdrawals transactions is increasing, and the Author, according to the law, can withdraw money only through the swift – this increases his spending on the withdrawal of his money. Add to this the fact that he works with other Authors of TF from other countries, and maybe then you finally understand something.

So please, stop writing about what you have no idea about, seriously.

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Again, we have to correct you, it doesn’t work the same for all countries! We already tried Payoneer and although Payoneer doesn’t block any country, there are specific restrictions, for example in our country and in one of our partners country. Like you wrongly said with Paypal (which will now cause authors who have to stick that that method lots of extra money in fees), this methods vary from country to country and are not all the same. The thing here is that Envato is supposed to simplify things for authors, not give them new headaches. Because, taking your example, people go from having three methods of payment (Paypal, SWIFT and Payoneer) to just one! You see what we are saying?

Yes, and only if you send from US account to another US account, and 2.9% is the lowest fee, like we told you some countries have 5.4%+0.30USD…that’s a lot!

And that’s for a lot of authors, take a look at this for example, from @kreatura


and he is a Power Elite Author! As we said in our previous post, the backlash is not something new, please check the links we posted before. Again, the uproar was so big that @collis himself had to provide (temporal) solution for split withdrawals.

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First off. This is a forum, and last time I checked I can have an opinion be it wrong or in this case not. Secondly, you should really check the community guidelines about your forum conduct before I or my colleague moderators will start applying the community rules and suspend you. Last time I checked telling someone to shut up politely or not is not allowed, neither is flaming a conversation. If you have an opinion, share it, and accept that others may have a different one.

** Google TAX** is just a figure of speech and it has absolutely nothing to do with paying your partner in another country using a legal invoice. It refers to tax planning strategies used by multinational companies that exploit gaps and mismatches in tax rules to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax locations where there is little or no economic activity. If you earn 50.000$, and you move 25.000$ to another country where taxes are low or non-existent, TO YOUR OWN ACCOUNT then you are the perfect definition of the so called Google TAX. But since you ( Person 1 / Company 1 ) are earning 50.000$ and your partner ( Person 2 / Company 2 ) sends you an INVOICE for PROVIDED SERVICES and you pay that invoice to a completely different person, please tell me how are you passing money to yourself in a different country where the tax rules are lighter? Because in that case, I think 90% of the companies in the world are doing the Google Tax evasion trick.

So before telling me to shut up, please read more about the “Google Tax Law” except it’s title, because it’s clear you’re just throwing things in this conversation of which you known absolutely nothing about, it applies to the SAME company trying to move their assets to pay less tax per profit and income, not to different entities. Then learn what Invoices are and how multinational companies, which you and your partner MUST BE in order to transfer money for services from one to another. It’s actually quite easy, and as I’ve previously mentioned, there are authors here doing it, with expert accountant advice and completely legal paperworks. Just a company paying another company in a different country for services paid. Not a company moving money from one bank account in country A to country B to avoid taxes.

They advocate 0 taxes. Probably because they like Envato have to abide by the rules of countries, and not the interwebs.

Yeap. I understand your point of view. If you are in countries where Payoneer have their hands tied and there is no PayPal 0% Tax like in the US … then … you are pretty much out of luck…

US to US is free. I sent you a link. Probably I misunderstood, but I see your point.

Guys, things will always be like this. You make money, you pay taxes, the more money you make, the more taxes you pay. It’s the way the world has ( unfortunately ) always worked.

Oh, and one more thing, yes, something else has changed: the ability to make split withdrawals, because in the past Envato implemented a temporal solution for that because of the backlash in the original topic, but in this new announcement there’s nothing about that. Anyway, what we really want is that for Envato to try and implement new tools to help authors in partnerships and or team,that’s why we created this topic (Petition to Envato) Partnership Tools to offer and exchange new ideas to build around this new changes, do you think that that is such a bad thing? :slight_smile:

Yes, US to US is free, that’s what we told in our post, but only there, from US to worldwide is 2.9%+0.30USD and for transaction to and from another countries the fees can get really high, and let’s be honest, most partnerships are composed of people in different countries

Yes, but taxes and restrictions are different things, that’s why we objected to the Payoneer option, not all authors from all countries have the same possibilities, which leaves authors the only possibility of paying more for something that they previously didn’t have to :frowning:

We understand that, but as we told you, this being a worldwide community, affects people in different ways, more when authors work in teams or partnerships. And the problem here is not paying taxes, the problem here are the new fees that authors will have to pay, that’s why the backlash you said you were amazed by. And some people will now have to pay to their eyeballs! For example: Pay US withholding tax + new transaction fee + their own country tax + conversion or transaction fee (that some banks around the world charge for)

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I truly understand all your points of view, and I believe you guys are on the wrong side of luck in this situation, but, in cases where 0% if possible, that’s absolutely awesome for those authors and those countries, and I’m fairly certain the Legal Team at Envato are running left and right trying to find the best solutions for everyone. The main idea is that that temporary solution Envato talked about, was, as you said, temporal.

Envato has to make us ( the authors ) happy but it also has to make the legal team happy. The sad side is that if they don’t make us happy we scream and cry, but if they don’t make the legal team happy, Envato ceases to exist because they then start committing illegal actions on an international level which I’m certain you understand will have catastrophic consequences.

Unfortunately this situation a matter of legal terms, things we feel unjustified other countries have and we don’t or vice versa, but the law is the law, and if Envato doesn’t follow it, we’re the ones to suffer all the consequences if they get shut down, if Envato follows it, we still have consequences only they don’t include 100% loss of money, but a certain percentage…

Thanks for sharing your point of view so clearly. I knew there would be some countries to get extra taxes, but, as I’ve mentioned above, I’m certain Envato’s Legal Team tried to dodge all bullets as much as possible, because if we leave, they loose, so it’s in their interest that we’re happy and increasing the overall market value. Cheers!

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@enabled We understand the legality of the situation, that’s why we created the topic we linked before (Petition to Envato) Partnership Tools . Knowing that there are some things that can’t be changed, but we can always strive to find new alternatives to make things easier to those who are “on the wrong side of luck” as you said. That’s why we are hoping for…that Envato could find a way, via new tools or another option, to help authors in partnerships and teams avoid this new fees.

Anyway, we only replied because in your first post it seemed that you didn’t understood why people were so up in arms about this and we wanted to share the other side of the story so you could understand why this change was so terrible for so many authors from different countries around the world and the restrictions these new changes carry :slight_smile:

Cheers!

First, re-read carefully your first message addressed to all authors.
Secondly, not only you can have your own opinion. I have already described you mine.

Third, do not misinterpret other people’s words, guided by imagination, not facts. If I wanted to say exactly the words that you ascribe to me, then trust me - I would say exactly that.

p.s. I would be happy to continue this dialogue, explaining in detail to you and your other misconceptions about the tax law (and not so superficial information from Google, which you are guided by), but unfortunately the desire has already disappeared, and there is no sense because your suspiciousness will turn it into a monologue. I wish you success, all the best.