@collis @natman
We are in rush. Need you revert asap. We have no time.
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Can we get some answer? Is really that hard to answer few simple questions?
Hi all, sorry I really dropped the ball on looping back. I’ve written up a set of answers and am just getting them checked off by the finance and legal teams (we proof all the answers on these threads!) We’ll have it up tomorrow!
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@collis @natman What about withdrawing 50/50 with Swift and Payoneer outside US, different countries.
Hey guys, apologies for the slow response on this thread!
For authors who don’t have passports, you can provide alternative documentation that proves the country of residence such as some other government issued documentation.
For authors splitting withdrawal in the same country, there are no extra documents required.
When an item is sold, the account has made a sale. Accounts on Envato Market are held by a single owner (who agrees to the terms & conditions and is responsible for the usage of that account). We are only providing a means for the owner to split where they are withdrawing to, as a matter of convenience.
For multiple withdrawals in the same country, no extra documentation is required. If the withdrawals are to different countries (using Skrill, PayPal, or any other method), then you need to provide the documentation about the account owner in the country of residence that matches up to the W-8 form information. In other words, we want to verify that you are indeed, in that country!
Great question. What’s important for us is that the user account with Payoneer (Ie your account) is registered to you and therefore carries your details and matching country of residence (ie Bulgaria). If you set up your Payoneer account with a different address, then you need to provide extra documentation to show that you are, in fact, a resident of Bulgaria.
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When you submit documents, you do so under penalty of perjury. Our tax team will review to check it off and let you know if we require more information.
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We haven’t set any restrictions at this time, however we may introduce them soon. Our aim is only to address some limited convenience for authors. Longer term, we are still working to get to a single withdrawal per author so we can automate the whole system up.
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Each account has a single owner, that author provides their tax details and where applicable extra documentation. We apply the relevant tax treaty rate on all sales into the US based on those details. When the owner withdraws their earnings, we will follow withdrawal instructions, however for clarity the earnings belong to the owner of the account.
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We apply tax withholding at the moment the sale happens.
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& 6. As mentioned in 4, we apply taxes when a sale happens, so I’m not sure these two questions are relevant.
To be clear, the changes we’re rolling out are not to facilitate joint owners of a single account. We’ve stayed away from such a system because it’s enormously complicated. As a couple of non-tax examples, imagine if we had a system for two owners of an account and they had a disagreement, or if there was a copyright claim or other legal action taken on the author. Similarly the tax side of things is also complicated. Imagine if one half of a joint owner was from the EU, and the other wasn’t, and then one of them used that account to buy an item - should we charge EU VAT, or not? There would be a lot of system complexity to enable this kind of feature.
Envato has always operated on the basis that there is a single account owner, and all earnings/sales are that owner’s. The split withdrawal system is to allow an account owner to direct the flow of funds for convenience - for example an author withdrawing to more than one account to manage their banking, or to have a different country from their tax form if they have recently moved.
Interesting question. When we made the author teams feature for item support, I thought it would be neat to allow authors to pay people for that work. Unfortunately such a system would be very complex because allowing people to send money to each other (disconnected from an ecommerce transaction) would be a different business entirely. Companies like Western Union that are systems for sending money have a very different set of laws and regulations that apply to them, and as you might guess, it’s really complicated stuff!
As I’ve mentioned before, our intent here isn’t to offer a partnerships system, but to provide authors with a convenience tool for managing their withdrawals. There is only a single account owner for an account.
Provided your account on Payoneer is set up for you and your Lithuanian address, this should be all fine!
Yes, I totally understand. Unfortunately creating a partnership system is really far out of the scope of what we can provide on Envato. We’ve looked into it a few times from different angles as mentioned above, but ultimately have never found a way to do it that is feasible. There are a lot of complexities in allowing authors to jointly own or run accounts, or to split sales amongst multiple owners. Some of them are tax related, but many of them are just general complexity.
Consequently Envato has always been set up for a single account owner. That account owner could be a legal entity like a business or company with multiple people involved, but there is just one entity owning the Envato account. Our split withdrawal system is a convenience for managing your withdrawals.
