Tax-time Questions

[Sophrosyne]

Okay, I just heard tonight that if you're a U.S. author, and your books are selling in Amazon's international stores, that there's some kind of paperwork you need to file, to prove that you're a U.S. citizen and will be paying taxes in the U.S., so you don't get nailed for European taxes as well.

Does anyone know anything about this? Because it's totally new to me. Do you know what paperwork that is? Or what the filing deadlines are? Or even who you file it to?

Thanks!

[HeidiHall]

What?!? Where did you hear that from? Since Amazon is the distributor to foreign lands, they should be the responsible party for all of that (not that I'm an accountant, but it sounded good when I wrote it). But seriously, Amazon, a US company, pays your royalties. I really don't think there are foreign tax documents you need to worry about unless you distribute outside of the country directly.

[Aurorawolf]

That's news to me, too. Smashwords requires foreign authors to sign some forms, but not U.S. authors (unless I missed something). I don't recall ever seeing anything like that at Amazon.

[Alan Petersen]

It's the VAT collected by some of the European countries. The VAT is determined in your list price and paid so there isn't extra paperwork if you're selling ebooks via Amazon European facing web properties.

When you set your List Price for our EU websites, you have to factor in the additional 3% value-added taxes (the Luxembourg statutory rate effective January 1, 2012) we will add for EU customers, so that your List Price complies with this section after adding these VAT taxes.

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B

Same concept applies for books in a bookstore unless you're going through a publishing house they should be taking care of it as well.

Always a good idea to confirm with an accountant.

[Sophrosyne]

Thanks for the info. The author who told me about it said the forms she filled out were Form 8802 & 6166, but she wasn't sure if it was needed if you're selling only through Amazon.