4 ms·

What about self-employment tax?

• petercooper 17y ago
  I can't answer the US question, but for any UK potential (or existing) authors who are reading.. you have two options: 1) Treat the after-tax "net" amounts you receive as regular income - which are then taxed in the usual way - and "forget" the US taxes paid. 2) Treat the pre-tax "gross" amount as income, then fill out a separate "Foreign Income" form on your self assessment. On this, fill in the gross US-earned amount, the amount of US taxes paid, and calculate the UK tax deduction. This is a mega pain in the butt, but if you earned over, say, $10k, you can get a nice savings. About £600 worth in my case - it's not worth it for much lower though.. The HMRC is okay with either, but you can't do both ;-)
  • cstross 17y ago
    Alternatively: get an ITIN (individual taxpayer ID number) from the US IRS, and jump through the hoops under the UK-USA double taxation treaty to declare yourself as a UK taxpayer. Double taxation treaties are bilateral arrangements between countries so that taxpayers can declare one of the signatory countries to be their country of residence and pay income tax earned in the other place in their home country. Result: you get back the US withholding tax money, although you have a larger income and consequently pay more tax to HMRC.
    • petercooper 17y ago
      Minus the ITIN part, that's what I'm going to be doing for 2008-09 (and what I outlined in option 2 above). It's not necessary to have an ITIN and to declare anything to fill out the "Foreign" portion of the tax return and use the treaty's benefits to deduct the withheld US tax locally. Though if you know any more, I'd love to learn more :)
• edw519 17y ago
  Same thing. One is on a W2, the other is on a 1099.