All revenue are attributed in the Envato system to the account holder, and where we need to issue a tax form such as a 1099-MISC or 1042-S, then that’s what we put on it. You can withdraw your earnings to a second account, however you should consult your tax advisor as to how you are accounting for this in your tax and financial affairs.
Yes, US RWHT will be applied only from January 1st, at the time of sale (ie on sales made in January).
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Thanks @collis. So basically for us nothing is change for now, only that we need to submit W8 form and send Envato proof of residence (Passport). Where we can send this document?
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Do we just have to send an email attaching the documents (Passport/Gov. ID etc) mentioning the Envato Account regarding split withdrawal? Anything else?
Let’s imagine the model: I have a company, for example in a country that has 0% RWHT and majority of stockholders are residents (fill the form W-8 on it) and my partner have proof of residence in country that have 10% RWHT. Next: I want to split withdrawals to Swift of company and to Payoneer of partner - what % of RWHT will be charged?
@collis Vijayanand here, Am from india. One of my partner located in viatnam. usually i send him money every month via paypal, In this case should i submit a required document for every transaction? or i just submit once?
Submit the document only once if you will continue splitting the earnings from “Withdrawals” page after Jan 01, 2016.
For authors who don’t have passports, you can provide alternative documentation that proves the country of residence such as some other government issued documentation.
Can we get more examples of documentation here? I know that Payoneer or Paypal for example accept bills from gas, electricity, TV cable or Internet, bank statements etc to prove the residency of a country? Can we submit this kind of documents?
If you are not able to provide such documentation, and need to withdraw to a different country to the one stated on your form, then the US Royalty Withholding Tax (US RWHT) that will be applied on your account will be the maximum rate of 30%.
Will we get a response from Envato saying that the documentation provided is ok before we make a withdrawal? I don’t want to find out the next month on 15th that my account is subject to 30% US RWHT.
Will be there another round of answers, or will I have to open a support ticket??
I have filled W-8 form and my country doesn’t have a tax treaty deal with US. so i have to pay 30% for every sale that comes from US. Am I allowed to withdraw multiple to different countries without providing passport doc.
Referring to this I will be allowed cause for me it’s same, even if i provide this documentation i will pay again 30% to US sales.
@collis Thanks for clarifying.
With all being mentioned here I suppose raising item prices up to 20-30% will be more than helpful at least for most of authors… Isn’t it? Envato competitors are selling much more less quality items for higher prices, so the buyers won’t be lost.
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If a corporate holds the account and provides certificate of incorporation to confirm its country / wh rate, can it request multiple withdrawals to pay team members / collaborators ? Each payment will have a different name / country.
As mentioned Collis about payments through services like Western Union involve some complex legal & financial issues that make hard using such platforms as a payment systems.
But I wonder if this occurs in the same way in the case of Transferwise
I guess like me, many of you will be tired with the abusive fees that banks apply to our monthly transfers and without detailing the great advantages of Transferwise, I think, if possible, it would be very interesting to have this service available to minimize commissions we all lose every time we do our transfers at the end of the month. If this is possible, of course.
In any case , it is very gratifying to see that actions are being considered to make easier payments and reducing the legal impact about all the gaps that Envato payment system currently have, especially talking in terms of collaboration between authors.
Hi everyone, jumping in here on Collis’ behalf with answers to a couple of previously unanswered questions. I think all other questions have already been covered by Collis’ original post or follow-up Q&A post, so please check those out if you’re still waiting for an answer. Thanks!
Unfortunately not, themesRevealed, we can only accept government-issued documentation as proof of residency for US federal tax purposes. Payoneer and PayPal may be governed by other regulations and their requirements therefore may be different.
Hi bitfade, for the duration of the split withdrawal extension, non-US authors will be able to continue to withdraw funds to different countries as long as they have provided documentation to support their residence or their company’s presence in the country declared on their Form W-8 (US authors will be able to continue doing this without providing any documentary evidence). However, all withdrawal accounts must be in the account owner’s name.