Do You Get Legal Guidance For Your Business?

[GuruGazette]

So, how many of you are truly running your businesses 100% legally?

Do you use professional legal and tax counselors to make sure?

Over the last couple of days I've been watching a huge international drama evolve on most of the stock photography forums. One of the biggest microstock photo sites recently discovered they have not been following the letter of the law where the IRS and taxes are concerned.

Now the story is pretty complicated but it boils down to this:
The US based company makes royalty/commission payments to foreign nationals. By law, that company is supposed to withhold 30% of the income from those contributors, and pay that in income taxes to the IRS UNLESS the foreign national resides in a country who has tax treaties with the US. In those cases the taxes that have to be paid can be reduced or even eliminated.

So what's this have to do with us over here in the IM world? Simple: Affiliates.

Lots of marketers have chosen to run their own affiliate programs in the last year or two, and many others run them through a service such as PayDotCom. When you run your own or use PDC, you pay the affiliates directly thus you have to deal with the various tax forms involved with that.

Now I'm not a professional tax person or lawyer, so I have no idea if payments to affiliates who reside in other countries might fall under a tax law like the one noted above but I'm curious whether anyone here actually knows either?

For that matter, I wonder if something similar applies where outsourcing is concerned?

That's where the "are you sure" part comes in above If you pay affiliates directly, do you also use professional legal/tax counsel to make certain nothing obscure and complicated is getting missed?

Interesting times we live in...

[Jillian Slack]

What a nightmare!

Perfect opportunity, though, for someone who is an expert (attorney, accountant) to create something to educate the rest of us.

[Flyingpig7]

I agree sounds like a minefield waiting to happen. I suspect the rules are a little different in the UK we are each responsible for self assessment here. But I think your talking about the responsibility of those who run Affiliate programmes /teams at the various networks with their own products. (those that are small (one man/woman band) and larger business concerns).VAT may come in here somewhere, that's an additional tax on type of products.
It will need an International (Intellectual rights) Lawyer (Jillian) to create something for the IM community to use as a guide.
Cheers for that sobering thought.

Keren

[GuruGazette]

FWIW while it is food for thought, the stock photo issue is solely due to the payment of royalties on creative works. I believe since affiliates are paid sales commissions it falls under different rules and regulations.

This could be why some online services like the Amazon Kindle publishing platform are only open to US contributors though.